Mwandayi, Towards a new reading of the Bible in Africa – spy exegesisis a mind boggling puzzle that possibly may never have a concrete an-
swer. The language of the prophets (Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28) would seem to
show that Lucifer held a very high rank in the heavenly hierarchy. Tak-
ing a similar stand is the Fourth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church
which taught:
"Diabolus enim et alii dæmones a Deo quidem naturâ creati sunt boni, sed
ipsi per se facti sunt mali." ("the Devil and the other demons were created
by God good in their nature but they by themselves have made themselves
evil").^27
A Scriptural explanation on who the Devil is can only be ascertained by
combining a number of scattered references from Genesis to Apoca-
lypse. Throughout the Old Testament he is presented as the adversary,
standing in opposition to God's people, whether that is the nation of
Israel as a whole (1Ch 21:1), their priestly representatives (e.g, Zech 3:1-
2), or the single, righteous man within Israel (Job 1-2). In the New Tes-
tament, he is presented as the enemy of the church, attacking God's
people (1 Pet 5:8; Jam 4:7) and opposing the redemptive work of God in
and through them (Mt 13:19,39). Taking a canonical approach, one finds
that from Jesus’ time of birth till he resurrected from the dead it was
actually a process of who would outmatch who in his fight with the
Devil.
From the working definition of intelligence as information and knowl-
edge about an adversary obtained through observation, investigation,
analysis, or understanding and the use of that information to make
important decisions, one finds that the first instance in which Jesus
employed espionage tactics is when he first stood up to read from the
book of the prophet Isaiah:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at lib-
erty them that are bruised and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord
(Lk 4:16-19).
Such a manifesto at the beginning of his ministry was addressed directly
to his opponents and we find here Jesus using the Bible (Isaiah) as a
source of intelligence. In announcing that he had come to preach the
gospel to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted Jesus had in mind the
(^27) Catholic encyclopedia: Devil, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04764a.htm (accessed
24/ 07/ 11).