Samael in Jewish Tradition- Evil Within, Evil Without

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:

Samael vs. Satan

Chapter 28 of Radiance, with its vision of Divine Justice, raises the question of Jewish views of Satan, especially as compared to Samael or Ashmedai. While in my story, Satan is a member of the heavenly court not the Sitra Achra, in the tradition things aren't quite so simple.

So what can we say about Jewish views of Satan, and how do they compare to Samael and other more obviously villainous characters from Jewish mythology?

SaTaN
In Hebrew, words are generally built out of three letter roots that are then conjugated in different ways to produce multiple meanings. The three base letters of Satan are שטן which means to oppose or to be an adversary against.

Now the Bible uses the root of the Satan 4 times in reference to some kind of divine being, in Numbers 22, Zechariah 3, Job 1-2 and 1 Chronicles 21. But to understand these references we should bear in mind that the word is also used for human characters (for example 1 Samuel 29) - because in the human sphere, the word Satan has two distinct but related uses, one is a military opponent, and the other is a more formal court prosecutor.

Its the use of Satan as a formal court prosecutor that really interests me, an aspect that is really played up in Zechariah 3 and Job 1-2, where Satan seems to be a role that angels sometimes play in the divine court, rather than the personal name of a particular creature.