A Brief History Of Satan
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Submitted by freefortermpapers on 06/24/2008 03:00 PM
- Category: Social Issues
- Words: 2758
- Pages: 12
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A Brief History Of Satan
He is the antitheses of God and the creation; tempter of Adam and Eve; deceiver of humanity. He is called by many names, and wears multiple disguises, all the while seeking to spite his former master and wreak havoc among humanity. The character in question is, of course, Satan. Known primarily through his role in the Judeo- Christian tradition, he is famous, or better yet infamous, throughout the world either as a literal reality, or a metaphorical personification of evil. And throughout his 2,000-year life, having traversed the broad spectrum of art, literature, and thought, he still remains one of the most interesting figures in the cathedral of the human mind. To say that the Satan character has had an impact on our understanding of good and evil is unquestioned. Yet like an enigmatic shadow, he still remains shrouded in the past, mysteriously under the kinds of layers that only accumulate with time.
The Devil, much like a person, is three- dimensional and complex. This perhaps is the great irony; for he is often portrayed as seductively easy to succumb too, yet he remains remarkably difficult to define. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to address four very distinct questions, which will hopefully provide a single, coherent picture of who he is, where he came from and how he developed. First, what of his origins? What other cultures contributed to the Satan idea? Second, how did these influences evolve within classical Judaism? Third, how did these ideas coalesce during the intertestamental period; and fourth, how did their final incarnation emerge in the New Testament?
The Satan of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the end result of a complicated process of cross- cultural pollination within various societies of the ancient world. As is most of the case with evolution of any sort, especially ideas, there isn't a simple linear progression or even a, " single line of development," from which a precise conclusion can be drawn (Stanford 19). A...
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