The Origin of Satan

The Origin of Satan

Devil -- Biblical teaching
Christianity and antisemitism
Bible. Gospels -- Criticism, interpretation, etc

Who is Satan in the New Testament, and what is the evil that he represents? In this groundbreaking book, Elaine Pagels, Princeton's distinguished historian of religion, traces the evolution of Satan from its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where Satan is at first merely obstructive, to the New Testament, where Satan becomes the Prince of Darkness, the bitter enemy of God and man, evil incarnate. In The Origin of Satan, Pagels shows that the four Christian gospels tell two very different stories. The first is the story of Jesus' moral genius: his lessons of love, forgiveness, and redemption. The second tells of the bitter conflict between the followers of Jesus and their fellow Jews, a conflict in which the writers of the four gospels condemned as creatures of Satan those Jews who refused to worship Jesus as the Messiah. Writing during and just after the Jewish war against Rome, the evangelists invoked Satan to portray their Jewish enemies as God's enemies too. As Pagels then shows, the church later turned this satanic indictment against its Roman enemies, declaring that pagans and infidels were also creatures of Satan, and against its own dissenters, calling them heretics and ascribing their heterodox views to satanic influences.
Provides an interpretation of Satan, tracing him from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and discussing his role in the Christian tradition.
In the Old Testament, he is merely the Adversay, a forbidding member of God's retinue. How then did Satan become the Gospels' prince of darkness, who brings about the crucifixion of Jesus as part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil? And why did Jesus' followers increasingly identify Satan with their human antagonists--first Jews, then pagans, and then heretics of their own faith? In this groundbreaking work of religious and social history, the author of The Gnostic Gospels traces the relationship between the embattled members of a breakaway Jewish sect and the myth they envoked to explain their persecution. The Origin of Satan is at once a masterpiece of erudition and a book resonant with contemporary implications. For in its pages we come to understand how the gospel of love could coexist with hatreds that have haunted Christians and non-Christians alike for two thousand years.--Publisher description.

Elaine Pagels

New York : Random House

The gospel of Mark and the Jewish war -- The social history of Satan : from the Hebrew Bible to the Gospels -- Matthew's campaign against the Pharisees : deploying the devil -- Luke and John claim Israel's legacy : the split widens -- Satan's earthly kingdom : Christians against pagans -- The enemy within : demonizing the heretics.
The gospel of Mark and the Jewish war -- The social history of Satan : from the Hebrew Bible to the gospels -- Matthew's campaign against the Pharisees : deploying the devil -- Luke and John claim Israel's legacy : the split widens -- Satan's earthly kingdom : Christians against pagans -- The enemy within : demonizing the heretics.

Book