A History of the Devil

by Gerald Messadié

Book Overview

AN UNORTHODOX COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF RELIGION-FROM THE DARK SIDE-BY A BESTSELLING THEOLOGIAN "The biggest ruse of the devil is making us believe that he doesn't exist," claimed Baudelaire. On the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568360819
• ISBN13: 9781568360812
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Kodansha
• Length: 377 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Blame it on Zoroaster!

Gerald Messadie traces the devil to Persian Zoroastrianism in the first millennium B.C. In founding the first true monotheism, Zoroaster was motivated by a hatred of the aristocracy and in particular bloody sacrifices. He seems to have borrowed his theology from Mazdaism, which originally taught that there were two spirits, Ahura Mazda, the "Wise God" and Ahriman, the spirit of evil, who would become our devil. We see the Christian devil developing when the Jews return from the Babylonian Captivity, where they were influenced by Zoroastrianism. Prior to this Judaism had no hell nor a real devil. Messadie examines the Old Testament and determines that the snake in the Garden of Eden was "just a snake" and that Job's tormenter was Yahweh's collaborator. Only with the coming of the Essenes, who revolted against Hellenism, did our conception of the devil appear. We also learn that Jesus was at one time an Essene, as was John the Baptist, since the Jews did not perform baptism. Some of this is awfully familiar. For instance, Zoroaster foretold a great war at the end of time when Heaven would send down a Savior, Mithra, who would destroy the forces of evil by fire and sword. Zoroastrianism also includes a Last Judgment, which will condemn the bad to hell, while the good will live in Paradise for all eternity. Zoroastrianism also had a great deal to do with consolidation of the power of the clergy. The religion was based on a transcendent definition of Good and Evil whose human adjudicator would be the clergy. Zoroastrianism also tried to lay down not only religious law but also civil law. Any breach in religious law would be punished by secular authorities. Thus, it was politics that gave birth to the Devil and "the Devil is indeed a political invention." We would see this again with the Devine Right of kings. Messadie works hard at proving that some cultures managed to get along fine without a devil. Native Americans, The Celts, pre-Christian and Arabic Africans, and Greeks and Romans managed without a devil. In Greece religion reflected its democratic culture; the individual had direct contact with his Gods. Greeks knew where Hercules lived. The Romans had utilitarian gods. Messadie says, "From the very beginning, the Roman gods were consuls, prefects and functionaries--in a word, state employees." In Rome "superstitio" was a crime. The Africans and the Native Americans' religions were animistic. Every one of God's creatures contained "a portion of his breath." One of the last chapters deals with Islam. According to Messadie, Islam is very much misunderstood in the West. Messadie was raised in Egypt, so he's a little easier on Islam than other scholars might be, but he doesn't mention the angel Gabriel dictating the Koran to Muhammad. Instead he emphasizes the political nature of Islam's inception. According to Messadie, Muhammad was a student of power most influenced by the Byzantiums. He studied the structure of their empire and determine

A Devil That Doesn't Exist

This book is a cross-cultural examination of how different societies have attempted to explain evil. Messadie describes the traditional religions of India, China, ancient Greece and Rome, Africa and the pre-Colombian Americas as having a generally more unitary and tolerant theology. Meanwhile, Western religions, especially Christianity and Islam, are shown to be dualistic, believing that God and the Devil are waging an ongoing struggle for world domination and control of the human soul. Messadie traces the origin of this mythical fallacy back to the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. It is here, through a God named Ahura Mazda and a Devil named Ahriman, that we find the most important theological foundation for the dualism that is to later soil Western religion. Interestingly, Messadie makes a convincing case that in the Old Testament Satan is generally shown to be acting in accord with the wishes of God. For example, the suffering Satan causes Job, so that Job may be forced to demonstrate his faith, is done with God's blessing. But it is in the New Testament that Satan is continually depicted as the enemy of God. This Christian obsession with defeating the Devil is shown to have tragic historical consequences. For example, Messadie writes about how church and state authorites conspired in the Middle Ages to imprison and murder various such "Devil inspired" heretics as the Cathars in order to maintain religious and and political control while also profiting from the property they confiscated from the victims. He even suggests that it was the Inquisition that served as the ultimate model for the Nazi and Stalinist legal systems. Personally, I think that the Western religious belief in dualism is one of its primary theological errors. Messadie seems to share a similar viewpoint. In fact, this book is a well written and thoroughly researched effort to show how this irrational belief in something that doesn't exist - "the Devil" - has historically caused, and continues to cause, immense suffering and tragedy.

A Book of History

I found it to be well written, though a bit dry but acceptably sarcastic in places. If you're looking for a book to strengthen your religious faith, you shouldn't be reading a history of the Devil. This is a non-religious book - that is, written from the point of someone not confined to any ideology or noticeable religious bent. It's a book from the view point that the Devil is a character of human creation and the timeline that this character's changes and developments follow. And as to that it covers the territory well. If you believe the same way you'll enjoy this book immensely. If you're strong in a belief of an organized religion, you'll be offended once again.

conspiracy theory meets the devil

One of the most illuminating and scholarly books I have ever read! Messadie begins the history of the devil with the primitive religions and moves on to the more traditional religions such as Christianity and Islam. His means to disprove the devils existance is a historical one. He shows that the different religions from the most primitive to the ones we have now, simply borrowed the idea of the devil mostly from each other and used it as a means to gain political power. He argues that the idea of the devil took form during the time of zoroaster. The devil was invented by theocracies to gain and mantain politcal power. Although the book doesnt come out and say it, this is an excellent book on religious conspiracy theories. Im amazed that this book is not better known. A true classic of its kind. Although the book did not convince me to abandon religion, I treasure it because it could turn out to be true on further evidence. Also because I like looking at the skeptical side of things. If this book is true imagine all those who claimed to have seen hell or the devil: it would all be suggestion. I used to know a trappist monk who's mother had to be locked up, because she had an intense fear of hell. No one deserves hell more than those who made up the devil or jesus christ and put people through terrible suffering, fear and dissapointment if this book is true. I also recommend the Christ Conspiracy by Acharya S. Christianity before Christ by John Jackson and the biography of Satan by Kersey Graves to give a good in depth study of the origins of Christianity, Satan, and the Bible. This book is a jewel in the rough and deserves rereadings and close study.

The devil's in the details

Where does the devil come from? Who were his ancestors? What is his history? Has he always existed? How did he become so powerful that contemporary humanity is always busy trying to pinpoint and classify and localize the agents of evil and their master? How does one write a history of something that does not exist?The author seeks to provide the answers by writing a phenomenological history, decoding the models by which humanity constructs the devil for itself. The devil wields considerable influence because it is difficult for humanity to avoid making the devil "into a mental object upon which we might graft the vicissitudes of our folly." Messadie takes us on a worldwide journey into the ethnology of evil as seen by the whole of humanity over time: from the ambiguous demons of Oceania, India, China, and Japan, to Zoroastrianism as the seed carrying the true birth of the devil, to the appearance of sin in Mesopotamia. He takes us through the 35 centuries of the Celts who lived without the devil, and Greece, where democracy drove out the devil. On to Rome, where the devil was banned, to Egypt, where eternal damnation originated. Africa gave us religious ecology, the North American Indians worshipped the land and nature, and Central America left us the enigma of Quetzalcoatl. In Israel, we find the demons as the heavenly servants of the modern devil. In the early Christian church, we see the confusion of cause and effect, where the devil exists and no one knows why. Finally, the author takes us to Islam, where the devil becomes a state functionary and the basis for religious wars. This translation from the French edition is a scholarly look into the history of the devil that is heavily footnoted with historical references and cultural analysis. Messadie presents an unorthodox view of Satan. Baudelaire said that the biggest ruse of the devil is to make us believe that he doesn't exist. Messadie argues that the true evil lies in the fact that we believe in the devil at all: "It is profoundly Satanic to believe in the devil".