50 Fun Facts About The Devil

The word 'devil' comes from the Greek diábolos, which means what?

Slanderer: Greek-speaking Jews used the word to translate the Hebrew satan, which is how an everyday term for a false accuser became the Devil's own name.

The Hebrew word śāṭān was originally a common noun meaning what?

Adversary: the word was first used of human enemies, and in the Book of Numbers even of an angel God sends to block Balaam's road.

Which religion was the first to develop a demonology headed by a supreme spirit of evil?

Zoroastrianism treated evil as a separate principle that God did not create: its good god freely chooses good and a rival spirit chooses evil, the first known dualist cosmos.

In the religion founded by Zarathustra, what is the 'destructive spirit' called?

Angra Mainyu, known afterwards as Ahriman, is no equal of the creator: he is bound to space and time, and the texts promise his destruction at the end of the world.

Zarathustra urged his followers to abandon the devas and worship which god alone?

Ahura Mazda, the 'Wise Lord', was to be worshipped alone, and the older gods he displaced, the devas, were recast as demons serving the evil spirit.

In the Charlie Daniels Band's 1979 hit, the Devil goes down to which US state looking for a soul to steal?

Georgia: he bets a golden fiddle against young Johnny's soul in a playing duel, and loses.

Which third-century Persian religion taught two eternal principles of good and evil and counted the young Augustine as a follower?

Manichaeism held that the two were once apart, are now mingled and will be parted for ever; Augustine followed it as a young man, then wrote against it as a bishop.

In the Welsh legend of Devil's Bridge, an old woman cheats the Devil by throwing bread to lure which animal across first?

A dog chases the loaf, so the Devil, promised the first living thing to cross the bridge he built for her, gets no soul; Swiss tellings of the trick send a dog, a goat or a chamois.

The Catholic Church launched which crusade against the dualist Cathars of southern France in 1209?

The Albigensian Crusade ravaged Languedoc for twenty years yet failed to stamp out the heresy; that was left to the Inquisition, set up in its wake.

Which 1215 gathering affirmed the devil was created good but turned evil by his own will?

The Fourth Lateran Council put it in its opening creed, then went on to order every Catholic to confess at least once a year.

The Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil' was inspired by which Russian novel, in which Satan visits Moscow?

The Master and Margarita had just appeared in English when Marianne Faithfull gave Mick Jagger a copy; Bulgakov's Devil turns up as a suave visitor called Professor Woland.

Legend says which Delta blues guitarist sold his soul to the Devil at a Mississippi crossroads?

Robert Johnson left town a guitarist who impressed nobody and came back a dazzling one, a change the tale of a bargain grew up to explain.

Which Buddhist figure tempts the Buddha with a celestial army and a vision of beautiful maidens?

Māra also disputes the Buddha's right to sit beneath the tree, and the Buddha answers by touching the ground, calling the earth itself as his witness.

Which creature in the Book of Genesis is traditionally identified with the Devil?

The serpent is never called the Devil in Genesis itself; later readers made the link, and the Book of Revelation speaks of 'the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan'.

A taunt in the Book of Isaiah about a fallen 'morning star' gave Christian tradition which name for the Devil?

Lucifer is simply the Latin Bible's word for the morning star; the verse was aimed at a king of Babylon and only afterwards read as the Devil's own plunge from heaven.

In which biblical book does Satan wager that a righteous man loves God only because he is blessed?

Job: here 'the satan' is a member of God's own court who cannot touch the man without permission, more a prosecutor than a rebel.

In the temptation of Christ, what does the devil offer Jesus?

All the kingdoms of the earth, shown from a very high mountain, are his price for a single act of worship; Jesus refuses with a line from Deuteronomy.

The Gospels of Luke and John both say that Satan 'entered into' which disciple?

Judas Iscariot: Luke places it before he goes to bargain with the chief priests, John at the supper itself, the moment he takes the bread.

How did Jesus answer the charge of casting out demons by Beelzebub?

A house divided against itself will fall, he said: Satan would hardly help tear down his own kingdom. Lincoln borrowed the image in 1858 to warn about a nation split over slavery.

The First Epistle of Peter compares the prowling devil to which animal?

A roaring lion 'seeking whom he may devour' is the image in 1 Peter 5:8, which tells believers to stay sober and watchful and to stand firm against him.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul warns that Satan disguises himself as what?

An angel of light, Paul says, so it is no surprise that the rival preachers troubling Corinth, 'false apostles', pass themselves off as servants of righteousness.

In the Book of Revelation, the dragon 'called the devil, or Satan' wages war against whom?

The archangel Michael and his angels win the war in heaven; the dragon is hurled down to earth, where it turns on a woman who has just given birth.

Where does Dante's Inferno place the Devil?

At the bottom of hell, Dante's Devil is no ruler of flames but a three-faced giant frozen to the waist in ice, chewing a traitor in each mouth.

Asmodeus, the demon who kills a bride's seven husbands on their wedding nights, first appears in which ancient Jewish book?

Tobit tells how the angel Raphael has young Tobias burn a fish's heart and liver, and the smoke drives Asmodeus all the way to Egypt.

In the Catholic Church, the official nicknamed the 'devil's advocate' argued against what?

Declaring someone a saint: the Promoter of the Faith dug up every flaw in a candidate's life and miracles, a post set up in 1587 and cut back by John Paul II in 1983.

In which C. S. Lewis book does a senior devil coach his nephew Wormwood in the art of temptation?

The Screwtape Letters runs to 31 letters from the bureaucracy of Hell, and the pupil fails: his human 'patient' dies in the Blitz and slips away to Heaven.

Some Gnostic texts call the creator of the material world by which devil's name from Jewish writings?

Samael, 'god of the blind', is what a voice from above calls the creator after he boasts that he alone is God, a rebuke for his ignorance.

The Quran often calls the devil Shaitan, but what is his personal name there?

Iblis is no rival god in the Quran: cast out for his pride, he asks for a reprieve until Judgment Day and is granted it, free until then to tempt humankind.

According to the Quran, the Islamic devil is 'one of the' what?

Jinn: the verse names his kind in the same breath as his disobedience, yet he had been standing among the angels, and scholars argued for centuries over which he really was.

Out of pride, the Islamic devil refused to prostrate before whom?

Adam was made of clay and he of fire, the devil argued, so bowing was beneath him; for that pride he was cast out of heaven.

Muslims throw pebbles at three walls in the 'stoning of the devil' during which annual observance?

The Hajj: at Mina, just outside Mecca, pilgrims cast stones at three walls that stand for the Devil, re-enacting a prophet's refusal to be tempted.

'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,' declares Satan in which epic poem?

Paradise Lost gives its fallen angel such stirring speeches that William Blake said Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it'.

In the Book of Jubilees, the demon prince Mastema, not God, proposes the famous testing of which patriarch?

Abraham is tested, in this retelling, because Mastema dares God to demand his son Isaac, a rewrite that shifts the cruel idea away from God.

In the Book of Enoch, which fallen angel teaches men to make swords?

Azazel is bound hand and foot in the desert for it, and God says 'to him ascribe all sin'; in Leviticus the scapegoat is sent out 'for Azazel', a name also read as a place or as the goat itself.

Which American satirist wrote The Devil's Dictionary, a book of cynical definitions?

Ambrose Bierce first issued it in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book; in 1913 he rode into revolutionary Mexico and was never heard from again.

Spinoza argued the devil cannot exist because, as God's opposite, he would consist of what?

Nothingness, he wrote in his early Short Treatise, adding drily that if so wretched a being did exist and prayers could help, 'one ought to pray for his conversion'.

Kant illustrated devilish envy with a merchant who bought and destroyed a rival's what?

Tulip: the merchant already owned one of the rarest, so he bought another man's and trampled it underfoot, wishing, Kant says, that nobody else should share the distinction.

In a 2023 Gallup poll, 58% of adults in which country said they believed in the devil?

The United States: 58% was the lowest of five readings Gallup had taken since 2001, yet still a clear majority, with belief strongest among weekly churchgoers.

The second-century Christian writer Tatian named which Greek god as the head of the demons?

Zeus leads the demons in Tatian's Address to the Greeks, part of a wider Christian move that turned the old gods' spirits, the daimons, into devils.

Beelzebub is occasionally known by what title?

Lord of the Flies is a literal reading of the Hebrew name, and William Golding took it as the title of his 1954 novel, where the 'lord' is a pig's head swarming with flies.

When King Ahaziah sent to consult Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron, which prophet intercepted his messengers?

Elijah met them on the road and asked whether there was no God in Israel to consult; the king, hurt in a fall through a lattice, was told he would never leave his bed.

In Peter Binsfeld's 1589 pairing of demons with the seven deadly sins, Beelzebub stands for which sin?

Gluttony was his share in Binsfeld's scheme, but the lists never agreed: an English tract of about 1410 had given him envy, and a French exorcist soon handed him pride.

Mephistopheles originated as the chief devil in which legend?

Faust was a real travelling German magician, or perhaps two men using that name, and the first book of his legend, the Faustbuch, was printed in 1587.

Which German writer's verse drama made 'Mephistopheles' the standard spelling of the demon's name?

Goethe did not invent the spelling: he took it from an eighteenth-century chapbook, while the oldest books of the legend had called the demon Mephostophiles.

Which Elizabethan playwright wrote the tragedy in which Mephistopheles serves a doctor who has sold his soul?

Christopher Marlowe gave his demon regrets of his own: asked how he comes to be out of hell, Mephistopheles replies, 'Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.'

Which word did John Milton coin as the name of Satan's capital city in Hell?

Pandemonium, built from the Greek for 'all demons', is the palace the fallen angels raise in his 1667 epic; only a century on did the word come to mean any uproar.

One proposed Greek meaning of the name Mephistopheles is 'not loving' what?

Light is the guess built on Greek words for 'not', 'light' and 'loving', but dictionaries call the name's origin unknown; a rival theory makes it Hebrew for 'destroyer' and 'liar'.

Which horned figure of Alpine folklore accompanies St Nicholas and punishes badly behaved children?

Krampus arrives with the saint on the night of 5 December: the good child gets a present, the bad one a beating with birch branches.

Who founded the Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966?

Anton LaVey founded it on Walpurgis Night, 30 April; despite the name, its members treat Satan as a symbol of individualism, not a being to worship.

Followers of which religion may not even utter the word for the devil?

Yazidism avoids the word, and others that sound like it, yet outsiders long branded its followers devil-worshippers for revering Malak Taus, the Peacock Angel.