Patristic writers who named the devil were answered inside their own century by Gregory of Nazianzus, who held that paying the devil was an outrage and that paying the Father was scarcely better. Anselm denied that any claim existed to be bought out. No formulation of the recipient has ever obtained general assent, and the ransom vocabulary is used today by Christians who reject every mechanism proposed for it.
What would resolve this Exegetical work establishing whether the ransom sayings were ever intended to carry a recipient at all, or whether the metaphor names a condition of captivity without implying a transaction. A finding either way would decide whether the recipient question is a real gap or a question the sources never posed.
OpenNew Testament exegesis; patristics; the study of biblical metaphorF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition