The Origin of Satan (34 page)

attack.

So compelling is this vision of cosmic war that it has pervaded

the imagination of millions of people for two thousand years.

Christians from Roman times through the Crusades, from the

Protestant Reformation through the present, have invoked it to

interpret opposition and persecution in myriad contexts. To this

day, many Christians—Roman Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical,

and Orthodox—invoke the figure of Satan against “pagans”

(among whom they may include those involved with non-

Christian religions throughout the world) and against “heretics”

(that is, against other Christians with whom they disagree), as

well as against atheists and unbelievers. Millions of Muslims

invoke similar apocalyptic visions and switch the sides, so that

those who Christians believe are God’s people become, for many

Muslims, allies of “the great Satan.”

Many religious people who no longer believe in Satan, along

with countless others who do not identify with any religious

tradition, nevertheless are influenced by this cultural legacy

whenever they perceive social and political conflict in terms of

the forces of good contending against the forces of evil in the

world. Although Karl Marx’s extreme and resolutely materialist

version of this apocalyptic vision is now nearly defunct, a

secularized version of it underlies many social and political

movements in Western culture, both religious and antireligious.

So long as the Christian movement remained a persecuted,

suspect minority within Jewish communities and within the

Roman empire, its members, like the Essenes, no doubt found a

sense of security and solidarity in believing that their enemies

were (as Matthew's Jesus says of the Pharisees) “sons of hell,”

CONCLUSION / 183

already, in effect, “sentenced to hell.” This vision derives its

power not only from the conviction that one stands on God’s

side, but also from the belief that one’s opponents are doomed to

fail. The words Matthew places in Jesus’ mouth characterize his

opponents as people accursed, whom the divine judge has

already consigned “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil

and his angels.”

Yet among first-century Christian sources we also find

profoundly different perceptions of opponents. Although

Matthew’s Jesus attacks the Pharisees and bitterly condemns

them, and John at one point characterizes Jesus’ opponents as

Satan’s progeny, the Q source that Matthew uses also suggests

different ways of perceiving others, in sayings attributed to

Jesus that urge reconciliation with one’s opponents:

If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember

that your brother has something against you, leave your gift

there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your

brother, and then come and offer your gift (5:23-24).

Or Matthew 5:43-44:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor

and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, “Love your enemies

and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be

children of your father in heaven.”

To pray for one’s enemies suggests that one believes that

whatever harm they have done, they are capable of being

reconciled to God and to oneself. Paul, writing about twenty

years before the evangelists, holds a still more traditionally

Jewish perception that Satan acts as God’s agent not to corrupt

people but to test them; at one point he suggests that a Christian

group “deliver to Satan” one of its errant members, not in order

to consign him to hell, but in the hope that he will repent and

change (1 Cor. 5:5). Paul also hopes and longs for reconciliation

between his “brothers,” “fellow Israelites,” and Gentile

believers (Rom. 9:3-4).

184 / CONCLUSION

Many Christians, then, from the first century through Francis

of Assisi in the thirteenth century and Martin Luther King, Jr.,

in the twentieth, have believed that they stood on God’s side

without demonizing their opponents. Their religious vision

inspired them to oppose policies and powers they regarded as

evil, often risking their well-being and their lives, while praying

for the reconciliation—not the damnation—of those who

opposed them.

For the most part, however, Christians have taught—and acted

upon—the belief that their enemies are evil and beyond

redemption. Concluding this book, I hope that this research may

illuminate for others, as it has for me, the struggle within

Christian tradition between the profoundly human view that

“otherness” is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is

divine.

N O T E S

1. Martin Buber, cited in discussion with Malcolm Diamond, professor of

religion at Princeton University, May 1994.

2. Neil Forsyth,
The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth
(Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1987).

3. Walter Wink,
Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine

Human Existence
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986); C. G. Jung,
Answer to
Job
, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1954).

4. Jeffrey B. Russell,
The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primi-

tive Christianity
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970).

5. Robert Redfield, “Primitive World View,” in Redfield, ed.,
The Primitive

World and Its Transformations
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1953), 92.

6. Jonathan Z. Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” in Jacob

Neusner and Ernest S. Frerichs, etis.,
To See Ourselves As Others See Us:

Christians, Jews, “Others” in Late Antiquity
(Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press,

1985), 3-48.

7. William Scott Green, “Otherness Within: Towards a Theory of Differ-

ence in Rabbinic Judaism,” in Neusner and Frerichs, eds.,
To See Ourselves As

Others See Us
, 46-69.

8. Even a well-known passage in the Talmud assumes that Jewish courts

condemned and executed Jesus. See b. Sahn. 107b and parallel passages, b.

Sotha 47a and j. Hag. 2.2., part of the Gemara on Sanh. 10.2. For discussion, see

E. Bammel, “Christian Origins in Tradition,”
New Testament Studies
13 (1967):

317-35; see also David R. Catchpole,
The Trial of Jesus: A Study in the Gospels

and Jewish Historiography from 1770 to the Present Day
(Leiden: E. J. Brill,

1971), for a fascinating and detailed discussion of the history of scholarship on

this passage.

186 / NOTES

9. Barnabas Lindars,
New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of

the Old Testament Quotations
(London: SCM Press, 1973).

10. James Robinson,
The Problem of History in Mark
(London- SCM Press,

1957; reprinted, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).

11. Albert Schweitzer,
The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of

Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede
(London: A. and C. Black, 1926).

12. Josef Jacobs,
Jesus as Others Saw Him
(New York: B. G. Richards, 1925); H. Danby, “The Bearing of the Rabbinical Code on the Jewish Trial Narratives

in the Gospels,”
Journal of Theological Studies
21 (1920): 26-51; C. G.

Montefiori,
The Synoptic Gospels
I, 2nd rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1927);

Richard W. Husband,
The Prosecution of Jesus: Its Date, History and Legality

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1916); Josef Blinzler,
The Trial of Jesus:
Jewish and Roman Proceedings Against Jesus Christ
, trans. I. and F. McHugh,

2nd rev. ed. (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1959).

13. Simon Bernlield, “Zur altesten Geschichte des Christentums,”

Jahrbücher fur Judische Geschichte und Literatur
13 (1910): 117.

14. Hans Lietzmann,
Synopsis of the First Three Gospels
, trans. F. L. Cross, 9th rev. ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1968); Martin Dibelius,
Die Form-geschichte

des Evangeliums
(Tubingen: Mohr, 1919), trans, and reprinted in 1971;

Dibelius,
From Tradition to Gospel
(New York: Scribner, 1965), 178-219; John

R. Donahue,
Are You the Christ?
(Missoula, Mont.: Society of Biblical

Literature, 1973).

15. Paul Winter,
On the Trial of Jesus
, 2nd ed. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974); see also M. Radin,
The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth
(Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1931); J. Klausner,
Jesus von Nazareth, Seine Zeit, Sein Leben

und Seine Lehre
, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Judischer Verlag, 1934); E. G. Hirsch,
The
Crucifixion from the Jewish Point of View
(Chicago: Bloch Publishing &

Printing, 1921).

16. Fergus Millar, “Reflections on the Trial of Jesus,” in P. R. Davies and

R. White, eds.,
A Tribute to Geza Vermes: Essays on Jewish and Christian

Literature and History
(Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 355-81.

17.
The Trial of Jesus; the Jewish and Roman Proceedings Against Jesus Christ

Described and Assessed from the Oldest Accounts
(Westminster, Md.: Newman,

1959), 290. See, for example, A. N. Sherwin-White,
Roman Society and Roman

Law in the New Testament
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); T. A.

Burkill, “The Condemnation of Jesus: A Critique of Sherwin-White’s Thesis,”

Novum Testamentum
12 (1970):321-42; R. E. Brown,
The Death of the Messiah:
From Gethsemane to the Grave
(New York: Doubleday, 1994).

18. See Winter; Lietzmann; Dibelius; G. Volkmar,
Die Evangelien
(Leipzig:

Fues’ Verlag, 1870), 588-91; J. Norden, “Jesus von Nazareth in der Beurteilung

der Juden einst und jetzt,”
Judische Literarische Zeitung
(June 18, 1930): 25; S.

Grayzel,
A History of the Jews
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of

America, 1947), 1337; J. Isaac,
Jesus et Israel
(Paris: A. Michel, 1948), 509; G.

Bornkamm,
Jesus von Nazareth
(Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1956), 1504; E.

P. Sanders,
Jesus and

NOTES / 187

Judaism
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), states that “Jesus was executed by the Romans as would-be ‘King of the Jews’ ” (p. 294) and also that internal conflict

among Jews was “the principal cause of Jesus’ death” (p. 296; cf. pp. 294-318). See

also the important article reviewing recent scholarship by G. S. Sloyan, “Recent

Literature on the Trial Narratives of the Four Gospels,” in T. J. Ryan, ed.,
Critical
History and Biblical Faith: New Testament Perspectives
(Villanova: Villanova

University Press, 1979), 136-76.

For a more technical discussion of the material in this chapter, see “The Social

History of Satan, Part II: Satan in the New Testament Gospels,”
Journal of the

American Academy of Religions
52/1 (February 1994): 201-41.

1. Josephus,
The Jewish War
1.1, Loeb edition, vol. 2, trans. H. St. J. Thack-ery (London: Heinemann, 1926). For an excellent recent discussion of

Josephus's works, see Shave J. D. Cohen,
Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita

and Development as a Historian
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979).

2. Josephus,
Life of Josephus
4, Loeb edition, vol. 1, trans. H. St. J. Thack-ery (London: Heinemann, 1926).

3. Josephus,
War
4.128.

4.
Ibid
., 4.146.

5.
Ibid
., 5.5.

6.
Ibid
., 5.430.

7.
Ibid
., 5.19.

8. For discussion of the dating of Mark, see Dennis E. Nineham,
The Gospel

of Mark
(Baltimore: Penguin, 1963); Vincent Taylor,
The Gospel According to
St. Mark
, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1966).

9. For discussion, see E. Pagels,
The Gnostic Gospels
(New York: Random

House, 1979); for a summary edition and translation of the texts, see James M.

Robinson, ed.,
The Nag Hammadi Library in English
(New York: Harper, 1977);

for Coptic texts, translation, and scholarly notes, see the series of over twenty

volumes published in Leiden by E. J. Brill as
Nag Hammadi Studies
.

10. Tacitus,
Annals
15.44, Loeb edition, trans. J. Jackson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931).

11. Cited in the excellent discussion by Brent D. Shaw, “Bandits in the Roman

Empire,”
Past and Present
165 (November 1984): 3-52. See also G. Humbert,

“Latrocinium,” in C. Davemberg and E. Saglio, eds.,
Dictionnaire des antiquités

grecques et romaines
iii, 2 (1904): 991-92; R. MacMullen, “Brigandage,” appendix B in
Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 255-68. E. J. Hobsbawm,

Bandits
(London: Penguin, 1969), singles out “social banditry”; Anton Block

criticizes his view in “The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry Reconsidered,”