One of my most popular posts of all time is an innocuous looking article about the differences I see between Satan and Samael (read it here). In that post, I tried to distinguish between Satan and Samael in Jewish tradition as different aspects of death, Satan as a natural, better kind of death, and Samael as death as a great evil.
Today I want to focus on a different aspect of Samael, namely his role in the great early medieval midrash, Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer (the chapters of Rabbi Eliezer). Written in the early Muslim period, this amazing work revitalises much earlier mythic ideas latent in rabbinic Judaism, creating a running narrative from the first day of creation onwards, harmonising all of scripture with powerful mythic symbolism.
The author of the midrash seems to be fascinated by the figure of Samael, and depicts him in a way that we might find strikingly Christian and not a little disturbing:
