Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
by Elaine Pagels
Index:
Contents
- From the Feast of Agape to the Nicene Creed.
- Gospels in Conflict: John and Thomas.
- God's Word or Human Words?
- The Canon of Truth and the Triumph of John.
- Constantine and the Catholic Church.
Comments
The Origin of Satan (1996)
The Origin of Satan notes
is a scholar's readable examination of how the New Testament associates Satan with
Jews resistant to the teachings of Christianity. The chapters are:
- The Gospel of Mark and the Jewish War.
Mark, a young co-worker or disciple of
the apostle Peter,
wrote his gospel during (or just after) the Rebellion of the Jews against the Romans.
Thus, it can be thought of as 'war literature'.
Pagels writes:
"The figure of Satan becomes ... a way of characterizing one's actual enemies as the
embodiment of transcendent forces. For many readers of the gospels ever since the first century,
the thematic opposition between God's spirit and Satan has vindicated Jesus' followers and demonized their enemies."
[The continuation of this in the third millennium will be familiar to observers of the domestic and foreign policies of
George W. Bush.]
For the Gospel of Mark, the enemies were especially Jewish enemies.
"Yet while Mark sees the Jewish leaders as doing Satan's work in trying to destroy Jesus,
his own account is by no means anti-Jewish, much less anti-Semitic. After all, virtually everyone who
appears in the account is Jewish, including, of course, the Messiah." (p.34)
- The social history of Satan: from the Hebrew Bible to the Gospels.
In the second century b.c.e., the Essenes and other
dissidents against assimilation of the
Jews into other cultures such as the Hellenic begin "to invoke
the satan to characterize their Jewish opponents; in the process, they turned this
rather unpleasant angel into a far grander - and far more malevolent - figure. No longer
one of God's faithful servants, he becomes what he is for Mark and for later Christianity - God's antagonist,
his enemy, even his rival." (p.47)
"The Essenes ... place at the center of their religious understanding the cosmic war between God
and his allies, both angelic and human, against Satan, or Beliar, along with his demonic and human allies."
(p.58)
- Matthew's campaign against the Pharisees: deploying the devil.
When Matthew was writing, "Jesus' followers were a marginal group opposed by the ruling party of Pharisees,
which had gained ascendancy in Jerusalem in the decades following the Roman war.
... the 'intimate enemies' had become primarily Pharisees."
- Luke and John claim Israel's legacy: the split widens.
Luke was a disciple of Paul. Luke's perspective was of a Gentile convert,
who represented Jesus' followers as
"virtually the only true Israelites left."
Pagels writes that "John presents the viewpoint of a radically sectarian group
alienated from the Jewish community. ... John's fierce polemic
against those he sometimes calls simply 'the Jews' at times matches in bitterness that of the Essenes."
In the gospels by Luke and John, it is said that
"Jesus himself identifies his Jewish opponents with Satan." (p.88)
- Satan's earthly kingdom: Christians against Pagans.
"What makes that Christians' message dangerous ...
is not that they believe in one God, but that they deviate from monotheism by their 'blasphemous'
belief in the devil." (p.143)
- The enemy within: Demonizing the Heretics.
"Church leaders troubled by dissidents within
the Christian movement discerned the presence of Satan infiltrating among the most intimate enemies of all
- other Christians, or, as they called them, heretics." (p.148)
I am sympathetic to the Valentinians (although demonized by the wide-ranging Irenaeus), who
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"taught ... that the creator God described in Genesis is not the only God, as most Christians believe ...
According to Valentinus, he is an anthropomorphic image of the true divine Source underlying all being,
the ineffable, indescribable source Valentinus calls 'the depth' or 'the abyss.'
When Valentinus does invoke images of the Source, he describes it as essentially dynamic and dyadic,
the divine 'Father of all' and 'Mother of all'." (Pagels, p.169).
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Footnotes.
The word "satan" derives from the Hebrew sãtãn
[enemy] from sãtan [to oppose].
Writings of dissidents were grouped as the
apocrypha [hidden things]
and the pseudepigrapha [false writings].
Some historical dates:
- early 6th century b.c.e.: With reference to the appearance of satan in the Bible's books of Numbers and
Job, Pagels writes (p.40):
"Although Hebrew storytellers ... occasionally introduced
a supernatural character whom they called the satan, what they meant was any one
of the angels sent by God for the specific purpose of blocking or obstructing human activity.
... the satan may simply have been sent by the Lord to protect a person from worse harm."
- 168 b.c.e.: Maccabean revolt and war. Later
- 64 or 65 c.e. Death by execution of Paul of Tarsus.
- 66-70 c.e. "The Jewish War", a rebellion by the Jews of Palestine against Rome.
Paul of Tarsus was the only follower of Jesus to have what he wrote before the War
included into the New Testament.
- 70 c.e. Defeat of the Jews with their collapse in the Siege of Jerusalem.
Gospel of Mark "written either during the war itself ... or immediately after the defeat."
Mark is concerned to convert Gentiles and about conflicts between his own group of Jews
and those Jews who reject Messianic claims about Jesus.
"Mark frames his narrative at its beginning and at its climax with episodes in which Satan and his
demonic forces retaliate against God by working to destroy Jesus."
The Gospel of Thomas may have been written in its first version at about this time.
[The version that we have may be a revision from three centuries later.]
- 70-100 c.e. The Christian movement becomes primarily Gentile.
- About 80 c.e. Gospel of Matthew written about 10 years after Gospel of Mark, "using Mark as its basis".
- About 90 c.e. Gospel of Luke written about 20 years after Gospel of Mark, "expanding Mark's
narrative with further sayings and stories".
- 90-100 c.e. Gospel of John written, perhaps in Alexandria.
- About 170 c.e. (p.69): "Another zealously orthodox bishop,
Irenaeus of Lyons ... was the first, as far as we know, to identify the four gospels of the New Testament
as canonical and to exclude all the rest"; he denounced all other books as heretical.
- About 180 c.e. (p.155): "Irenaeus, claiming the authority of apostolic succession as bishop of
a congregation in Lyons, wrote a massive five-volume attack on deviant Christians - whom he called heretics -
attacking them as secret agents of Satan."
- About 370 c.e. (p.69): "[Books from] the sacred library of the oldest
monastery in Egypt ... were buried, apparently, ... after the archbishop of
Alexandria ordered Christians all over Egypt to ban such books as heresy and demanded their destruction."
- 1896 c.e. Gospel of Mary Magdalene discovered on papyrus fragments in Egypt.
- 1945 c.e. Dozens of long-lost accounts of the life of Jesus found at Nag Hammadi (upper Egypt).
These were the writings of the people denounced by Irenaeus, about 180 c.e., as heretics.
Barnabas (the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles)
"claims that the God whom most Christians worship,
the God of the Hebrew Bible, is himself one of the fallen angels -
indeed the chief of the fallen angels, from whose tyranny Christ came to set human beings free".
(Pagels, p.158)
The word "satan" derives from the Hebrew sãtãn
[enemy] from sãtan [to oppose].
Satan appears in the New Testament of the Bible, such as this, from early in Mark (i, 13), after Jesus is
baptized by his cousin John and recognized by the Holy Spirit:
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"13: And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan ..."
[The King James version]
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Satan appears in the New Testament of the Bible, in Luke iv, 5-8:
"5: And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain,
shewed unto him all the kingdom of the world in a moment of time.
6: And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them:
for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7: If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8: And Jesus answered and said unto him:
Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written
THOU SHALT WORSHIP THE LORD THEY GOD, AND HIM ONLY SHALT THOU SERVE."
[The King James version]
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and Revelations xii 7-9:
"7: And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon;
and the dragon fought and his angels,
8: And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
9: And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the Devil,
and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world:
he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him."
[The King James version]
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Satan appears in the Qur'an [or Koran], which is
the word of God as spoken by Muhammad and
remembered and written down after his death].
This is from Surah (chapter) 47, verse 26:
"Surely, those who turn their backs after guidance has become manifest to them,
Satan has seduced them and holds out false hopes to them."
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[Thanks for visiting.]
New books on Christianity and Spirituality by Pagels, Ehrman, et al.
Biopsychology.
