Lucifer

In modern and late Medieval Christian thought, Lucifer (Hebrew: הילל heylel – Lucifer, "light-bearer" shining one, morning star, 'Helel' describing the king of Babylon) from (Hebrew: הָלַל halal "to shine," "to flash forth light," "to be boastful") is a fallen angel commonly associated with Satan, the embodiment of evil and enemy of God. Lucifer is generally considered, based on the influence of Christian literature and legend, to have been a prominent archangel in heaven (although some contexts say he was a cherub or a seraph), prior to having been motivated by pride to rebel against God. When the rebellion failed, Lucifer was cast out of heaven, along with a third of the heavenly host, and came to reside on the world.

Lucifer was originally a Latin word meaning "light-bearer" (from lux, "light", and ferre, "to bear, bring"), a Roman astrological term for the "Morning Star", the planet Venus.

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."
—Genesis 3:15 ESV

According to David J. Stewart

The reason Lucifer has been understood to be a proper name of the Devil has to do with the Latin translation of the Hebrew term Helel. This word was understood, by some, to be a proper name for the king of Babylon. It means "light bearer," or Lucifero in Latin. The Latin title became a popular name for this evil figure. When the King James translators rendered the Hebrew term into English, they kept the popular term "Lucifer" for the Devil.

The word Lucifer was the direct translation of the Greek eosphorus ("dawn-bearer"; cf. Greek phosphorus, "light-bearer") used by Jerome in the Vulgate. In that passage, Isaiah 14:12, it referred to one of the popular honorific titles of a Babylonian king; however, later interpretations of the text, and the influence of embellishments in works such as Dante's The Divine Comedy and John Milton's Paradise Lost, led to the common idea that Lucifer was a poetic appellation of Satan.

A 2nd-century sculpture of the moon goddess Selene accompanied by Hesperus and Phosphorus (pictured left): the Morning star was later Latinized as "Lucifer". Lucifer is a poetic name for the "morning star", a close translation of the Greek eosphoros, the "dawn-bringer", which appears in the Odyssey and in Hesiod's Theogony.

A classic Roman use of "Lucifer" appears in Virgil's Georgics (III, 324-5):

"Luciferi primo cum sidere frigida rura carpamus, dum mane novum, dum gramina canent"

"Let us hasten, when first the Morning Star appears, To the cool pastures, while the day is new, while the grass is dewy"

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