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Originally Posted by alatar
My point here is that if Lucifer rebels pre-Creation or during Creation, then it may be closer to Arda than thought. And think that I may have included the Biblical verse previously where it states that Satan was sinning from the beginning.
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Hmm. It all depends on which 'Satan' one ascribes to. The Satan we know in popular culture is inherited from Milton. (And we ought to recall that Milton's
Paradise Lost is/was on the Vatican list of proscribed books for its doctrinal irregularities, so we cannot automatically assume that Tolkien ascribed to a Miltonic Satan.) One very interesting, very different view of Satan is
Elaine Pagel's The Origin of Satan
Her thesis is that in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, the satan was merely an adversary of humans, doing God's will to challenge or test us but that as Christianity developed in the first century he was literally demonised to be the enemy within. Melkor is not simply an antagonist of the Children of Illuvatar, but one whose desire to sub-create challenges Eru's status as The One. In fact, perhaps it can be said that Melkor's rebellion arises from the original treatment of him as the enemy within who is demonised.