The Father of the Devil (John 8:44)

2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
pp. 540-565
Author(s):  
M. David Litwa
Keyword(s):  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Devil

Abstract This article argues that John 8:44 helped to inspire the early Christian view that the creator was an evil being. John 8:44 has at least four possible readings allowed by grammar. In two of these readings, taken by a variety of early Christian groups (including early catholics), there is indication that the devil has a father. Since the desires of this father are known from the parallel desires of his children, some early Christians inferred the hostility of the devil’s father toward Christ, and thus his evil nature.

Syncretism and Allegory in the Jerusalem Orpheus Mosaic

Traditio ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Block Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian View ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Visual Statement

The ingenuity of early Christian artisans in turning a host of pagan symbols and images to the service of a new ideology is one of the most conspicuous features of Christian art during the second and third centuries after Christ. It is responsible for the art of the catacombs in which Orpheus the charmer of wild beasts represents Christ the Good Shepherd, and the eagle, peacock, Dionysiac grapes, sun, stars, and other pagan funerary symbols of long standing express the state of the Christian soul after death. Yet as Christianity grew stronger in the Roman empire, as councils were held and creeds formulated, and as a distinctively Christian view of history evolved in which Old Testament figures replaced pagan heroes, we find a curious lag in the visual arts. The old pagan imagery continues to appear in Christian funerary monuments, often in conjunction with newer, wholly Christian, motifs, but significantly not replaced by them. This phenomenon is not due simply to the conservatism of the artisans, but owes much to the vigor of the old motifs and the persistence of the ideas they represented. It also points up the fundamental difference between a verbal statement, made up of words which may be freely rearranged and whose connotations shift mercurially from year to year, and a visual statement, which is less flexible and able to retain its symbolic appeal for a very long time. The difference, practically a commonplace in the study of the history of ideas, is nonetheless often overlooked in the study of the ideas and motifs of late antiquity, when words and pictures ostensibly representing the same ideas were often straining in opposite directions. Thus, while the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon sought to settle for all time the relation between the human and divine in the person of Jesus, Christian artisans were still depicting Christ the Good Shepherd in the aspect of Orpheus.

How the Devil Got His Hooves and Horns: The Origin of the Motif and the Implied Demonology of 3 Baruch

Numen ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 195-229
Author(s):  
Alexander Kulik
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Physical Description ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Modern Image ◽  
The Demonic

Abstract This paper reexamines the problem of the origins of a popular medieval and modern image of the devil as an anthropomorphic creature with hooves and horns and seeks to reconstruct the analogous ancient image of a satyr-like devil as it could be witnessed in diverse sources, including Hellenistic mythology, rabbinic legends, and early Christian texts. It seems that, not belonging completely to any of these worlds, this therianthropic motif emerges from a complicated literary history wherein Greco-Roman Pan, Jewish seirim, and other mythological figures graft themselves and their imagery around the forces of the demonic. The main argument of the paper as a whole centers around the place of 3 Baruch in this complicated history. This composition may contain the only physical description and detailed treatment of demonic seirim-satyrs in early Jewish literature and the earliest notion of satyr-like demons available to us.

scholarly journals Socio-Psychological Alienation in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Kharbutli ◽  
Ishraq Al-Omoush
Keyword(s):  
Psychological State ◽  
Evil Nature ◽  
The Devil

This paper investigates socio-psychological alienation in Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown”. It focuses on Brown’s psychological motivations that lead him to leave his village, Salem, on a journey to be taken literally and allegorically along with the inner conflicts thereof. Eventually, the result is a short-lived schism in his psyche. In fact, what urges Brown to step farther into the dark wood is an insistence to discover the whole truth so as to put an end to any vacillation between threatening possibilities suggested by the devil about the Puritan society to which he belongs. Thus, Brown turns into a rejectionist of all the teachings of his Puritan culture. In the end not only does he liberate himself from these cultural shackles, but he also seems to rise above them. So, while he lives among his countrymen he is not one of them. Brown’s new psychological state never allows him to accept the evil nature and the hypocrisy of his ancestry. Moreover, the psychological confusion in Brown’s psyche reaches its peak in a state of depression that we notice at the end of the story, which eventually puts him among those who have come to be called the “dark” romantics of the period, along with Poe, Melville, and Dickinson.

scholarly journals The Creation of the Devil and the End of the White Man’s Rule: The Theological Influence of the Nation of Islam on Early Black Theology

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Marjorie Corbman
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Nation Of Islam ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Devil

This article examines the emergence of the Black Theology movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the context of the religiously diverse milieu of Black political movements during the same period. In particular, the theology of the Nation of Islam was widely understood by contemporary commentators as a major source of the confrontational rhetoric and tactics of the Black Power movement. Drawing upon the writings of the radical Black nationalist minister Albert B. Cleage, Jr., this article examines the importance of what Cleage termed the Nation of Islam’s “Black cultural mythology” in providing the possibility of a break in identification with white Christianity. In particular, it traces the influence of the Nation of Islam’s proclamation of God’s imminent apocalyptic destruction of white America on the theology of James H. Cone and Cleage. In doing so, this article argues for the importance of examining questions of racial and religious difference in American history alongside one another. It was precisely through creative appropriation of a non-Christian framework of biblical interpretation, rooted in faith in God’s complete identification with Black humanity and the consequent imminent judgment of white America, that early (Christian) Black Theologians were able to retain their Christian identity and sever its entanglement with white supremacy.

Bodies and Souls: The Case for Reading Revelation 18.13 as a Critique of the Slave Trade

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-409
Author(s):  
Murray Vasser
Keyword(s):  
Slave Trade ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Christian View

Though commentators often claim that Rev 18.13 entails a critique of the slave trade, a robust defence of this assertion has not been offered. In this article, I first analyse the use of the terms σώματα and ψυχαὶ ἀνθρώπων in the extant Greek literature and demonstrate that the peculiar conjunction of these terms in Rev 18.13 is best understood as a critique of the slave trade. I then demonstrate that such an interpretation accords with the literary context of Rev 18.13. This article thus offers an important contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the early Christian view of slavery.

From Worm to Wyvern

2021 ◽  
pp. 84-136
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Central Body ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Sea Monster ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
The Devil

How did the classical dragon, essentially just a massive snake in form, a worm, evolve, in early Christian culture, into the very particular fantasy creature we know as a ‘dragon’ today in the West? It is argued that the dragon acquired its animalian head and more bulbous central body from another well-established creature of classical fantasy, the ancient sea-monster (kētos), this by virtue of the fact that, whilst dragon and sea-monster had remained largely distinct creatures in classical culture, they had been confounded by the Septuagint. Its wings, however, and probably too in effect its two legs (the latter placed in the position of the sea-monster’s front flippers), it derived rather from demons and the Devil, the latter being associated with snakes already in the Old Testament, and then spectacularly so in the New Testament’s Revelation. By the ninth century AD these two developments had crystallized in the wyvern-type dragon.

demons in Christian thought

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory D. Wiebe
Keyword(s):  
Early Church ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Greek Culture ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Christian Understanding ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Devil

The background of early Christian demonology was in both Hebrew and Greek culture. Jews associated the Greek word daimōn with the false gods of the surrounding nations. This was in many ways an intuitive application of the Greek term. It carried the sense of ambivalent divine or semi-divine power, which significant philosophical traditions understood to mediate between humans and gods. The New Testament carries this theme, though its focus is more on Christ’s exorcisms of demons, and his gift of that power to his disciples, with the early church tying the two together in the theological literature, as well as baptismal exorcisms and renunciations of the devil and idolatry. Demons were widely thought to have aerial bodies, which allowed them to perform various marvels, like foretelling the future. They were ultimately taken to be fallen angels with Satan as their leader, though this was not a given early in the tradition. While the Christian understanding was that Christ had defeated them on the cross, this was not taken to preclude the ongoing influence of demons in human affairs prior to the final judgement. Indeed, they constituted a significant moral problem for the Christian life, which absolutely opposed them. For Christians, Christ and the demons were the two sides of the fundamental dilemma of every human soul. The problem of demons manifested differently depending on the context, whether in its encounter with false religion, from idolatry to the persecutions the gods inspired; or in the innumerable tempting thoughts encountered in the pursuit of ascetic discipline.

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