Philo of Alexandria aka Philo Judaeus (20 BC-50 AD) offers an interesting point which we can place on a line plotting the identification of heylel transliterated into a compound Latin term Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12, the day or morning star. I will follow by providing some examples of how the term came to be understood as referring to Satan.
Philo wrote the following in The Cherubim, part I, VII (21), “the periods of the seven planets have received their exact measure of time, moving on in an equal course, as the Sun, and Lucifer, and what is called Stilbon. For these three planets are of equal speed.”
In The Decalogue, VII, Philo wrote:
…some nations have made divinities of the…sun and moon, and of the other planets and fixed stars…The air they call Juno; fire, Vulcan; and the sun, Apollo; the moon, Diana; and the evening star, Venus; Lucifer, they call Mercury; and to every one of the stars they have affixed names and given them to the inventors of fables, who have woven together cleverly-contrived imaginations to deceive the ear, and have appeared to have been themselves the ingenious inventors of these names thus given.
Origen Adamantius (182-254 AD) noted the following in Commentary on John, book I, chap 13 The Angels Also Are Evangelists, “the Earth, that seat of war, on which Lucifer, star of the morning, fell from heaven, to be warred against and destroyed by Jesus.”
In De Principiis, book I, chap V On Rational Natures, Origen wrote:
Again, we are taught as follows by the prophet Isaiah regarding another opposing power. The prophet says, “How is Lucifer, who used to arise in the morning, fallen from heaven…”
Most evidently by these words is he shown to have fallen from heaven, who formerly was Lucifer, and who used to arise in the morning. For if, as some think, he was a nature of darkness, how is Lucifer said to have existed before? Or how could he arise in the morning, who had in himself nothing of the light? Nay, even the Saviour Himself teaches us, saying of the devil, “Behold, I see Satan fallen from heaven like lightning.” For at one time he was light. Moreover our Lord, who is the truth, compared the power of His own glorious advent to lightning, in the words, “For as the lightning shineth from the height of heaven even to its height again, so will the coming of the Son of man be.”
And notwithstanding He compares him to lightning, and says that he fell from heaven, that He might show by this that he had been at one time in heaven, and had had a place among the saints, and had enjoyed a share in that light in which all the saints participate, by which they are made Angels of light, and by which the apostles are termed by the Lord the light of the world. In this manner, then, did that being once exist as light before he went astray, and fell to this place, and had his glory turned into dust, which is peculiarly the mark of the wicked, as the prophet also says; whence, too, he was called the prince of this world, i.e., of an Earthly habitation: for he exercised power over those who were obedient to his wickedness, since “the whole of this world”—for I term this place of Earth, world—”lieth in the wicked one,” and in this apostate.
That he is an apostate, i.e., a fugitive, even the Lord in the book of Job says, “Thou wilt take with a hook the apostate dragon,” i.e., a fugitive. Now it is certain that by the dragon is understood the devil himself.
Gregory Nazianzus or Nazianzen aka Gregory the Theologian (325-389 AD) noted the following in Five Discourses on Theology, “The nature of the divine essence is then above all conception by human intelligence. It is, moreover, well that it is so. For…We should, perhaps, lose ourselves through pride, like Lucifer, if it were given us too soon…”
Gregory also compiled a text known as Origen’s Philocalia or Philocalia of Origen which states the following in chap I:
…what is said about the ruler of Tyre cannot be understood of some future human ruler of Tyre. And the many passages relating to Nabuchadnosor, particularly in Isaiah, how can we possibly take them to refer to the man of that name? For the man Nabuchadnosor did not fall from heaven, nor was he Lucifer, nor did he rise early on the Earth. And the sayings in Ezekiel concerning Egypt, to the effect that it would be desolate for forty years, [Ezek. xxix. 11 f.] so that the foot of man should not be found there, and that war should be so fiercely waged at some time or other that throughout the whole land blood should reach to the knees, what sensible person will understand them of Egypt that borders on the Ethiopians with their sunburnt bodies?…he who in Ezekiel is said to have walked blameless in all his ways, until iniquity was found in him, fell from heaven, viz., as Isaiah tells us, Lucifer, once a morning star, afterwards, undone and cast clown to Earth. For not only of the sons of men is it true that if a man be perfect and have not the wisdom of God, he is accounted but a thing of nought; but it is true even in the order of Angels, and of sovereign Powers, and in every rank of being that is Divine so far as God is with it.
Eusebius of Caesarea or Pamphili (263-339 AD) wrote the following in Demonstratio Evangelica, book IV, chap 9:
…those on the side of the opposing rebel power were either daemons, or vile spirits immersed more or less in wickedness, with the cunning ruler of them all the mighty daemon, who first failed of their reverence of the Divinity and fell from their own portion…It is this godless and unholy scheme of the great Daemon… prophecy speak about him again, how he thought about himself and (b) how he bragged: “How has Lucifer that rose at morn fallen from heaven: He is crushed to Earth that sent to all the nations. But thou saidst in thy heart, ‘I will go up to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven. … I will ascend above the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ But now thou shalt go down to hell, and to the foundations of the Earth.”
Truly Scripture shews many things at once in this, the madness of the said spirit, his fall from the better to the worse, and the end of his fall.
In book X, chap 8 he comments thusly on Psalm 21:
And when with divine eyes He saw His body being suspended on the tree, the unembodied and invisible powers without in the air hovering around Him like voracious birds and wild beasts, and knew that almost at once His body would be a corpse, and fell the powers and rulers of the air surging around Him on every side, the spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience, and the (d) daemons flying over the Earth wherever men inhabit, and perhaps also the wild and dreadful beasts of Tartarus, of which Isaiah said, addressing Lucifer that had fallen from heaven: “Hades beneath was disturbed to meet thee, all the giants rose before thee.”
St. Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae / The Ruin of Britain (6th century AD), part IV:
Disperse, I pray, the dark black mist of your heart’s slothfulness, so that ye may be able to see the beaming light of truth and humility. A no common Christian but a perfect one, a no mean but most excellent priest, a martyr not sluggish but distinguished, says: Now am I beginning to be a disciple of Christ. And you, just like that Lucifer, cast down from heaven, are puffed up with words, not power, and ruminate under your teeth, and allege by gestures the things which your advocate had formerly pictured, saying: I will ascend unto heaven, and will be like to the Most High; and again: I have digged and drunk water, and with the print of my feet have dried up all the rivers of the banks.
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