Satan appears in the Bible as seen by humans only at the very end of the world; elsewhere he only talks to God or Christ.
Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge said mostly false; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judge as a claim about the biblical text. True: in the Bible, Satan (or the devil) appears or acts in a scene seen by humans only in end-of-world passages (e.g. Revelation), and other appearances are only exchanges with God (Job, Zechariah) or Christ (the temptation). Mostly true: this holds with only marginal exceptions that depend on interpretation. Mixed: several clear passages outside the end times show Satan acting among or seen by humans (e.g. the serpent in Genesis if identified as Satan, Satan entering Judas, 1 Chronicles 21 inciting David), yet the reading still fits a substantial part of the text. Mostly false: the claim captures a real pattern (Satan rarely appears directly) but is clearly contradicted by standard passages. False: the text plainly shows Satan appearing to or dealing with humans in many non-eschatological passages, and the claimed pattern does not hold.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Luke 22 Commentary: The Last Supper; Jesus Is Betrayed Enduring Word (Pastor David Guzik commentary) · 10 December 2015
“Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve.”
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E2 Luke 22 Commentary: The Last Supper; Jesus Is Betrayed Enduring Word (Pastor David Guzik commentary) · 10 December 2015
“And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.”
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E3 A brief history of belief in the Devil (950 BCE - 70 CE) Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae (Izak Spangenberg, University of South Africa) · August 2013
“The author of 1 Chronicles introduced the character Satan since he could not believe that Yahweh would have prompted David to call a census and then punish him and his subjects.”
Reasoning
E1 quotes Luke 22, where Satan enters Judas Iscariot, which is not an end-of-world passage. E2 shows Jesus telling Simon that Satan has asked to sift him, so Satan is acting with respect to the disciples. E3 is a journal article saying the author of 1 Chronicles brought in Satan in connection with David's census, in place of having Yahweh prompt it. That is a non-end-times scene involving a human. These are the kinds of clear exceptions the criteria list under 'mixed', but the evidence does not show that Satan appears among humans so widely that the claimed pattern fails across the whole text.
Cite this claim
Peter Thiel, “Satan appears in the Bible as seen by humans only at the very end of the world; elsewhere he only talks to God or Christ.” (said April 2024). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_814edcad6136, method 0.1.0+3e03e2df, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_814edcad6136
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Peter Thiel
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Mostly true
“In Goethe's "Faust," he has a pact with the devil and he sort of gets this knowledge by morally dubious means.”
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Mostly true
“But it still always works out more for the best and Goethe's Faust gets redeemed.”
In Goethe's Faust, things work out more for the best and Faust is redeemed.
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Mixed
“I believe it was during the French Revolution because it was believed that verbal ability ran in families.”
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Mostly true
“I’m not sure it’s esoteric, but it is the book of Revelations, is the apocalypse because apocalypse in Greek means unveiling, and if you unveil the social order, you might end up deconstructing and…”
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Mostly true
“We settled that in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia.”
Debates about religion in Europe were settled by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.