Mephistopheles - in The Faust Legend

In The Faust Legend

The name is associated with the Faust legend of a scholar — based on the historical Johann Georg Faust — who wagers his soul with the Devil.

The name appears in the late 16th century Faust chapbooks. In the 1725 version which was read by Goethe, Mephostophiles is a devil in the form of a greyfriar summoned by Faust in a wood outside Wittenberg. The name Mephistophiles already appears in the 1527 Praxis Magia Faustiana, printed in Passau, alongside pseudo-Hebrew text. It is best explained as a purposely obscure pseudo-Greek or pseudo-Hebrew formation of Renaissance magic.

From the chapbook, the name enters Faustian literature and is also used by authors from Marlowe down to Goethe. In the 1616 edition of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Mephostophiles became Mephistophilis.

The word derives from the Hebrew mephitz, meaning "destroyer", and tophel, meaning "liar"; "tophel" is short for tophel shequer, the literal translation of which is "falsehood plasterer". The name can also be a combination of three Greek words: "me" as a negation, "phos" meaning light, and "philis" meaning loving, making it mean "not-light-loving", possibly parodying the Latin "Lucifer" or "light-bearer".

Mephistopheles in later treatments of the Faust material frequently figures as a title character: in Meyer Lutz' Mephistopheles, or Faust and Marguerite (1855), Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele (1868), Klaus Mann's Mephisto, and Franz Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes.