The devil is today a prevalent myth among believers of the so called Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
The faithful person thinks of the devil as a supreme being, though of an inferior level to that of God, ruler of a kingdom called hell, at the same time real and metaphorical.
His mission in life would be to prevent as many souls as possible from reaching salvation, taking them to hell and torturing them eternally. Additionally, the devil has a special part to play as the Antichrist, heralding apocalypse when the end of times finally comes.
Clearly not everybody is in line with these ideas, but even for those who are, it is important to understand that things weren't always this way.
There was a time, and not so long ago, when hell and the devil didn't fill people's imagination and in fact didn't exist at all. So a legitimate question arises: What's the origin of this myth?
Within the frame of polytheism, gods are not entirely good or evil and propitiatory rites to any gods in antiquity would be regarded today as crimes: animal and human sacrifice, blood drinking, mutilation, castration. Evil was generally attributed to a bad executed rite.
The triumph of monotheism brings about an important change since the only God must be free of evil. Hence a dualistic concept emerges whereby evil is assigned to a second supreme being of a lesser entity. Monotheism is truly asymmetrical 'duoteism'.
The Old Testament barely mentions Lucifer and Satan, two angelic beings that are later to be the foundation of the concept of the devil.
The New Testament fully identifies Satan with the devil, though only in the Book of Revelation is made clear that the beast (dragon), the snake, the devil and Satan are the same thing (Revelation 20.2)
Hell didn't exist in the Old Testament and the first mentions to a possible afterlife simply refer to a descent to the grave.
The concept Sheol appears later as the place where all souls, good and evil, go after death.
The concept Gehenna refines this notion and implies that souls must spent one year purifying ere they can be admitted into the Sheol.
Jesus changes this view when he threats with the Gehenna as a place where there's no purification, but torment, and this is not temporary but eternal.
A somewhat confusing mention in Peter 3.18-20 and the Apostles Nicean Creed support the notion of a trip Jesus took during the three days of his apparent death and give credibility to the idea of hell as an actual place.
Satan wasn't a great problem for Christianity as official religion of the Roman Empire that had to concentrate in getting rid of early heresies. In fact, the devil was second order figure during the Middle Ages until the times of the crusades.
Indeed, when crusaders came back from the Orient they brought back certain spiritual notions that made things change and thanks to which the figure of the devil gained importance.
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Consider, Sir, that those which appear yonder, are not giants, but windmills
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