‘Shaitan’ [Heb.

‘blocker’, ‘enemy’] was originally a term in preExilic (pre-587 BCE) paleoHebrew

referring to the Canaanite tribelets that Torah commands the benei Yisroel to exterminate & ‘utterly
eradicate from under the vault of heaven—men, women, children & animals leaving nothing alive that
breathes - shew no mercy at all to them [haGoyyim I.e. gentiles such as Moabitess, Jebusites, Girgishitrd
&c.) but extirpate them from the face of the earth leaving their villages in shards & ruins never to be re-
inhabited …’ but during the postExilic Period beginning with the Persian occupation of Palestine (533-332
BCE) took on a different Persian imported meanjng - that of Ahriman, the satanic fallen Angel of the
Zoroastrians who dualistically (like ev’rything else Persian) opposes Ahura Mazda (aka Ohrmzahd) the
‘good deity’ —

So the modern idea of Shaitan morphed into Judaism via postExilic Persian occupation / a
Zoroastrian imported Weltanschauung which included Angels & Devils, the Last Judgement, the
Resurrection of the Dead & the appearance ms of the Saviour Messiah and an ‘Anti-Christ in the Last
Days’ …

In the prose Introduction to the poetical sections of Job [Job chapters 1 & 2 = later Hebrew prose
c. 250 BCE; chapters 3-42 are written in far older preExilic unpointed paleoHebrew poetry except for the
last 6-verses which are in late Hebrew prose) Shaitan is depicted more as an ‘accuser’ much like the
character of the Persian Ahriman …

Where the goat head & hooves & tail come from may be due to syncretistic amalgamation of
several fertility gods & pagan sexual-nature deities such as ‘Pan’ (lit. ‘The All’ in Greek) which were seen
to be contrary to the spiritual nature of man (life v. Death; flesh v. Spirit &c.) set in an eternally-equal
dualistic ‘Zoroastrian’ opposition…

Most modern-day ‘Christians’ know nothing at all about such a deep Zoroastrian influence on Hebrew
postExilic writings & on the Dead Sea Scrolls & all the later Christianities down to the present day