Giving Satan His Due

[elfs]

On the other hand, Kuhner may be on to something, but only within his own vision of the world.

Elaine Pagels wrote a great book I read many years ago entitled The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics. In her book, Pagel writes that humans have an unending supply of suspicion that something is wrong and, if so, it is not our fault. If you eliminate all of the external enemies, and still things suck, then the search inevitably gets turned toward inner enemies. That's why Pagel's list must be read in order: the first threat is one outside the borders of the nations under the early Church's control; the second threat is perceived of those who lived side-by-side with the medieval Church, and finally; the last threat comes from members of the Church itself who dissent even in small ways.

A charitable reading of Kuhner's worry is that, deprived of external threats, human beings in relationships will turn on each other. If the marriage isn't perfect, and there are no external threats, then it must be the other person who's at fault.

Basically, Kuhner's essay is a fundamental one: an unnamed other people aren't quite so emotionally savvy and secure as either church leadership or the leadership of the sexual anarchy^[1]. Kuhner could even point to the wrecked homes on both sides as evidence that his thesis holds true even of intelligensia, regardless of their ideology. But for him, the strictures with which he has lived his whole life, which have served him well, should not be allowed to fall away. If we have to keep mortal terror to keep such order, so be it.

^[1] If you think "anarchist leader" is oxymoronic, please read one book on anarchy, and another on leadership.

Comments

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Do I understand correctly that he's postulating that Christian church created Satan to refer to all other things that offended them? That would be a shock to students of the old testament, which mentions Satan early on in Genesis and predates Christianity by a kiloyear at the least.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

[Citation needed]

There's little evidence that the serpent, Lucifer, and Satan are even the same character.

And no, she isn't proposing that at all. What she proposes is that the modern image of Satan as a corrupting influence (see: Job!) has encrusted around the Church's attempt to rout out what's wrong with the world, an attempt that has repeatedly corrupted the church itself.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

And here's an even more interesting thing:

First, Hebrew, like all semitic languages, is written in an alphabet without vowels. But that's okay because…

Second: In Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Ancient Egyptian…), the "root" of a word is the consonants. They always stay the same. Rather than slap on prefixes or suffixes to change, say, adjectives into nouns, the Semitic languages go and change the vowels.

This brings me to Third: Ever read the Book of Job? I mean really read it. "Satan," or "<scary>The Adversary</scary>," appears only briefly, in only a few sentences. That happens a few paragraphs from the beginning, in what is a complete nonsequiter when you give it a second glance.

1+2+3 all bring me to this: what if the original Hebrew word wasn't "Adversary". What if the actual vowels that were meant to be there were for the word, "Adversity." As in, the Angel of Adversity.

Reread the Book of Job that way, and the first few paragraphs turn into ths: G*d is reviewing the angels, then gets to the Angel of Adversity, who's just kicking about. So, G*d gives Adversity new marching orders: bring some adversity to Job.

This also fits in with the end of the Book of Job, wherein G*d tells Job and the 3 self-pious of his four friends that He does not go around only giving lollipops to "the Good" and spankings to "the Bad"; that there's more to it than that. A Jewish friend of mine told me, "Yes, that's exactly it. Which is why Job is the last book in some versions of the scriptures," a message from the Almighty saying, 'Grow Up already.'

[gramina.livejournal.com]

The OT treatment of the Adversary (sort of "prosecuting attorney" as I understand it) is radically different from themedieval-and-later understanding of Satan. It's really helpful, actually, to distinguish them.