Satan isn’t in the Old Testament - McClellan

As always, remember McClellan is basing this on the HC and its attendant presuppositions. And ignoring other scholars, data, and arguments.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bi9JX29NAg

1. 1 Chronicles 21:1 and the Proper Name Śāṭān

The argument that śāṭān in 1 Chronicles 21:1 is simply an indefinite common noun (“an adversary”) overlooks key syntactical and textual evidence:

• The Anarthrous Construction: In Classical Biblical Hebrew grammar, personal proper names typically do not take the definite article (ha-). While Job 1–2 and Zechariah 3 use the arthrous form ha-śāṭān (“the adversary” or “the accuser”), 1 Chronicles 21:1 drops the article entirely (śāṭān wayyāqām ‘al-yiśrā’ēl). Standard Hebrew grammars note that dropping the article marks the grammatical transition of an appellative title into a proper personal name (Gesenius, Kautzsch, & Cowley, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, §125d–f; Waltke & O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, §13.6).

• Ancient Translation Evidence (Septuagint): Translators of the Septuagint (LXX) - Alexandrian Jewish scholars translating the Hebrew scriptures in the 3rd to 2nd century BCE - rendered the word in 1 Chronicles 21:1 directly as the transliterated proper name Satan (Σατάν), rather than the Greek noun for adversary/accuser (diabolos or antikeimenos), showing that ancient Jewish translators read it as an identifiable supernatural entity long before the New Testament period (Hanhart et al., Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graecum; Jobes & Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, Baker Academic).

• Scholarly Recognition of the Shift: Major commentators note that Chronicles represents the crucial bridge where the heavenly adversarial role solidifies into a personal name:

  • Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox Press, 1993, pp. 374–375), observes that the absence of the article points to śāṭān being treated as a proper name denoting an independent celestial figure.

  • John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (Sheffield Academic Press, 2000, pp. 185–187), explains that 1 Chronicles 21:1 represents the first unambiguous instance where Śāṭān functions as an individualized, personalized proper noun.

  • Esther J. Hamori, God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Monstrous Gods, and Deadly Divine Beings in the Bible (Broadleaf Books, 2023), similarly details how the figure transitions across Israelite literature from a functional title into a personalized supernatural adversary.

2. The Adversarial Nature in Zechariah 3 and Job

Characterizing ha-śāṭān in Job and Zechariah as a loyal civil servant or routine member of the divine bureaucracy minimizes the explicit conflict in the text:

• The Divine Rebuke in Zechariah: In Zechariah 3:2, Yahweh directly confronts the figure: “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you!” The verb used for rebuke (gā‘ar) carries legal and cosmic force; God does not issue a formal judicial rebuke to an investigator merely performing their assigned civic duty. As Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers demonstrate (Haggai, Zechariah 1–8, Anchor Yale Bible, Doubleday, 1987, pp. 184–190), this exchange portrays an adversarial confrontation between Yahweh’s grace toward the priesthood and an antagonistic prosecutor.

• Malicious Intent in Job: In the Job prologue, the figure does not merely audit moral behavior; he casts active doubt on human integrity and God's assessment of Job (“Does Job fear God for nothing?”, Job 1:9), moving Yahweh to test him. Old Testament scholar David J. A. Clines (Job 1–20, Word Biblical Commentary, Thomas Nelson, 1989, pp. 18–24) points out that ha-śāṭān operates with distinct cynicism and hostility toward both God and man, demonstrating that the adversarial disposition of Satan is already deeply embedded in the narrative framework.

3. Typology and Double Reference in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28

While the primary historical references address the King of Babylon (Isaiah 14:4) and the King of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:2), theological and literary traditions recognize a prophetic double reference:

• Transcendental Language in Ezekiel 28: The text uses imagery that exceeds any historical earthly king: Ezekiel 28:13–15 explicitly places this being “in Eden, the garden of God,” dressed in celestial gems, designated as an “anointed guardian cherub” on the “holy mountain of God,” and blameless “from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you.”

• Cosmic Archetypes in Prophecy: Biblical scholars such as Brevard S. Childs (Isaiah, Old Testament Library, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) and Walther Zimmerli (Ezekiel 2: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48, Hermeneia, Fortress Press, 1983) point out that prophetic polemic routinely weaves earthly tyrants together with celestial, mythological archetypes. Early patristic commentators like Origen (De Principiis, 1.5.4) and Tertullian (Adversus Marcionem, 2.10) formalized this canonical reading, arguing that the pride and fall of these earthly rulers consciously reflect the primordial fall of a rebellious celestial being.

4. Canonical Unity vs. Methodological Reductionism

Historical-critical atomization isolates biblical texts solely to their immediate presumed compositional moments. The classical canonical approach assesses the texts through the lens of inner-biblical exegesis and progressive revelation:

• Inner-Biblical Exegesis: As shown by Michael Fishbane (Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel, Oxford University Press, 1985), later biblical and Second Temple writers continually re-read and expanded earlier imagery to unveil theological layers already implicit in the tradition.

• Second Temple & Canonical Identification:

  • Wisdom of Solomon 2:24 explicitly identifies the Edenic serpent with cosmic evil: “Through the devil’s envy death entered the world.”

  • Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 bring this trajectory to its conclusion by tying all strands together: “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan.”

• Rather than an invented anachronism, canonical theologians - such as Geerhardus Vos (Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments, Eerdmans, 1948) and Brevard S. Childs (Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments, Fortress Press, 1992) - demonstrate that Christian interpretation views these texts as an organic trajectory where earlier foundational figures find their complete theological identification over time.

Conclusion

When Dan McClellan asserts that "Satan isn't in the Old Testament," the claim is presented as pure, unvarnished "data over dogma." Yet as the grammatical, textual, and canonical evidence demonstrates, this verdict is not an inescapable empirical finding extracted neutrally from ancient ink; it is the calculated byproduct of historical-critical presuppositions operating behind the curtain.

McClellan’s methodology depends on [as pointed out in Dan McClellan and the Epistemology of Biblical Criticism] an inverse dogmatic triad: methodological naturalism (which precludes transcendent intent across centuries), Troeltschian historicism (which insists texts are entirely trapped within their narrow, immediate sociopolitical horizon), and an atomizing hermeneutic of suspicion (which treats every nuance, stylistic development, or shifting emphasis as an irreconcilable contradiction rather than part of an organic trajectory). By strictly enforcing these axioms, McClellan must artificially freeze śāṭān in a single lexical box, disregard the anarthrous grammatical shift in 1 Chronicles 21:1, brush aside early Jewish reception in the Septuagint, downplay the explicit cosmic hostility in Zechariah and Job, and dismiss inner-biblical typology as post-hoc theological invention.

The debate, therefore, is not between "objective historical science" and "blind faith." It is an encounter between two competing interpretive models - see: Historical Critical Method vs Historical Grammatical Method. McClellan’s framework demands that ancient texts remain fractured, evolutionary artifacts governed solely by human rivalry. A robust canonical framework, by contrast, accounts for the genuine historical conditioning of human authors while recognizing that progressive revelation organically binds early titles, cosmic imagery, and adversarial roles into a coherent portrait over time. Far from being absent, the figure of Satan emerges through an undeniable biblical trajectory - one that is obscured only when an interpreter chooses methodological reductionism as their guiding dogma.