Post by Alkemi on Jan 14, 2017 20:19:05 GMT 1
THE ORIGIN OF SATAN
ELAINE PAGELS
zalbarath666.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/elaine-pagels-the-origin-of-satan.pdf
ELAINE PAGELS
zalbarath666.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/elaine-pagels-the-origin-of-satan.pdf
What fascinates us about Satan is the way he expresses
qualities that go beyond what we ordinarily recognize as human.
Satan evokes more than the greed, envy, lust, and anger we
identify with our own worst impulses, and more than what we
call brutality, which imputes to human beings a resemblance to
animals (“brutes”). Thousands of years of tradition have
characterized Satan instead as a spirit. Originally he was one of
God's angels, but a fallen one. Now he stands in open rebellion
against God, and in his frustrated rage he mirrors aspects of our
own confrontations with otherness. Many people have claimed
to see him embodied at certain times in individuals and groups
that seem possessed by an intense spiritual passion, one that
engages even our better qualities, like strength, intelligence, and
devotion, but turns them toward destruction and takes pleasure in inflicting
harm. Evil, then, at its worst, seems to involve the
supernatural—what we recognize, with a shudder, as the
diabolic inverse of Martin Buber's characterization of God as
“wholly other.” Yet— historically speaking, at any rate—Satan,
along with diabolical colleagues like Belial and Mastema (whose
Hebrew name means “hatred”), did not materialize out of the air.
Instead, as we shall see, such figures emerged from the turmoil
of first-century Palestine, the setting in which the Christian
movement began to grow.
qualities that go beyond what we ordinarily recognize as human.
Satan evokes more than the greed, envy, lust, and anger we
identify with our own worst impulses, and more than what we
call brutality, which imputes to human beings a resemblance to
animals (“brutes”). Thousands of years of tradition have
characterized Satan instead as a spirit. Originally he was one of
God's angels, but a fallen one. Now he stands in open rebellion
against God, and in his frustrated rage he mirrors aspects of our
own confrontations with otherness. Many people have claimed
to see him embodied at certain times in individuals and groups
that seem possessed by an intense spiritual passion, one that
engages even our better qualities, like strength, intelligence, and
devotion, but turns them toward destruction and takes pleasure in inflicting
harm. Evil, then, at its worst, seems to involve the
supernatural—what we recognize, with a shudder, as the
diabolic inverse of Martin Buber's characterization of God as
“wholly other.” Yet— historically speaking, at any rate—Satan,
along with diabolical colleagues like Belial and Mastema (whose
Hebrew name means “hatred”), did not materialize out of the air.
Instead, as we shall see, such figures emerged from the turmoil
of first-century Palestine, the setting in which the Christian
movement began to grow.