In Jewish folklore, there is no Devil. There is, however, a satan (sah-TAHN), whose purpose is to present people with tests on behalf of God to prove their good/evil.

In the copy of the Old Testament that I found in my synagogue listed the names and ages of the descendants of Adam as "all the days of _ numbered _ years, and then he died." However, Enoch's entry said, "Enoch walked with God for 350 years and then he was no more, for God took him." Also there's the whole Book of Enoch that I never got around to reading.

According to some accidental research on , Lilith was actually the first human woman, and was created at the same time as Adam. She ran off with Samael and they had ALL the babies. I was originally going to write the fic to accommodate this, but Lucifer told me he hated humans before he met Lilith and then she couldn't really be the first woman anymore.

In some stories, Samael is the angel of Death, and since Supernatural already has Death the Horseman I couldn't make that one work, so I went with the previously listed Jewish lore. (Azrael/Azriel is also a candidate for Death, but I have no idea who that would be… the horseman?)

Angels took human wives and fathered the Nephilim "who became the great heroes of the time" about one or two generations before Noah was born. The Grigori are the group of angels who fell from Heaven to father these Nephilim, and the leader of these angels was Azazel. Putting on my deerstalker, I figured that this was the time period that Lucifer fell, made Lilith the first demon, and spread all sorts of evil through humanity that would give God cause to flood the entire freaking Earth.

I don't know if the part about Lucifer getting his name from driving the Leviathan into Purgatory is true or not, but credit for the idea goes to CherylB1964 in her fanfic "The Butterfly Effect". It's very good, and probably inspired more of this story than I could consciously think of.

I looked it up online and the things I said about angels are true: seraphim have six wings and have to cover themselves, Zachariah is totally a cherub (lol!), and when I went to look up the names of the archangels (because I forgot Raphael somehow) I instead found vague wording about "four perfect beings"… and that's how the ending got there. I quite like it this way!

Congratulations, you are reading the first piece of fanfiction that left me actually tempted to steal a bible… from a place of worship! (I didn't actually steal the friggin' bible, okay? I just read it while my brother was practicing for his bar mitzvah.)

The 10 commandments thing totally came out of my ass as an interpretation of Ruby's line, "Hell is forgetting what it's like to be human".

Yes, I am a firm believer in the Chuck-as-God theory, but I couldn't find where he lived.

More accidental research from Cracked: In Hebrew, Jesus's name is Yeshua. The Bible was translated from Hebrew to Greek, where it became Yesus because the Greek alphabet didn't have all of the letters and sounds to get it right. When translated from Greek, that makes him Jesus. When translated directly from Hebrew, that makes him Joshua – as in the chill black angel who was a little closer to God than all the others. Yes, Kripke is amazing.

I've said it before: Samael is Lucifer's real name.

I know the whole thing about the Winchester bloodline being the important thing about vessel-hood, but I think it's more than that. I think the true vessel of an angel has to lead a life parallel to the angel he's made for. Michael raised Lucifer like Dean raised Sam (that's cannon, btw). Lucifer fought with his father and got kicked out of the house, like Sam did with John. Castiel would do anything for his family, even at his own detriment and even if it's really not for the best at all but he doesn't see it – just like Jimmy Novak. That's why, while the bloodline provides additional vessels, angels only have one true vessel (I'm guessing every couple of generations because that would be dumb if not). I know Gabriel had an actual assigned job as God's messenger, and I figured the other archangels had jobs too. I made Raphael a warrior based on his role of protecting Chuck. I made Michael the teacher because he's the oldest and to parallel Dean. I made Lucifer the agent of tests to fit in with the Jewish lore, and also to parallel Sam's thirst for knowledge.

Yeah, so I was looking up old clips out of boredom and I stumbled on some Lucifer ones, including the scene where Lucifer and Michael first confront each other, the "no one dicks with Michael but me" thing, and an interview with Mark Pellegrino where he explained how he tried to play Lucifer's motivation as justice… and then I suddenly was in Lucifer's head (WHICH IS REALLY NOT A FUN PLACE TO BE BUT OKAY YES IT IS) and then this happened. I wanted to focus more on the relationships between archangels, and I really wanted to draw the parallels between Michael/Lucifer and Dean/Sam, but this ended up being incredibly, weirdly God/Lucifer-centric instead (also WAY more biblical). I may be a little more pro-Lucifer after all this, and it scares the crap out of me!