Posted by:
outsider
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Date: September 03, 2014 09:50AM
The best book on this is "The Origin of Satan" by Elaine Pagals, an historian at Princeton.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Origin-Satan-Christians-Demonized/dp/0679731180Here is one review I found online:
"An NBCC and National Book Awardwinning scholar of Gnosticism and early Christianity argues that the concept of Satan was central to the way apocalyptic Jews and the Christian Church saw--and treated--their enemies. When St. Paul declared that Christians were struggling with the powers of darkness and not with common flesh and blood, he was expressing an essentially cosmic attitude. Pagels (Religion/Princeton; The Gnostic Gospels, 1979, etc.) believes that this attitude led to a demonizing of human opponents and opened the door to a new kind of fanaticism and hatred.
She argues that this dualistic cosmology originated with the Jewish Essene sect who pitted the ``sons of Light'' against the ``sons of Darkness.'' Pagels argues that the Gospels invoke this apocalyptic scenario against the Jews who opposed Jesus. As the Christian movement became increasingly Gentile, this demonizing came to be directed against pagan magistrates and, finally, dissident Christians. Fundamental to Pagels's argument is the thesis of many scholars that the Gospel accounts of Jesus' trial and execution, by seeming to place blame on the Jews rather than the Romans, actually reflect the situation of later decades when Christians were completely separated from Judaism and anxious not to provoke the Romans.
Pagels sees the whole demonizing tendency as continuing down the centuries in anti-Semitism and in sectarian hatred generally. Her case is not entirely convincing. For instance, she seems to have forgotten that mass slaughter of enemies, e.g., the Canaanites, had already been advocated in the early Hebrew scriptures without any reference to Satan.
Furthermore, her powerful quotations of Gnostic sources and the Pagan philosopher Celsus cause her to introduce theological questions that she fails to address in any depth, e.g., her assumption that orthodox Christianity was essentially dualistic and that the proscription of heresy was merely an issue of control. An attractive and scholarly, if not entirely satisfying, presentation of a stimulating thesis."
Back to my comments:
As Mormons, we simply did not know the Bible. Reading and studying bible history now, as an atheist is really interesting.
In her book, Pagel goes over the role of the satans (note: plural and not capitalized) in the Jewish traditions, and how the role evolved over time.
The part about Lucifer being mistaken for the Satan of the New Testament is interesting. It's yet one more reason that the so-called new scriptures get thinks completely wrong.
From Wiki:
"Lucifer (/ˈluːsɪfər/ or /ˈljuːsɪfər/) is the King James Version rendering of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל in Isaiah 14:12.[1] This word, transliterated hêlêl[1] or heylel,[2] occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible[1] and according to the KJV-influenced Strong's Concordance means "shining one, morning star, Lucifer".[2] The word Lucifer is taken from the Latin Vulgate,[3] which translates הֵילֵל as lucifer,[Isa 14:12][4][5] meaning "the morning star, the planet Venus", or, as an adjective, "light-bringing".[6] The Septuagint renders הֵילֵל in Greek as ἑωσφόρος[7][8][9][10][11] (heōsphoros),[12][13][14] a name, literally "bringer of dawn", for the morning star.[15]
"In this passage Isaiah applies to a king of Babylon the image of the morning star fallen from the sky, an image he is generally believed to have borrowed from a legend in Canaanite mythology.[16]
"Later Christian tradition came to use the Latin word for "morning star", lucifer, as a proper name ("Lucifer") for Satan as he was before his fall.[17] As a result, "Lucifer has become a by-word for Satan in the Church and in popular literature",[3] as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno and John Milton's Paradise Lost.[14] However, the Latin word never came to be used almost exclusively, as in English, in this way, and was applied to others also, including Christ."
Here's an interesting article in Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_in_ChristianityNote that in Job, Satan is part of God's Court. The idea of him becoming archenemies does not occur at the time, and I believe that Pagels makes the case that the Essenes, a Jewish sect which were prior to Jesus' time, where the first to make Satan the King of Evil, as it were, and Christians followed.
The book is also valuable in helping to understand the political environment around the time the Gospels were written (starting with Mark, at about 70 CE) with the Jewish war, and how the gospels attempted to portray the Jews as being bad and the Jesus followers as less of a threat to the Roman empire.
Of course, as an atheist, I don't believe any of the story, but studying the history of how it unfolded is fascinating.