<p>11:14 <em>And no marvel. For even Satan fashions himself into an angel of light</em>- See on :13. For reasons why this is not supporting any idea of a cosmic satan, see my <a href=http://www.realdevil.info/5-21.htm><i>The Real Devil 5-21</i></a><em> . </em>It needs to be recognized that Paul&rsquo;s writings very often allude to extant Jewish and Gentile literature, sometimes quoting verbatim from them, in order to correct popular ideas. Thus Paul quotes Aratus (Acts 17:28), Menander (1 Corinthians 15:33) and Epimenides (Titus 1:12) &ndash; he uses odd phrases out of these uninspired writings by way of illustration. I&rsquo;ve shown in <i>The Real Devil</i> that much of the Biblical literature does this kind of thing, e.g. the entire Pentateuch is alluding to the various myths and legends of creation and origins, showing what the truth is. The fact Paul&rsquo;s 21st century readers are largely ignorant of that literature, coupled with Paul&rsquo;s rabbinic writing style not using specific quotation rubric or quotation marks, means that this point is often missed. It&rsquo;s rather like our reading of any historical literature &ndash; parts of it remain hard to understand because we simply don&rsquo;t appreciate the historical and immediate context in which it was written. When Paul speaks of Satan being transformed as a bright Angel, he&rsquo;s actually quoting from the first century AD <em>Life of Adam and Eve</em> (12&ndash;16) which speculated that &lsquo;Satan&rsquo; refused to worship the image of God in Adam and therefore he came to earth as a bright Angel and deceived Eve: &ldquo;Satan was wroth and transformed himself into the brightness of angels, and went away to the river&rdquo; (For references, see Susan Garrett, <em>The Temptations of Jesus in Mark&rsquo;s Gospel</em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) p. 45. <em>The</em> <em>Life of Adam and Eve</em> was apparently widely quoted and alluded to in the first century &ndash; see throughout M. Stone,<em> A History of the Literature of Adam and Eve</em> (Atlanta: Scholar&rsquo;s Press, 1992)). Paul&rsquo;s quoting from that document; although in a preceding verse (2 Cor. 11:3) he has stressed that &ldquo;the <em>serpent</em> beguiled Eve by his subtilty&rdquo;. He&rsquo;s reaffirming the Genesis account, which doesn&rsquo;t speak of a personal Satan, but rather simply of a serpent, created as one of the &ldquo;beasts of the field&rdquo;. So we could paraphrase Paul here: &lsquo;I know that the Jewish writings say that the serpent wasn&rsquo;t really a serpent, it was &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;, and was actually in the form of a bright Angel. Now that&rsquo;s not the case &ndash; let&rsquo;s stick with Genesis, which speaks of a literal serpent. But OK, in the same way as in the Jewish myth Satan became a bright, persuasive Angel, well, these false teachers from the Jews appear as wonderful, spiritual people &ndash; but following them will lead you to the same catastrophe as fell upon Eve as a result of being deceived&rsquo;.</p><p>The way Paul uses the word <em>metaschematizo</em> &ldquo;transform&rdquo; three times is interesting &ndash; &ldquo;the stress is so heavy here because Paul is turning their own word against his opponents&rdquo; (Neil Forsyth, <em>Satan and the Combat Myth</em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) p. 269). If this is the case, then we would yet another example of which there are so many in Corinthians of Paul using a term used by his enemies in order to answer them &ndash; which would mean that he is not necessarily agreeing with it. Indeed the apocryphal Jewish <em>Apocalypse of Moses</em> claims that because Satan appeared as such a dazzling, shining Angel, Eve was inevitably deceived by him. Paul here would thus be alluding to this idea &ndash; not that his allusion means that he supported the idea.</p>