"Lucifer makes his appearance in the fourteenth chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, at the twelfth verse, and nowhere else: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!""

"The first problem is that Lucifer is a Latin name. So how did it find its way into a Hebrew manuscript, written before there was a Roman language? To find the answer, I consulted a scholar at the library of the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. What Hebrew name, I asked, was Satan given in this chapter of Isaiah, which describes the angel who fell to become the ruler of hell? The answer was a surprise. In the original Hebrew text, the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah is not about a fallen angel, but about a fallen Babylonian king, who during his lifetime had persecuted the children of Israel. It contains no mention of Satan, either by name or reference. The Hebrew scholar could only speculate that some early Christian scribes, writing in the Latin tongue used by the Church, had decided for themselves that they wanted the story to be about a fallen angel, a creature not even mentioned in the original Hebrew text, and to whom they gave the name "Lucifer.""

"Why Lucifer? In Roman astronomy, Lucifer was the name given to the morning star (the star we now know by another Roman name, Venus). The morning star appears in the heavens just before dawn, heralding the rising sun. The name derives from the Latin term lucem ferre, "bringer, or bearer, of light." In the Hebrew text the expression used to describe the Babylonian king before his death is Helal, son of Shahar, which can best be translated as "Day star, son of the Dawn." The name evokes the golden glitter of a proud king's dress and court (much as his personal splendor earned for King Louis XIV of France the appellation, "The Sun King")."

"The scholars authorized by the militantly Catholic King James I to translate the Bible into current English did not use the original Hebrew texts, but used versions translated from the Catholic Vulgate Bible produced largely by St. Jerome in the fourth century. Jerome had mistranslated the Hebraic metaphor, "Day star, son of the Dawn," as "Lucifer," and over the centuries a metamorphosis took place. Lucifer the morning star became a disobedient angel, cast out of heaven to rule eternally in hell. Theologians, writers, and poets interwove the myth with the doctrine of the Fall, and in Christian tradition Lucifer is now the same as Satan, the Devil, and - ironically- the Prince of Darkness."

"So "Lucifer" is nothing more than an ancient Latin name for the morning star, the bringer of light. That can be confusing for Christians who identify Christ himself as the morning star, a term used as a central theme in many Christian sermons. Jesus refers to himself as the morning star in Revelation 22:16: "I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.""

"And so there are those who do not read beyond the King James version of the Bible, who say "Lucifer is Satan: so says the Word of God," while others with knowledge of the Latin and Hebrew texts say, "No, Lucifer is the classical Roman name for the morning star, and now Jesus is the morning star." This discussion can only anger certain fundamentalists. (I have at hand an evangelical tract from a Baptist church that says, "I believe in the Infallibility and Preservation of God's Word, of which the King James 1611 authorized version is the God-guided faithful translation.")"

"Fortunately, this issue of errors in biblical translations is not one that we have to struggle with ourselves. Generations of biblical scholars of all faiths have been aware of the mistranslations and of the misunderstandings that arise from the use of archaic terms whose meanings have been lost, or have evolved into different usages. To address these problems a conference was held in October 1946, attended by delegates of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalist churches. At another meeting four months later, delegates from the Presbyterians and Quakers joined the original group, along with representatives of various Bible societies. Still later, observers were sent as representatives of the Roman Catholic Church."

"The work on a new translation of the Bible, direct from the sources, stretched out over several years. The most distinguished biblical scholars and specialists in the world were invited to contribute, and every delegate was given the opportunity to review and express his own views on every verse, every word, as presented by the translators."

"The result of this prodigious joint effort was The New English Bible, of which the New Testament was published in 1969 and the Old Testament one year later."

"That does not mean that I have cast aside my King James version: I have them both. But I must recognize that while God may be the inspirational source of all the Old and New Testament scriptures, He is certainly not responsible for the imperfect translations from the language of the earliest surviving texts. To err is human, and men can become overzealous because of the emotional aspects of the subject."

"To the point, the verse in the King James version (Isaiah 14:12) that begins "How art thou fallen from heaven, 0 Lucifer..." has now been translated directly from the Hebrew in the New English Biible as "How you have fallen from heaven, bright morning star..." There is no mention of Lucifer, no reference to any disobedient angel plunging to hell, nor should there be."