I’m aware of the history of interpolation through the serpent in Genesis, to the accusing angel in Job, the references in Isaiah and Ezekiel to the fall of the morning star and an ambition to replace God. So that we eventually arrive at the contemporary character most people are familiar with.

In the course of that, I would like to know if we have a good idea where the idea of Satan being the greatest angel first appeared. John Milton centers the fall on “sense of injured merit”. Shakespeare alludes that “the brightest fell” in Macbeth. So this idea of giving the Devil a noble place in the precorrupt universe seems to have been around at least that long in Europe? Did it begin in the Middle Ages or can we trace the idea further back? What about theologians? Was this a significant idea among Biblical scholars or is there more evidence to suggest this trend beginning among laymen?