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The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics Paperback – April 30, 1996

by Elaine Pagels (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 685 ratings
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From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition. 

"Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." —The Boston Globe

With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan’s story into an audacious exploration of Christianity’s shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.
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  1. Print length
    214 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Vintage
  4. Publication date
    April 30, 1996
  5. Dimensions
    5.2 x 0.65 x 6.89 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0679731180
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0679731184
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." —The Boston Globe

"Pagels is a wonderful writer.... She has a gift for bringing ancient texts alive.... Fascinating." —San Francisco Chronicle

"Lively reading...a book that makes familiar concepts disturbingly fresh and provocative." —The New York Times

"Pagels has achieved something important.... Thoughtful scholarly works that are also original and adventurous are not common. The Origin of Satan is such a work, and we should be correspondingly grateful." —New York Review of Books

"Lucid and closely reasoned.... Pagels remains always a lively writer who discerns the human implications of esoteric texts and scholarly disputes." —Chicago Tribune

From the Back Cover

igious historian whose The Gnostic Gospels won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition. With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan's story into an audacious exploration of Christianity's shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (April 30, 1996)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 214 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679731180
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679731184
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.65 x 6.89 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 685 ratings

About the author

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Elaine Pagels

Elaine Pagels

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After receiving her doctorate from Harvard University in 1970, Elaine Pagels taught at Barnard College, Columbia University, where she chaired the department of religion. She is now the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Professor Pagels is the author of several books on religious subjects and was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981. She lives and teaches in Princeton, New Jersey.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
685 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the book fascinating and well-researched. They describe it as readable and well-written in a scholarly manner. Readers appreciate the good insights into the history of the creation of Satan and the Christian religion.

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ReadabilityReadableHistoryContent quality
53 customers mention "Readability"53 positive0 negative

Customers find the book fascinating, powerful, and enlightening. They say it's well-written and carefully researched. Readers also mention the book is academic but also quite readable.

"All of Miss Pagels books are excellent, both to content and documentation. She is the best...." Read more

"...It's a fascinating book and a great look at the early days of the Church. If you're into that kind of thing, go pick it up...." Read more

"I was a great book that I enjoyed thoroughly...." Read more

"...the scholarly manner that Elaine Pagels has mastered, but it is utterly enlightening...." Read more

31 customers mention "Readable"31 positive0 negative

Customers find the book readable, well-written, and easy to follow. They say it's short but thorough.

"Great history, great explanation of how different beliefs came to be. Thank you, Ma'am for writing this book. I will keep it a a reference source." Read more

"...Not only was extremely well written in the scholarly manner that Elaine Pagels has mastered, but it is utterly enlightening...." Read more

"...the history of the early Church, this is an accessable, easy-to-read piece of scholarship for the general reader on a fascinating topic. Recommended." Read more

"...Overall, I found this to be very academic, but also quite readable and thorouhgly engaging." Read more

14 customers mention "History"12 positive2 negative

Customers find the book's history good, easy to digest, and excellent. They say it puts religion in historical context and is an interesting summary of the changing religious scene. Readers also mention the book has fascinating and game-changing insights that can change their world view.

"...Her books are excellent in showing the historical events that helped create some beliefs that have escalated into some of the horrors being taught..." Read more

"Great history, great explanation of how different beliefs came to be. Thank you, Ma'am for writing this book. I will keep it a a reference source." Read more

"...Unless you read this easy to digest history of the development of the idea of him. Not too dense, not too light. Just right." Read more

"...There is an excellent history here of the early Christian Church, the gospels and Gnostic gospels pertaining and very small portions of the Hebrew..." Read more

4 customers mention "Content quality"0 positive4 negative

Customers find the content boring and disappointing.

"This book presents an excellent analysis, yet I did find it somewhat disappointing...." Read more

"interesting in bits, but too boring to get through in one go" Read more

"...I expected a less academic read; nevertheless, I simply didn't enjoy the style or content." Read more

"...Relies on a lot of false assumptions about Christ. Boring." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

Little Tex
5.0 out of 5 stars All of Miss Pagels books are excellent, both to content and documentation
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2017
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All of Miss Pagels books are excellent, both to content and documentation. She is the best. This is the 4th book I've had about Satan's origin, and this is the only one that makes sense. My opinion: Satan gets a bum rap. He did not have any power until he arrives in the New Testament. The word "Satan" is only mentioned in 4 places in the Old Testament. (Use an Exhaustive Concordance) Even the "Lord's Prayer" proves he gets a bum rap: the line "And lead us not into temptation." Who you praying to? So it ain't Satan who tempts, is it? If you are truly interested in learning, read this and get the truth. Her books are excellent in showing the historical events that helped create some beliefs that have escalated into some of the horrors being taught today on TV and in mega churches.
35 people found this helpful
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Doug Cresse
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2022
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Great history, great explanation of how different beliefs came to be. Thank you, Ma'am for writing this book. I will keep it a a reference source.
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Chris Gladis
4.0 out of 5 stars Things make a lot more sense now....
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2011
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Let me get this out of the way right up front: I can't think of the title of this book without the Church Lady from the heyday of Saturday Night Live popping into my brain. And now she's in yours, too. You're welcome.

So. Who is Satan? A fallen angel? The great adversary of God? Saddam Hussein's bitch? If nothing else, Satan is the great scapegoat, the one on whom we tend to pile all our troubles. Your church is running out of money? Satan. Your kid is doing drugs and listening to that awful hip-hop music? Satan. Queers getting married? Definitely Satan.

For some, Satan is an actual being, a true agent of evil whose purpose is to ruin all that God has made. For others, Satan is a symbolic representation of the evil inherent in the human condition, an abstract form made real in order to better understand it. In other words, there are as many versions of Satan as there are people who invoke him.

But how did the whole Satan thing get started? Where did he come from and how did we get to the Satan that we all know and loathe today? That's what Elaine Pagels was determined to find out when she wrote this book.

While most of the book focuses on the New Testament and a history of the early Christian church, it was the ancient history of Satan that I found most interesting, mainly because it concurred with a pet theory that I've had for a long time: Satan was never an enemy of God. Satan was God's quality control guy. It was his job to look for weaknesses in the system, to probe Humanity for its faults and flaws so that it could be made better. Thus the serpent in the garden (which, just as a note, was never actually revealed to be Satan), and especially the story of Job, where God allows Job's life to be ruined on a bet. My guess was that he won a nice, crisp one-dollar bill.

The Satan of Olde was an agent of God, there to make sure that things went the way they were supposed to. He caused trouble, he stirred things up, yes, but that was his job. Much like the office manager that you despise because he always harps on you for checking your Facebook account during company time, even though you both know there's nothing better to do right now, but he just enjoys watching you suffer and enforcing his stupid little rules.... That guy is, at least in his own mind, working for the greater good of the company. He may be a dick, you may wish great misfortune heaped on him and his progeny, but he's doing the job he was given to do.

Sounds great, but Satan's downfall from "annoying but necessary agent of God" to "vile and demonic enemy of god" was planted a long time ago, before Christianity was even on the horizon.

The Jewish religion, from whence our concept of Satan arose, has always been one of Otherness. Israelites and Enemies. Us and Them. From its earliest days, God made sure the Israelites knew that they were a small force against the world, with only Him to protect them. He told Abraham straight out that He would bless him and curse his enemies. Therefore, the descendants of Abraham had to be on constant guard from enemies both from without and within. With a Satan already set in their theology as a tester and troublemaker for God, it was not a far leap to look to him as the cause of the multiple troubles that the Jews had over the years. Around the time of Christ, the Essenes were a distillation of that concept. They were a small Jewish sect - a minority within a minority - which believed that they were the only true Jews and that everyone else had gone soft. The Jewish majority was corrupt, led astray from the true path to God, probably by Satan.

When the Christians showed up, a minority with an even more tenuous existence than the Essenes, they found this concept very useful. Telling their story from the point of view of an embattled minority, they found Satan to be a very useful opponent against whom their Messiah could fight. He was an excellent symbol that stood not only for the earthly conflict that was taking place between the Christians, Romans and Jews, but a greater spiritual conflict that involved all humankind in a battle between good and evil.

Pagels' basic thesis is that the concept of Satan, whatever else it may be, was used to not only encourage persecution of The Other - Jews and pagans, to be precise - but to also keep the Christians themselves in line. The book is actually a history of the early Christian movement and how that history was reflected in the writing of the Gospels. In fact, just like in the Bible, Satan doesn't really appear much in this book. Rather Pagels looks at how the early Christian movement fought for its survival against enemies without and within, and then how Satan became a spiritual catch-all for those who disagreed with them.

It's a fascinating analysis of the early days of the Church, and just how chaotic and tumultuous it was. There were so many churches with so many different interpretations of Jesus' life and death, so many Gospels being written and so many opinions on the very nature of God's universe that it's surprising the whole thing managed to come together to be the world's largest religion.

What's more, it shed some light on something that's always annoyed me: the persecution complex that so many Christians have. The best time to catch this is in December, when pundits in the States start going off about the War on Christmas as though the last twelve Christians in the country were holed up inside the Topeka Christmas Shanty with shotguns and eggnog. Every time a judge tells a town that they can't have the Ten Commandments on the lawn of their town hall, or a Wal-Mart tells employees to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" there is always a vocal group of Christians who claim that they're being persecuted and that they're on the edge of extinction. All this despite the fact that Christianity is the most popular religion in the world, that there are more Christians in Congress than any other religion, and that every single President in US history has been Christian. Despite all that, there seems to be a knee-jerk need to feel persecuted.

This book offered a very good reason why this is: because that was how the religion was founded, and it is the fundamental narrative of Jesus' story. If Jesus had been part of the Jewish majority, his story would have ended very differently, no matter how radical his ideas. The early church was born of persecution, first from the Jews and Romans, and when they were no longer a danger, from pagans and heretics. And under all that, the hand that is always set against them, is Satan. As long as Satan is there, the Christians will always have someone there to persecute them. Without that cosmic, deathless opponent, Jesus becomes just another political rabblerouser executed by Rome. Certainly no Messiah would have allowed himself to die unless it was a gambit in a much greater game against a much more powerful opponent. Without Satan and the relentless threat attributed to him (and, by extension, those who are seen to ally with him), Jesus's sacrifice becomes meaningless, and the whole religion follows with it.

It's a fascinating book and a great look at the early days of the Church. If you're into that kind of thing, go pick it up.Many thanks to my mom and stepdad, who pointed my attention towards it.

-----------------------------------------------------
"How, after all, could anyone claim that a man betrayed by one of his own followers, and brutally executed on charges of treason against Rome, not only was but still is God's appointed Messiah, unless his capture and death were, as the gospels insist, not a final defeat but only a preliminary skirmish in a vast cosmic conflict now enveloping the universe?"
- Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan
-----------------------------------------------------
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5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating history with modern relevance
Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2023
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The underrealized history of one of our most popular characters: The devil. Everyone knows who Satan is but nobody knows how he got here. Unless you read this easy to digest history of the development of the idea of him. Not too dense, not too light. Just right.
11 people found this helpful
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Reid McCormick
3.0 out of 5 stars good but not what I expected...
Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2022
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Upfront, this is not the book I expected it to be. Even the back cover misleads the reader. Having said that, I still found this book to be interesting.

This book is not really a summary of the concept of Satan throughout history. There is a little bit of that but that is not the theme of the book.

This book is more a Jewish and Christian examination of the “other.” Who is the “other” entity? That is the subject of this book.

In religious circles, it is easy to identify who is faithful and who is not. In the Old Testament, the enemy was clear. Those who were not Israelites, those who did not worship Yahweh - they were the enemy. But what about within the circle? Who was the enemy within the circle? This is where the symbol of adversary, accuser, and Satan emerges.

Christianity changed the game. The religious faith was no longer a matter of customs or a question of nationality. The spiritual enemy was the real enemy, and this enemy took on many forms.
So, I enjoyed this take, but I was looking for more or a history of the devil since there is not much written in the Old and New Testaments.
10 people found this helpful
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T. R.
5.0 out of 5 stars a worthy read for insight
Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2023
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I was a great book that I enjoyed thoroughly. I believe Elaine Pagels did excellent research so much of what I learned opened me up to a new understanding of how the early church operated and was comprise.
3 people found this helpful
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Karen Berner
5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!
Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2011
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This book is so much better then I ever thought. Not only was extremely well written in the scholarly manner that Elaine Pagels has mastered, but it is utterly enlightening. Every single chapter brought a new feeling and idea that was amazing to learn of, and yet, each chapter of time is linked to perfection.

This book should be read by everyone in the west and it deserves nothing but the best regards!
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Top reviews from other countries

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Rudy
5.0 out of 5 stars Well done
Reviewed in Canada on July 21, 2024
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Anónimo
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente libro si quieres saber cómo ha evolucionado el mito de Satanás a lo largo de la historia.
Reviewed in Mexico on August 5, 2022
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La errónea idea de que Satanás es un personaje lo desvelas en este libro, la invención del cristianismo para ganar, mantener y aterrorizar a sus adeptos queda muy claro en este excelente estudio histórico de Pagels.
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Lorena
3.0 out of 5 stars Sin más
Reviewed in Spain on June 16, 2020
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No está mal, pero como resumen de la Biblia porque poco habla de lo que se supone que trata el libro. No lo recomiendo aunque es interesante pero no merece la pena comprarlo
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Kalyan Ray
4.0 out of 5 stars Elaine Pagels is always readable
Reviewed in India on March 12, 2019
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Well-written, but a little thin, like an elongated essay
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read
Reviewed in Australia on June 26, 2021
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Liked this book. Examines the history of the early Christians and the creation of the first Christian church. Satan is not protrayed as a monster but can be different things to different cultures.
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