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The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (1977)

af Jeffrey Burton Russell

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingSamtaler
358471,362 (4.08)Ingen
"Evil--the infliction of pain upon sentient beings--is one of the most long-standing and serious problems of human existence. Frequently and in many cultures evil has been personified. This book is a history of the personification of evil, which for the sake of clarity I have called 'the Devil.' I am a medievalist, but when I began some years ago to work with the concept of the Devil in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, I came to see that I could not understand the medieval Devil except in terms of its historical antecedents. More important, I realized that I could not understand the Devil at all except in the context of the problem of evil. I needed to face the issue of evil squarely, both as a historian and as a human being."--from the Preface This lively and learned book traces the history of the concept of evil from its beginnings in ancient times to the period of the New Testament. A remarkable work of synthesis, it draws upon a vast number of sources in addressing a major historical and philosophical problem over a broad span of time and in a number of diverse cultures, East and West. Jeffrey Burton Russell probes the roots of the idea of evil, treats the development of the idea in the Ancient Near East, and then examines the concept of the Devil as it was formed in late Judaism and early Christianity. Generously illustrated with fifty black-and-white photographs, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from specialists in religion, theology, sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy to anyone with an interest in the demonic, the supernatural, and the question of good and evil.… (mere)
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Fascinating exploration of the development of the Western, Christian idea of the personification of evil. The mid-70's anthropological methodology, however, now reads as paternalistic and condescending to anything pre-Christ, but we can forgive him because he was of the V. Gordon Childe era, as well as being firmly in the Jungian camp, which struck me as delightfully antiquated. His break down of pre-Hellenistic faith structures was also limited to what the Church Fathers deigned to assimilate into the nascent Christian faith. His ideas of evil, whether it is natural or moral, how and where in a divine world or body of divine beings it resides, were the most compelling arguments. His assertion that our current ideation of evil is contemporary with Christian thought is also dated, but those are my only qualms with the book. Enjoyed it, will look out for his "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages". ( )
  MaryJeanPhillips | Jun 22, 2022 |
Pros: very thorough, lots of endnotes

Cons: not many photos

This was a very interesting book about how peoples in the past thought about the concept of evil and how those philosophical musings and religious beliefs slowly morphed into the idea held by Christians that there is a single force that causes evil: the Devil.

After the preface the book consists of 7 chapters: The Question of Evil, In Search of the Devil, The Devil East and West, Evil in the Classical World, Hebrew Personifications of Evil, The Devil in the New Testament, and The Face of the Devil. There’s a select bibliography and an index.

The book starts with a discussion of what evil is. This book traces how ancient societies thought of ‘evil’, whether it was part of the gods, human nature, imposed from the outside or something within us. It examines both religious and philosophical beliefs from various cultures and periods whose peoples wanted to know why good things happened to bad people. Why, if there’s a god (or gods) who is good, who created a world of good, is there evil in the world?

We’re so used to categorizing things that it’s easy to forget just how interconnected the world really is. I tend to think of Greek mythology as independent from other religious practices, even though I know the Romans modified the beliefs to fit with their own pantheon of gods. So it was eye opening learning how the Greek gods were turned into evil spirits by early Christian thought, and how Pan was used as a template when artists started visualizing the devil as a personification of evil.

I only knew bits and pieces of other ancient religions so leaning more about them and how they intersected and built off of one another was fascinating. I also loved learning side information like why people with red hair were considered evil.

The most interesting section for me was on the Persian Zoroastrian religion, whose basic mythology is similar to the one Christianity ultimately settled on. I also enjoyed learning more about the apocalyptic Jewish writings and how they impacted the Gospels in the New Testament.

There aren't that many photos, but the ones included help visualize how the devil gained certain attributes (like wings, horns, etc).

This is an older book (it came out in 1977), but it’s still highly relevant to Christian and general religious studies. ( )
  Strider66 | Jan 28, 2020 |
How evil was personified in the lands of India, the Middle East, and the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome is the subject of this book.

I suppose Russell thought the opening chapter, "The Question of Evil", was formally necessary so we know what needs to be personified. His answer, that evil is "deliberate violence done to a being that can feel pain", leaves something to be desired. Besides the obvious question of war and police violence, it defines as evil violence committed to deter or punish. It doesn't help matters when we cite that great work of 70's pseudoscience, Peter Tompkins' and Christopher Bird's The Secret Life of Plants, as bringing up the idea of evil committed against the vegetable kingdom. More forgiveable, given the age of the book, is the short shrift given to evolutionary psychology's (labeled sociobiology when this book was written) explaination of evil.

Once Russell leaves that behind and gets into the history of the devil, things become more interesting the further you go though Russell repeats himself more than necessary for such a short book.

"The Devil East and West" is the broadest ranging chapter in the book . Looking at myths and the beginnings of religion throughout the world, Russell finds that good and bad qualities are often mixed into the same figures, that deities are often twinned to an opposite, and that generational wars in heave abound with one side judged evil. He even gets into specific, common attributes to these diabolical figures, e.g. black, red, and horned. Nor are these attributes, at this stage in humanity's religion, confined to a single demonic figure. Often legions of lesser demons are affiliated with various evils of disease, death, and the weather.

Zoroastrianism in 600 BC essentially added a new development. To make its deity Ahura Mazda completely good, to rid him of the evil qualities found in other gods, to make him more worthy of worship, the evil qualities were assigned to the evil Ahriman. Of course, this scheme raised other questions. If Ahura Mazda was all powerful, why let Ahriman roam free? If he could defeat Ahura Mazda, why let his evil continue unabated until sometime in the future. And, as Russell details, Zoroastrianism went through many heresies and evolutions.

"Evil in the Classical World" delves into the demonic aspects of Greek religion, the mysterious Orphic cult and the many Greek gods which exhibit good and bad tendencies. Russell also has a concise section (at least to my untutored eye) about Greek thought on the soul and what evil was.

The highlights of the book are the chapters on the Hebrew development of evil and the devil of the New Testament. Russell traces how the Old Testament god, most blatantly on display in Job, has many troubling aspects. If he is not evil, he certainly seems to employ demonic figures and the Devil as servants and advocates in a celestial court judging individual human worth. Gradually, probably under the influence of Zoroastrianism, Yahweh's most fearsome aspects -- his treatment of Job, hardening Pharaoh's heart and provoking others to sin just to punish them -- were assigned to a diabolical figure. In theological terms, evil in the Hebrew cosmos when from monism, a deity uniting good and evil, to dualism with supernatural beings for each moral quality. He supports his argument with reference to apocryphal books as well as the traditional Bible.

When talking of the Devil in the New Testament, Russell talks not only of the specific animals that came to be associated with him, but the questions the Devil raises in Christian thought. Some are the same questions Zoroastrianism had: what is the exact relationship of the good and evil deities? Is one subordinate to the other? (In a valid aside, Russell notes that atheists frequently use the question of evil in their arguments against God, but the logic of those arguments implicitly assumes that a supreme being must have the qualities of a Christian God.) Russell looks at how the iconography of the devil - where he is said to live, what his relationship is to Hell (prisoner or administrator?), what animals are associated with him - developed.

The final chapter, "The Face of the Devil", ends with Russell's not very interesting attempt to bridge his scholarship of the Devil to his personal experience with evil.

I can't judge the worth of Russell's religious, philosophical, and historical scholarship, but I found a couple of the chapters interesting enough, in this short book, to make it worth reading. This edition also has some interesting black and white photos of religious art. Those with a more spiritual or philosophical bent will probably find the question of evil's definition more interesting and practical than I did. ( )
1 stem RandyStafford | Feb 5, 2012 |
Good old Nick is as fascinating today as in the days the Russell's books the Devil, Satan, Lucifer, and Mephistopheles were written. As has been since the first human ails per moral choices contemplated. And though the natural and moral evil nowadays seldom is personified the way it has been in cultural contexts Russell goes through, it still is hard fr a human heart to find personified evil in itself. And this is exactly what motivates Russell through the book the Devil.

Some of my academic associates and friends noted that for a good part the book itself deals with something that simply doesn't exist: perception of personified evil - when understood as the Devil - in Hellenistic world. Russell can thus be argued to bring an alien point of view into cultural context. This becomes clearer when compared to - say - Stoyanov's treatise, The Other God (...), on the same subject.
The Devil ought not to be read by those who are too keen to find anything but working truths or baseline for thinking in books, because it is balancing on the edge of reading newer interpretations a-historically back to older sources.

For a purely academic research this might have been an embarrassing deficiency. For Russell's study, however, giving away clearly his private motivation doesn't in my book - pardon the pun - as a deficiency as much as a literal presence of a fellow human being. ( )
  kyynhima | Jan 28, 2008 |
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"Evil--the infliction of pain upon sentient beings--is one of the most long-standing and serious problems of human existence. Frequently and in many cultures evil has been personified. This book is a history of the personification of evil, which for the sake of clarity I have called 'the Devil.' I am a medievalist, but when I began some years ago to work with the concept of the Devil in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, I came to see that I could not understand the medieval Devil except in terms of its historical antecedents. More important, I realized that I could not understand the Devil at all except in the context of the problem of evil. I needed to face the issue of evil squarely, both as a historian and as a human being."--from the Preface This lively and learned book traces the history of the concept of evil from its beginnings in ancient times to the period of the New Testament. A remarkable work of synthesis, it draws upon a vast number of sources in addressing a major historical and philosophical problem over a broad span of time and in a number of diverse cultures, East and West. Jeffrey Burton Russell probes the roots of the idea of evil, treats the development of the idea in the Ancient Near East, and then examines the concept of the Devil as it was formed in late Judaism and early Christianity. Generously illustrated with fifty black-and-white photographs, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from specialists in religion, theology, sociology, history, psychology, anthropology, and philosophy to anyone with an interest in the demonic, the supernatural, and the question of good and evil.

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