Summary Of The Origin Of Satan By Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels’ The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics is an appealing read for any person that is intrigued by the history of Christianity. I personally found that the book had little to do with the Satan himself, and instead focuses on Christianity's evolving ideas of basic human morals. From early ideas about the Jews, and on to enemies from within the faith. Many of the ideas covered in this book suggest parallels with current issues such as clashes between both secular and theocratic societies; between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and even among cultures. Pagels’ conclusion reads “The struggle within Christian tradition between the profoundly human view that 'otherness' is evil and the words of Jesus …show more content…
The book is actually a history of the early Christian movement and how that history was reflected in the writing of the Gospels. Actually I found that Satan does not really come up a great deal in this book. Rather Pagels looks at how the early Christian movement fought for its survival against enemies, and then how Satan became a spiritual excuse for those who disagreed with them. It is a great breakdown of the early days of the Church, and just how messy it was. There were so many churches with so many different interpretations of the life and death of Jesus Christ, so many opinions on the very nature of God's universe that it is surprising the whole thing managed to come together to be the world's largest …show more content…
From its initial days, God told the Israelites that they were a minute force against the world, with only Him to defend them. With a Satan already in their theology as a tempter for God, it was not a big jump to look to him as the cause of all the troubles that the Jews had faced. The Jewish society was corrupt, led away from the path of God, presumably by Satan. When the Christians (a minority with an even weaker existence) arrived, they found this concept very practical. Telling their story from the point of view of a tormented minority, they found Satan to be a very useful opponent that their Messiah could fight. He was a great symbol that fought for the conflicts that were taking place between the Christians, Romans and Jews and also the spiritual conflict that involves all humankind, that is the classic fight between good and evil. If Jesus had been included in the Jewish religion, his story would have ended in a very different way, no matter how unfamiliar his ideas were. "How, after all, could anyone claim that a man betrayed by one of his own followers, and brutally executed on charges of treason against Rome, not only was but still is God's appointed Messiah, unless his capture and death were, as the gospels insist, not a final defeat but only a preliminary skirmish in a vast cosmic conflict now enveloping the universe?" (Pagels). The