How did the devil get his name in the Holy Bible?

Answer 1

The name Satan first appears in the Old Testament in works written after the Babylonian Exile, and represents Satan not as the Christian devil, but as the loyal assistant of God, tasked with testing the righteousness of the faithful. This may reflect the Zoroastrian influence of the Jews' Persian benefactors, but the Jews were not willing to accept the dualism of Zoroastrianism.

Some time in the first century CE, Christianity began to see Satan as the devil, in effect the chief demon. We see reference to Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12-14. This actually refers to the hated king of Babylon, who laid the nations low. It talks of his pomp and splendour, how he had ruled the nations in anger, and his fate after his overthrow by the king of Persia. He had compared himself to the Morning Star (and was thus derisorily called 'Lucifer' - lucem ferre, which mean "light-bearer", a name for the dawn appearance of the planet Venus) and had thought that he would ascend into heaven and sit among the stars, but was now himself persecuted. Christian scholars misunderstood this passage and thought that it was intended to refer to Satan. Thus the Christian devil gained a new name: Lucifer.

The Christian devil is sometimes also referred to as Beezlebub, a corruption of Baal Zebub, an ancient Semitic god. It was probably natural to disparage the gods of others by treating them as demons or the devil himself.

AND

The English word (the) Devil comes from the Greek word diabolos - "an accuser, a slanderer" - (from diaballo, "to accuse, to malign"). It is one of the names of Satan and should be applied only to Satan, as a proper name.

The noun is applied to slanderers, false accusers in 1Tim 3:11; 2Tim 3:3 and Tit 2:3.