Boehner Says Cruz Is “Lucifer in the Flesh”

Last updated on: March 26, 2017 at 10:48 pm by Kermit Zarley

Boehner Says Cruz Is “Lucifer in the Flesh” 2017-03-26T22:48:22-07:00 Kermit Zarley

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U.S. Republican politician John Boehner of Ohio served as Speaker of the House of Representatives for the past five years. I like Boehner–he plays golf. He says he’s a golfing buddy of Donald Trump, the virtual Republican nominee for U.S. president this year.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is the only candidate left in the Republican race against Donald Trump for president with any possible chance to beat him on the first ballot at the Republican convention. Ted Cruz is a strong Christian, and his dad has been a Baptist pastor. In the Republican caucasus and primaries, Cruz has gained a significant portion of the Evangelical vote. Yet he doesn’t persuade me. But neither does Trump. I’ve blogged about him being such an egomaniac whose word can’t be trusted and thus he is not a model for U.S. president.

Yesterday, John Boehner, a Roman Catholic, gave an interview in which he called Ted Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh.” By using the term Lucifer, I guess Boehner meant to call Cruz the Devil himself. Or did he mean the Devil indwelt Mr. Cruz? Boehner explained concerning his revulsion to Ted Cruz, “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” Boehner wasn’t holding back any punches.

Yet Cruz’s come back was pretty lame. He said to the American people, “When John Boehner calls me Lucifer, he’s not directing that at me. He’s directing that at you.” Go figure!

When Boehner was Speaker of the House, he was trying to get Republicans on board to pass a budget bill by the deadline to keep the federal government from defaulting on its financial obligations. Ted Cruz was a tea party leader who opposed Boehner’s efforts, claiming the government should default. In recent years, Congress had been down that road before, barely passing a budget bill before the twelfth hour. It has been an example mostly of radical Republican politicians calling for downsized government spending mostly attributed to Democrats, and willing to let the government fail for it.

Back then I sided with Boehner on this intra-Republican squabble about the budget. But Boehner now calling Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” reminds me of the days of the Roman Catholic Inquisition. According to church historians, over the centuries in Europe the Inquisitors hanged and burnt at the stake tens of thousands of Anabaptists whose sole crime was merely refusing to baptize infants because Anabaptists believed the Bible didn’t sanction it. (Anabaptists are the predecessors of modern Baptists.)

Those were the days of the union of church and state in Europe. Both Catholics and mainline Protestants had gotten some religious laws passed by the state such as making it a crime against the state for anyone to publicly condemn the practice of infant baptism by the church. Some of those executed Anabaptists were also charged with the crime of rejecting the Catholic and Protestant doctrine of the Trinity, a word Anabaptists rightly said was not in the Bible either. I suspect those Inquisitors likely would have characterized some of their executed victims as “Lucifer in the flesh.”

Where do we get this idea of calling the Devil “Lucifer”? This word is not in most modern versions of the Bible either, but it does appear once in the King James Version (KJV). The Hebrew prophet Isaiah prophesies in his book about a “king of Babylon” (Isaiah 14.4), whom he calls a “man” (v. 16). So, the KJV translates helel in Isa 14.12, which is a descriptive word about this king, as “Lucifer.”

This KJV translation “Lucifer” in Isa 14.12 is the primary reason for the popular identification of Satan, the Devil, as “Lucifer.” But it is an incorrect translation of helel in Isa 14.12 in the Hebrew Bible. And the Bible elsewhere never calls Satan “Lucifer.” Instead, this KJV rendering in Isa 14.12 is a transliteration of the word lucifer from Isa 14.12 in the Latin Vulgate. Catholic Church father Jerome translated the Vulgate in the fifth century. It was the primary Christian Bible for the next thousand years.

Yet Jerome didn’t think lucifer or this king of Babylon in Isaiah 14 referred to Satan. Latin Vulgate translates other Hebrew and Greek words as lucifer in Job 11.17; 38.32; 2Pt 1.19. Moreover, Jerome did not capitalize lucifer in Isa 14.12, as if a proper name. And in his Vulgate he also has lucifer in Job 11.17; 38.32; Ps 110.3; 2 Pt 1.19. Some early Christian hymns in Latin even applied lucifer to Jesus and John the Baptist (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer).

Nevertheless, identifying Satan as “Lucifer” became a fixed tradition in medieval Christian lore. Yet “Lucifer” is an improper translation in Isa 14.12 in the KJV for either helel in this text in the Hebrew Bible or heosphoros for it in the Septuagint (3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible).

In fact, both the Hebrew word helel and the Greek word heosphoros mean “shining one,” and the Latin word lucifer means “light bearer.” So, take your pick: what John Boehner really called Ted Cruz was “shining one” or “light-bearer.” Some things never change, even when they are wrong, including a politician calling his colleague by the supposedly proper name “Lucifer.”

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