Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology

Updated by: 
Michal Drori Elmalem
Research notes: 
Reader Checked OA 30/10/2012
Reference type: 
Book
Author(s): 
Orlov, Andrei A.
year: 
2011
Full title: 

Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology

Place of Publication: 
New York
Publisher: 
State University of New York Press
Abstract: 

Dark Mirrors is a wide-ranging study of two central figures in early Jewish demonology—the fallen angels Azazel and Satanael. Andrei A. Orlov explores the mediating role of these paradigmatic celestial rebels in the development of Jewish demonological traditions from Second Temple apocalypticism to later Jewish mysticism, such as that of the Hekhalot and Shi‘ur Qomah materials. Throughout, Orlov makes use of Jewish pseudepigraphical materials in Slavonic that are not widely known.
Orlov traces the origins of Azazel and Satanael to different and competing mythologies of evil, one to the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the other to the revolt of angels in the antediluvian period. Although Azazel and Satanael are initially representatives of rival etiologies of corruption, in later Jewish and Christian demonological lore each is able to enter the other’s stories in new conceptual capacities. Dark Mirrors also examines the symmetrical patterns of early Jewish demonology that are often manifested in these fallen angels’ imitation of the attributes of various heavenly beings, including principal angels and even God himself.

URL: 
http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5288-dark-mirrors.aspx
Label: 
16/04/2012
Record number: 
16 174