Review of Elaine Pagels' The Origin of Satan

The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans and Heretics by Elaine Pagels

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In her Introduction, Elaine Pagels reminds us that she is a historian. This isn’t surprising since her expertise is the period in which Christianity was born and there are few topics more likely to elicit an emotional reaction among some readers than Christianity and the other two members of the Abrahamic “Big Three”: Islam and Judaism.

As a historian, of course, Pagels’ job is to immerse herself in the time period, gathering and analyzing as many pieces of evidence as humanly possible. Many of us who were raised in a conservative Protestant tradition rarely read contemporary sources, focusing instead exclusively on the canon. By focusing only on what was deemed “God’s Word,” however, we missed out on a world abuzz with treatises, letters gospels, debates and conversations about existence, Jesus and God. Pagels takes us to the homes of these writers, whether it’s an urban abode in downtown Jerusalem or a desert cave. All these people were thinking and debating and talking and if we claim to care about the story of Jesus it seems imperative that we should know what the world was like before, during and after his life.

So why spend so much time on Jesus in a review of Pagels’ book on the origin of Satan? The birth of Christianity and the birth of the traditional Western view of Satan were entirely intertwined. Drawing on her expertise in the original languages of Scripture, Pagels demonstrates that the word “Satan” originally denoted a functionary of God’s retinue, one dedicated to obstructing human behavior when directed by God. For example, in the biblical story of Balaam and the Ass, it is “a satan” who prevents him from disobeying God. As the story progresses, Balaam’s donkey begins to talk and Balaam is able to see the angelic being, the “satan,” standing before him, barring the way to rebellion.

It was not until the 1st century that “Satan” became the entity we all think of when we hear the name. The story of the angels’ rebellion is a recent one and one that has been applied retroactively to previous scripture. Who tempted Eve in the Garden? According to Genesis, it wasn’t Satan, it was the serpent. “Same thing” you say? Not until much later in history. (I’ll be reading Pagels’ Adam, Eve and the Serpent next.)

As she painstakingly tracks the use of the word “satan” in Scripture and contemporary sources, Pagels posits that the modern concept of Satan and the spiritual warfare inherent in the Gospels would not have developed as it did if it weren’t for Jewish internecine struggles under 1st century Roman occupation and during the war against Rome itself. Again, as a historian, Pagels looks at WHEN a Gospel was written and under what pressures and within what zeitgeist the author wrote. If you were a Jewish follower of Christ who barely survived the war against Rome and were now embroiled in struggles with the majority of Jews who did not appreciate early Christianity’s challenge of the status quo, whom would you paint to be the villains in the various “trials” of Jesus? Those motivated by none other than “Satan,” of course.




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