<p>11:13 <em>For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ</em>- Paul claimed Divine qualification and authentication of his apostleship, whereas these men had merely declared themselves &quot;fashioning themselves&quot; apostles. They branded themselves as &quot;super apostles&quot; (:5); Paul calls them <em>false</em> apostles. The transformation of these men into something they were not is the basis for :14; as these men 'fashioned themselves' so &quot;Satan fashions himself&quot;. But the connection is not historical, to some supposed even in Eden when Satan turned into an Angel. For Genesis and the Bible are silent about this; it is an import from paganism. The present tenses here must be given their due weight. As the false apostles were fashioning themselves into apostles of Christ, so 'Satan' was fashioning himself into an angel of light. I take this as meaning that these men were part of a much larger system of adversarial opposition to Paul's work, which he sums as 'Satan', the adversary. And the context here and elsewhere points unmistakeably to a Jewish satan. I have written about this at length in <a href=http://www.realdevil.info/2-4.htm><i>The Real Devil 2-4. </i></a></p><p>There is indeed allusion to the deceit of the serpent in Eden, who was of course adversarial 'satan' = adversary, but this is not to say that Paul read the serpent as anything more than a literal &quot;beast of the field&quot; as indeed the serpent is presented in Genesis. As the serpent deceived Eve by his subtilty, so these false apostles worked deceitfully. These false apostles accused Paul of having the characteristics of the serpent- crafty and taking people in with guile (12:16). It is these very words and allusion to the serpent which Paul now uses about the false apostles here and in :3 and this explains the usage of serpent imagery. It all seems a rather tit for tat situation- he was trying to outboast them, and calls them the names they call him. This is all in contradiction of Paul's earlier arguments that he will not commend himself as others do nor compare himself with others. But he is carried away in a desire by all means and by every kind of argument to try to win the Corinthians to Christ and to himself.</p>