The Origin of Satan. - book reviews

Christian Century, March 13, 1996 by W. Trent Foley

ELAINE PAGELS is rapidly becoming to early Christian studies what Leonard Bernstein was to classical music and Martin Marty is to American religion--a popular interpreter who can make palatable and even pleasing to the broader public the specialized nature of a particular discipline. Unhappily, her book is more suitably titled to promote its sale than to reflect its content. A more accurate though less snappy title would have been The Origin of Demonization in the Christian Tradition. Pagels's main concern is to show how orthodox Christians of the first three centuries tended to portray their opponents as agents of Satan.

In a departure from her earlier works, she devotes most of this book to a critical examination of canonical texts, specifically the four Gospels. In chapter one she shows how the Gospel of Mark began the venerable Christian tradition of demonizing various adversaries. For Mark the chief adversaries are Jerusalem's Jewish leaders. Mark was less concerned for historical accuracy than to defend his own community from charges of treason leveled against it by certain other Jewish groups in about 70 C.E. What makes Mark's portrayals of Jesus' enemies so pernicious is Mark's conviction that these human conflicts between Jesus and Jewish leaders--and, by implication, between Mark's community and its detractors--mirror a larger cosmic conflict, the war between God and Satan.

After arguing that the roots of Mark's demonizing tendencies derive from earlier Jewish tradition, especially the apocalyptic strand in which Mark stands, Pagels focuses on how Christian tradition from the first through the third centuries continues to portray the enemies of Christ and his followers as allies of Satan. Yet as the tradition evolves, the enemy changes. For Matthew it is the Pharisees; for Luke and John, the Jews more generally; for the second-century Christian apologists, pagan gods and rulers; and for the first proponents of Christian orthodoxy, Gnostic heretics.

In a brief conclusion, Pagels notes how this early Christian tendency to demonize now permeates even resolutely secular ways of thinking about various social and political conflicts. She suggests as a remedy that we take more seriously the Gospels' complementary emphasis upon reconciliation with enemies.

Those who believe that such critical evaluations of Christian origins can help us reflect more deeply upon ourselves and our culture and think more responsibly about various "others" will cherish this book for its incisiveness and insight. Yet Pagels's analysis is not wholly original. Her argument calls to mind Robert Jewett's The Captain America Complex, which makes the same point and goes on to show how similar portrayals permeate both President Reagan's cold-war rhetoric and Popeye cartoons.

Pagels's book would be far more compelling had it applied its insights to the contemporary scene. Clearly the

book is meant as a corrective to the corrosive effects of our modern demonizing, but whether those effects can be seen in the Nazi Holocaust, the cultural genocide of Native Americans, or the smug way that television talk-show audiences identify and heap abuse upon current had guys, Pagels does not say. Because she does not identify any contemporary crises that result from the urge to demonize, her counsel to embrace Jesus' word of love and reconciliation is less convincing than it might be.

I suspect that Pagels's scholarly colleagues may wince while reading some parts of her book (especially when she relays without comment the early tradition's questionable claim that Roman magistrates executed the apostle Paul). But Pagels is not writing just for her colleagues. If her book succeeds only in provoking its more general audience to reflect on how this darker aspect of Christian origins continues to influence the way we image others, then it will have been well worth the writing.