Within Reason - #79 Elaine Pagels - The Origin of Satan

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Elaine Pagels is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnosticism. Buy "The Origin of Satan" by Elaine Pagels here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elaine Pagels, welcome back to the show. Thank you. Good to be here, Alex. Good to see you. Who is Satan? What a great question. Satan is traditionally thought to be an invisible being, responsible for all evil and suffering in the world. Actually, a character created, as far as I could tell, in Jewish and Christian tradition, although he may have had forerunners in sort of bad actors in Egyptian mythology, Babylonian mythology.

There are gods who do very bad things. He's not a god, but he is seen as a spiritual being with a bad reputation. And a lot of people will have an image of the red devil with the horns and the pitchfork and the big tail. What is that and where does that come from? Well, when I first thought about the topic of Satan, I thought of it as kind of a joke, you know, a little cartoon figure like the one you mentioned. But when I started to think, why is that figure really part of the way Christians talk about the story of Jesus, the way Muslims talk, and even now Jews speak about Satan much more than they used to, where did that come from and I realized that it comes from pre-Christian stories about angels and God of Israel creates everything good presumably

and all of the angels were good so to speak if you ask St. Augustine but even in the Hebrew Bible there's a story about how some of the angels who were charged with protecting the earth failed their duty and they went down and were desired human women. The angels were all masculine in Greek mythology, I'm sorry, in, well, not only Greek mythology,

but in Jewish mythology. The angels all have male names. And the story in Genesis 6 says that there were some of these sons of God, as they're called, Benito, who sons of God can either refer to angels or humans, but often refers to angels. Some of the sons of God fell in love with human women, desired them, and came down to Earth and made it with them.

And the results of those hybrid unions between humans and spiritual beings were sort of demonic kind of spiritual entities. And that's part of the story in Genesis, a very strange story. But later, around the time of Jesus and before, some Jewish thinkers turned it into a much grander story. Yeah, I mean, that idea of Satan as some kind of example of a fallen angel is quite common in the Christian tradition, and yet it's difficult to pinpoint exactly where that comes from. I mean, Satan is seen by some as the sort of overlord of the underworld. It's like he's in charge of the place and he's punishing sinners. But on other accounts, he himself is someone that's being punished by God for sin.

And there's imagery in the Bible of him being chained up for a thousand years and thrown into the abyss. And so perhaps you can help us clarify here, you know, is Satan this victim of punishment, of divine punishment for his sins? or is he some kind of powerful being that oversees the punishment of other sinners? Well, actually, the answer to that is yes, he is both. I mean, in Christian tradition, he's had 2,000 years to become a character. Originally, as I said, it comes from Genesis 1. He's one of the angelic beings who does something wrong and then gives rise to evil forces on the earth. Genesis 6.

Right. But what I discovered, and this was a surprise. to me, having been raised in nominally Christian tradition, to realize that in the Hebrew Bible there is no such character as an overlord of evil, or even a seriously malevolent spiritual being, just not there. Even in the book of Job, people remember that it talks about, the Lord talks to Satan, and the Satan says, have you considered my servant Job and so forth? They have a quarrel, and because of Satan's accusation of Job, the Lord allows the Satan to punish Job and make him suffer,

just to see what he'll do. But he's not there, an enemy of God. When I started to look at this, I was surprised to see nothing in the Hebrew Bible suggests that God has a spiritual enemy up in heaven. It's only after the Hebrew Bible is written that Jews and then later Christians, develop that character into what you said, a great overlord of the forces of evil. Yeah, the development of Satan and the concept of Satan is fascinating to me. You have a book called The Origin of Satan, which I'll link down in the description.

The earliest sort of, well, some of the points of which the word Satan is used. I mean, the word Satan means something like accuser. It can mean something like accuser. it comes from a verb, meaning to obstruct, to block someone. And so in Hebrew, you have the word, at one point that one of the angels blocked Balaam, that's in Numbers 22, put up an obstacle in his way, because it comes from the word to obstruct or to block. And later, the Greek word Diabolos, devil, comes from the word, it means,

somebody who throws something at you. So it's like you're working along, somebody throws a huge obstacle right in front of you and, you know, and frustrates you. And that's what the Satan can do, even as a servant of God. But that's not the picture you get in later sources. No, Satan, I mean, the word Satan meaning something like accuser is used in the Hebrew Bible to refer to a person. That is not to a singular entity called Satan or the Satan, but rather it's a title that can be given somebody if they are an accuser. So it's used in like First Samuel, for example. But then you do get this development. There are two points where you get reference to the Satan. That is not Satan like somebody who's given the label of an accuser, but someone

who is identified as the Satan, the accuser. That's who they are. And one of those you've already mentioned is the book of Job, where God sort of has this spiritual counsel who he's like discussing things with. And the Satan, the accuser, is one of the members of the spiritual council. And so even in this story of Satan taking power over Job and ruining his life, it doesn't seem like he's doing it out of some anger towards God or something. He's doing it with God's permission, as if he's part of the council. The Satan is also referenced in Zechariah 3, where Satan is kind of like a judge in a sort of strange court case, right? We could call them Demel's Advocate.

Yeah. Because that's who he is. And the court that you mentioned quite rightly is a court of spiritual beings. Those are angels, the Venei al-Lohim, the sons of God are angels. And they're all clustered around God. They are his courtiers. They do his bidding. They fight his wars for him.

and they do what he tells them. And the Satan in the book of Job, as you said, can't act on his own. He has to request permission from God to do everything he does to do. And then Job gets it all back, as you know, at the end of the story. So he's not really against God. He's one of the servants of God. And so we have this idea of a character who seems to be the father of some kind of malevolence. I mean, he's the one given the task to upset Job's life, but it's sort of done under God's command.

And I was reading about this, and the story of Job and the story of Zechariah are written sort of during or after the Babylonian exile. And there's some suggestion that it's around this time that we see this development of Satan from being a simple label of accuser into more of a spiritual entity that is the father of evil. Is that right? it is and where you really find it developed is in the Dead Sea Scrolls because as in the Zacharias story you mentioned what it comes out of I think are conflicts in the human community when I first was trying to study where does Satan come from I was reading some books by Jeffrey Burton Russell who's a professor at the University of California who actually wrote five books on the subject. And in one of the books, he started by saying, the figure of Satan has

nothing to do with social history. And I stopped there and I thought, now that is such a wrong statement and frankly, such a stupid one, that I'm going to look for the social history of Satan. What does it mean to tell stories like the ones you mentioned, Alex? What does it mean for the human community. Because you're not just talking about conflict up there with God and Satan having a battle in the stratosphere. It also reflects down here on earth there's a conflict between two groups. Your group is inspired by Satan. My group is inspired by God. And that's the story from which it comes. So when groups of Jews clash in Zechariah about the exile and what to do, the story of Satan comes up. And when the people of the Dead Sea, under Roman occupation

of Judea, say, we can't live under domination of these Roman emperors and their armies. We refuse to allow them to control our country as if it were their satellite. So we're going out in the desert, we're going to start a new community that is pure, that has nothing to do. with a Jerusalem community in Jerusalem that's collaborating with the enemy, namely the Romans. And so in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they talk about a war in heaven between the good angels who are loyal to God and the angels who turn away from God and actually seduced the sons of God, which means the human, God's human community, which are the people of Israel. the men of Israel in particular.

So they want to say, we, the community that has seceded from the Roman population, I'm sorry, from the Jewish population controlled by Rome, we out in the desert who have nothing to do with that, we are God's people. But the evil power has seduced the whole rest of the Jewish community, and they're cooperating with the Romans. And therefore, they have gone over to the dark side. And they serve the Satan, they call them. They call them Bayelse-Bul, which means, I think it is power of darkness.

I have to check that. Or Lord of the Flies. There's many names for the evil one. And he's called Prince of Darkness. So he has a number of names. But he has many underlings who are the other angels who have turned away from God. And that's the picture you get in the Dead Sea Scrolls before the time of Jesus. Jesus.

Can you tell us, before we move on to the Jesus element, what are the Dead Sea Scrolls? I don't think I've done an episode on them, so it would be useful for those who don't know. The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of a library, of a devout religious community of Jews, developed about 100 BCE. after the Romans basically took over Judea and ruled it in their way and even appointed the chief priest of Jerusalem and put Jewish satellite kings in power. Herod the Great was one of them. He was Jewish, but he's like the eastern European provinces under Russia. He's one of them. He's one of them, but he's totally controlled by the massive outside government, Rome.

And so it was those people who were preoccupied with conflict between good and evil. It was both down on earth, between us in the sacred community, which has nothing to do with the Romans, and those other Jews who are collaborating with Rome. So that's what it means on earth when they're picturing this scene in heaven with a greatly elaborated picture of the forces of evil contending against God. We'll get back to Elaine Pagels in just a second, but first, do you trust the news? I don't most of the time. And if you don't, too, that's probably got something to do with the bias that inevitably

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or by clicking the link in the description, or if you're watching, by scanning the QR code that's on your screen. Subscribe using my link to get 40% off their unlimited access vantage plan for as little as $5 a month. And with that said, back to Elaine Pagels. Well, there's a particular text amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls called The Book of Enoch, which, as far as I'm aware, I haven't read it, details this. The kind of thing you're talking about in extreme detail. I mean, it's a long text where we really begin to see this idea of the demonic and the Satan that we know and hate today start to develop, right? Yes, and it's interesting. You mentioned that because the idea among Jewish groups of the time is that there's only one nation that has a quality of holiness to God, and that is Israel.

so gentiles don't even count they are not in a spiritual battle they are simply devoid of spiritual anything they worship false gods Egyptians Babylonians Romans you name them they're all not even in the running the only people who matter are the sons of God and that is as I said it can be a term either for spiritual beings or for the human beings who are on the side of God. And so Enoch and the others basically say, well, yes, there were evil angels that fell. You can read about them in Genesis 6, just a little episode. But now they've taken over Israel. They're trying to seduce Israel. They are targeting God's people, and they're delivering many of God's people over to the dark side.

Hmm. So we're seeing this development, and I want to track this very plainly for people listening. We begin with this title, Satan, accuser, which can be applied to people and is applied to various people throughout the Hebrew Bible. And then on two occasions, you end up with ha satan, or the Satan, which is a sort of specific character in the book of Job, in the book of Zachariah. But here, this Satan is not quite like the evil overlord. Satan. It's sort of part of God's counsel in some sort of strange form. In some apocryphal literature here, we're beginning to see a more sort of traditional satanic figure and demonic realm emerge. Then we get to the development of the New Testament canon. We get the figure of Jesus and we get people beginning to write a whole new series of scripture. And suddenly, Satan is cropping up everywhere. If you read the New Testament, three of the Gospels, the synoptic Gospels, right near the beginning, have Jesus being tempted explicitly by Satan in the desert. John mentioned Satan by name three times as sort of fulfilling specific tasks in the Gospels. So suddenly Satan appears in full force as this identifiable character and mastermind of evil and in opposition to Jesus and to God.

So what causes this sudden development of the character of Satan? Well, there was a precedent because when that sacred community of Jews, like a kind of monastery, went out into the desert to oppose the Jews collaborating with Rome, they already had a character of the Prince of Darkness, the Satan, the Beelzebel, who had many, many demonic forces underneath him, like an army of evil beings. and so that really preceded Jesus. And I think the story of Jesus is very much shaped by what you see in the Dead Sea Schools. The idea that some people, members of Israel, men primarily, are under the power of the Spirit of God and worship the right God, and others in Israel are on the side of Satan. So, Jesus, the story of John the Baptist, many people think he was a member of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or at least, I'm sorry, he was a member of the community that created the Dead Sea Scrolls and had a whole sacred library with many books that talk about satanic beings fighting God's people and God's spirit. John the Baptist was probably one of them because he was talking the language of the end of time

saying, well, evil is taken over the world, God is about to take it back, the end of time is coming, he's going to judge all the evil people, and you better be on God's side, you better be baptized, purified from your sins, and ready to meet your God, right? That's John the Baptist message.

And the story of Mark, first introducing Jesus says he was among the Jewish group who came out listened to this preacher in the wilderness saying, better watch out the end of time is coming. God is going to judge the world. The judgment

day is near and Jesus goes out with others to be baptized purified of sins in the Jordan River and then is presumably under the spirit of God. So his followers had this

same kind of cosmology. And as you see, it works on the ground here where the humans live, and it's the same as what's up there. So let's talk about that. Although first, I wanted to ask if you give any credence to the idea that, I mean, we mentioned that this idea of the Satan began to emerge around the time of the Babylonian exile. Babylon being not too far from Iran, which will have had a Zoroastrian religion, which has an idea of an eternal battle between good and evil. Some have suggested that whilst the Jews are exiled in Babylon, they come into contact with Zoroastrianism, and it's this influence that helps to develop the character of Satan. Do you think there's any credence to be given to that theory?

Oh, I think it's quite likely. I mean, Babylonian, I mean, that mythology, Zoroastrian, you know, It's the power of the good God against Arimon, who is an evil force. And Egyptians have a similar idea of an evil force against the right gods. So there's precedent. There's a book by a British scholar called The Old Enemy, the Old Forsyth, a literary study of the precedence to the Hebrew idea. Yes, and he does a very good for that. Yeah, I had a wonderful episode not long ago on the history of Yahweh,

as a sort of desert storm god turning into the god of Israel and the god of Christianity. And Dr. Justin Sledge, who as my guest, suggested that the Babylonian exile was also partially responsible for the development of monotheism. He said that, you know, you had this localized god of the temple, and the Babylonian exile explodes this because there's no more sort of local temple to go to. And so you either have to get rid of your God or say that your God is this omnipresent beast. being that's not a localized agent. And so you end up with the development of monotheism. Interestingly here, it seems that at around the same time, perhaps due to the Zoroastrian influence, we also begin to get the origin of Satan. So it's like Yahweh and Satan as these opposing spiritual beings in the Jewish tradition seem to emerge around the time of Babylon. What a significant

event that was in the history of the religious tradition. Absolutely. I mean, it transformed the Jewish community. And that's when you see this kind of conflict. And part of the conflict on the Jewish side is, how do we respond to the Babylonian conquerors? Do we fight them or do we cooperate with them? And that's the same tradition with which they came into Roman occupation. So let's talk about the New Testament then, which we was sort of skirting around the edges of a second ago. As I said, the Gospel of John only mentions Satan three times by name. The first of these is where Jesus, Jesus, is arguing with some of his Jewish opponents, and he says to them that they're not children

of Abraham, they're children of the devil. This is where the mention of the Satan appears. And this Satan is described as a murderer from the beginning and the father of lies. And Jesus says here to his opponents, you are the children of the devil, not the children of Abraham. What did he mean? Well, it's very shocking. The Gospel of John is the most extreme of the foreman. Gospels in this regard. It suggests that Jesus comes from God and does the work of God and everyone who opposes him or who denies that he is the only son of God belongs to Satan. Any traditional Jew who doesn't recognize Jesus as the Messiah and actually as God in person, God incarnate

belongs to Satan you see this today with Christians who follow the gospel of John that if you believe in Jesus as the son of God you're saved, you're right you're on the side of God

if you don't you're damned to eternal darkness and suffering that's very extreme but that's where this tradition takes it and what do you think has been the impact of verses like this in the development of religious traditions?

I think it's very unfortunate because many people today, and this also includes people who are secular, often see the world, see, for example, politics from the point of view of there's a good side and an evil side. We don't have two sides struggling for territory or power simply against one another. We see good and evil. I'm talking American politics today and politics in many countries, and it sort of emerges out of this view of the world that good and evil are fighting a nearly equal battle up in heaven. Now, good will end. edge it out. That's the apocalyptic story. Good will win in the end. But in the meantime, evil forces may take over. And so whether you're talking about Adolf Hitler, whether you're

talking about people today, it's the scenario of good and evil that plays very strongly in political life, in countries that are primarily Christian or Jewish. Jewish or Muslim. And Jesus says here in the Gospel of John that this devil, this Satan is a murder from the beginning, the father of lies, seeming to lean into this concept of Satan as this malevolent spiritual being, as opposed to some kind of subservient member of God's counsel, suddenly in the Gospel of John, we've got a very explicit depiction of the Satan that we'd recognize today, right? Absolutely. And it probably is referring to the story of Cain and Abel. The first evil act is the brother kills his brother, right? It's a murderer from the beginning. And that's probably saying the first murder was evidence that from the beginning of time, not from the beginning of this century, Jesus would have said, but from the beginning of time, the gospel of John suggests, there was always almost an equal fore.

And that looks very much like the Babylonian vision of supernatural power. Yes. There's another mention of Satan in John chapter 12 where he's described as the archon of the cosmos, which is kind of interesting. It means literally the ruler of the world. When Jesus says in John, I see the ruler of the world is coming. He's substituting what you find in the other Gospels for Jesus saying in the Garden of Gassimini. I see Judas coming. So Judas there is cast in the Gospel of John as Satan's Satan in person.

Well, that's the third mention of Satan in the Gospel of John is where the author of John specifically says that when Judas betrays Jesus, it's because Satan. enters Judas, and that's what causes him to betray Jesus. Satan enters him right after the supper when, and he says, Jesus says, go out and do what you have to do, knowing, of course, that he's going to betray Jesus. And then finally, the last mention, right, is when he speaks with Pilate, were you going to bring that one up? No, no, tell me.

Well, Jesus at his trial, according the way John tells it, which is completely counterfactual, I must have to say. He says, Jesus actually gives the sentence. Pilate never does. Jesus says, Pilate is questioning him, and Jesus says, no, the one who turned me over, those who turn me over to you have the greater sin.

Who do you blame for the death of Jesus? The Jews. The Jews are crying for the death of Jesus. That is the story you get in Matthew and you get it in John. And what startled me when I began to work on this, the history of Christianity, is to realize that is an impossible story historically, that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. That could not have happened. Tell us why. Because how do you crucify somebody, Alex?

You have to have an arm. You have to have equipment. You have to have the men who know how to do it. This is a technique that was developed by the Romans as the worst possible punishment for slaves and people in revolution against Rome. Insubordinate people, Romans could not stand insubordination. Order was everything in the Roman Empire. And so anybody who protested against the Roman Empire was condemned to the worst possible death, which is crucifixion. So crucifixion was radical, extreme form of death. The only person in Judea, the now captured province, Roman province, where the Jewish people lived, was the governor. And you could not crucify anybody unless the governor had given the

order. But the stories about Jesus suggests that the governor never ordered his crucifixion. That cannot have happened. Any historian of Rome, Fergus Miller, professor at Oxford University, has said the only person who can give the order would be the governor of Rome. So Jesus was crucified and there are witnesses both Roman and Jewish at the time who said, yes, and the person who gave the order, of course, was the governor pilot. Tacitus says that, and the Jewish historian Josephus says that. That's a, I was going to say that's a known fact. Because if you look at the famous book by military historian GCS Brandon, Jesus and the zealots,

he begins by saying, there's really only one fact. which we can know for sure about the story of Jesus. And that is that he was crucified by the Romans as a rebel against their government in Judea. That's a fact. As close as you can get to any fact in the New Testament. But that's the fact that is contradicted by the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Matthew. And that's what startled me so much when I was looking at how that counterfactual story plays out on the ground politically and socially.

So why then, why the inclusion of this story, which, at least in your opinion, is so blatantly a historical? The reason for that, why followers of Jesus suggested that, if you read the four Gospels, Pilate never sentences Jesus. In fact, every writer avoids the point where the sentence would have to be given. If you read the Gospels, who sentenced Jesus to death? The chief priests at a trial that probably never took place. And Pilate is this weak little guy who's saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, I think this man is innocent.

He tries in Luke three times to say, Jesus is innocent. I don't want to crucify him. In Mark, he says, I'm going to let him off. He's not guilty. What is going on here? And in Matthew, he tries very hard to defend you. In John, he becomes a philosopher talking to Jesus with great respect. And so who's responsible from the death of Jesus?

I mean, Pilate asks for the bowl of water to wash his hands. I have nothing to do with this, with this righteous man. He says he's a righteous man, but he never condemns Jesus in any of the four Gospels. And all of them have, the Jews outside the residents of Pilate are saying, crucify, crucify, crucify. And Pilate is this weak little guy who just can't stand up to what is right. And he finally says, I give up. I mean, you do it. I wash my hands of it.

that's the story in the Gospels. Why? Because I was trying to figure that out. Why? And the answer I think has to do with the fact that if you, Alex, are a follower of Jesus of Nazareth and he was crucified for sedition against our government, you probably have the same politics. If you are a follower of bin Laden, we know what your policy. politics are, no matter what you say. You can deny it, but we know you. And this is like saying he's a follower of bin Laden. He's a traitor to the government. His followers can say we're not traitors, but they must be. Their insurrection is just like their leader Jesus. So what happened after the death of Jesus when there was the Roman war and the Roman, and there was a huge Jewish revolution against Rome in the name of God in our common liberty, the Romans came man, after four years, utterly devastated Judea. They burned the center of Jerusalem to the ground, tore down the temple, which you see

today in Jerusalem, thrown to the ground, these huge stones. They destroyed Jerusalem as a Jewish stronghold, and they set up a Roman camp in its place. And when they found followers of Jesus, one of them was his brother, James. One of them was Peter, an outspoken follower of Jesus, who was preaching about Jesus in Rome. When they find Paul, who's preaching about Jesus in Syria, they crucify Peter. Paul is beheaded, and James is stone to death. Followers of Jesus are in danger because they are assumed to be of the same politics as Jesus, namely insurrectionists. So how, if you're a follower of Jesus, do you defend yourself?

I don't think he was an insurrectionist. He never tried to raise an army. There's very little evidence of weapons. But how do you defend yourself if people assume that that's who you are? You say, well, okay, he was crucified. And Roman soldiers did it, and we know that because nobody else had the equipment. or if Jews were going to kill someone, they'd stone him to death. That was traditional.

They didn't have equipment to crucify people. They didn't know how to do it. It's a Roman crucifixion. But why was it done? Because the Jews insisted. Because they overpowered the governor. They talked him into it. They forced his hand, right?

He just couldn't stand up to the crowds. And so that's the story that the followers of Jesus tell. They said, look, it was a big mistake that trial. he the governor tried to let him off it was the Jews who insisted and they're the people responsible for the death of Jesus not the Romans because we knew he was innocent all along this is when they're preaching the gospel of Jesus to Greek and Roman crowds 40 or 50 years after Jesus had been killed so it's shifting the blame for Jesus's death from the Romans to the Jews as a way to quell concerns about the followers of Jesus being insurrectionists against the government. And to save their own lives, to save their own lives. And they were, of course, mostly Jewish. So there could be suspected of insurrection.

So is this something like the beginning, in your view, of Christian anti-Semitism? this idea of the Jews as the condemnable population who are really responsible for the death of Christ, not the Romans. Do you think this is where this idea originates? Absolutely it is. And so I was teaching the origin of Christianity recently, and one of the students who said, I was in your class. I didn't know because we had about nearly 300 students in the class. And I said, oh, so what surprised you?

because his background was Jewish. He said that the Jews didn't kill Jesus. And I said, you believe that? He said, yes, I've heard that my whole life. And I was shocked because he was in a very educated family. But this is a very common thing, right, that the Jews killed Jesus. This has been said by Christians. It's part of the Christian story.

It's part of the B minor Mass. and the St. Matthew Passion, it's the way Christianity tells its story. And the question then would be, how do you know that that's not what really happened? Right. How does Brandon know that that is not true? Well, he says because we know Roman law,

and Fergus Miller says, impossible, you can't crucify without the governor. Now, how do we know the governor didn't crucify Jesus? The reason is Is that the gospel's picture pilot For their own purpose As this very weak man He just can't stand up to crowds

He just gives in, you know the story We all know the story But that's not who Pilate was When you read the two most informed Jewish writers of the first century one of them, a contemporary of Jesus. His name is Philo of Alexandria. He's from a highly educated family.

His nephew is the ethnarch of Egypt. That is his Jewish nephew, in spite of the fact that he's Jewish, is working hand-in-glove with the Roman who is the head of Egypt for Rome. And the agent of the person ruling Rome for Egypt is a Jewish. young man who is a cousin of Josephus who writes a book called the Jewish War. Very detailed study of the first century. It's a huge book. Josephus was actually a general in the Jewish war. He fought against Rome. He was put in prison for fighting against Rome. And then he became trusted by the Roman General Titus for helping the Romans after he was captured and he was freed and he wrote

a famous book called The Jewish War and the Jewish Antiquities to try to persuade Romans after the war that Jews were an ancient and educated and highly moral and philosophic people. Which is why he ended up with the Romanized name Flavius Josephus because he becomes accepted into the Roman household. and he was honored by the Romans, he was given a villa in Rome, and he wrote this book to speak about the glory of his people so that Gentiles would get the point. I started speaking about Philo of Alexandria, who, a little younger than Josephus, was a contemporary of Jesus, and he was the most prominent representative of the Jewish community in Alexandria, which

they say consisted of about a quarter of the city of Alexandria when it was the capital of Egypt just as there were they say a quarter of Rome was Jewish many Jews lived in Rome and many in Alexandria but when the Alexandrian Jews wanted to write a petition and get it to the emperor on behalf of the community

in Egypt they said Josephus as head of delegation of distinguished men to present their case to the emperor. And Philo wrote a famous document. He wrote a great deal. It was a very devout Jew, wrote many books about Genesis and so forth. But he also wrote about his delegation to the emperor of Rome, who at that time was Emperor Claudius. It was Claudius that he went to see.

but he writes in his account of his embassy to Rome that that Pontius Pilate was known to be brutal, cruel he exploited people everybody, the Jews hated him he says he often did frequent executions with no trial

he was absolutely hated by the Jewish people because he was a ruthless and horrible emperor and finally he was recalled by Emperor Tiberius and probably told to commit suicide because the Jewish community hated him so much. That man was ruthless. He didn't bother checking out

if somebody accused, a Jew accused of sedition was guilty. It's more what you'd see in the life of Brian. He just said, oh, yeah, another one of those guys. Just crucify him. He crucified thousands of people. So when you see this depiction then of Pilot in the Gospels being this very reticent, no, no, this man's innocent, sort of battling with the idea, literally washing his hands at one point, washing his hands of the crime, this seems to be out of accord with our extra-biblical account of who Pilot was.

It's completely at odds with anything we know historically about Pilot. But in fact, that act of washing hands to demonstrate innocence is a Jewish ritual. Romans didn't do that. So the whole story, if you ask Roman historian Fergus Miller at Oxford, I think former professor at Oxford at this point, I don't know whether he's still teaching. If you ask anyone who knows Roman history, Brandon in his book, Jesus and the zealots, makes this point very powerfully. The pilot you see in the Gospels is not the pilot

who was ruling Judea at the time of Jesus. So help me tie this back into the idea of Satan because we sort of started with Satan and talking about Satan as this character in the New Testament who's become this demonic figure. And now we're talking about the origin of Christian anti-Semitism and the nature of Pontius Pilate. How do we tie that together?

What I realized, Alex, is that when Mark starts his gospel, he's not just writing a history. There is history in it, some of it. There are biographical and historical elements. But primarily, it's a message about Jesus of Nazareth, and primarily it's a manifesto. And he starts up by saying, telling a story about a message. man, whose origin is prophesied in the book of Isaiah, that's John the Baptist, and then man comes up to him and is baptized, and the Spirit of God descends on Jesus of Nazareth. And a voice from heaven says, this is my beloved son.

In him I'm well pleased. And immediately, it says, the Satan, the Spirit sent him Jesus into the wilderness to battle against the evil force presumed to be ruling the world. Since Rome was ruling the world, many devout Jews, Jesus' followers included, and the Dead Sea Scrolls community also, believe that evil is now ruling the world. God has to take it back. So if Jesus comes from God, his task is to overpower the evil force first. And he does it initially in Mark, but the whole story of one,

work is, hey, the fight isn't over. The evil power is not giving up. He, in fact, engineers, he possesses people to oppose Jesus and finally get him crucified. And even when he succeeds in that, the evil power succeeds in that, Satan gets him crucified by going into Judas, just as John said. and Luke says the same even then he doesn't win the war because God finally takes Jesus back from the dead and he is going to rule the world in the future

that's the story the gospel's too there's this very strange sense I mean we described John describes Satan as the archon of the cosmos in John chapter 12 we spoke about that a moment ago you said it sort of means ruler of the of the world and when Satan is tempting Jesus

in the desert at one point he sort of shows him. He takes him up a mountain and shows him the land and says, this can all be yours if you'll just bow down to me, implying that Satan is the ruler of the world at this point. The Satan seems to many devout Jews like the ruler of the world because it's ruled by Rome. And Rome worships crazy gods that aren't gods from the Jewish point of view. Demonic powers, right? It's very interesting in John's Gospel that, well, throughout the synoptic gospels, that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is a healer, and he's also an exorcist, and he goes around casting demons out of people. And so there are people who are demonically possessed, and Jesus

goes up to them, and upon, you know, hearing the name of the Lord, they all sort of flurry and disappear. John's gospel doesn't have exorcisms. Jesus doesn't go around exercising people. There's no exorcisms of demons in the way that there is in the synoptic gospels in John. John, what you do have in John is this idea of Satan, the archon of the cosmos, the man who sort of enters into Jesus. So again, seeming to sort of take this character of Satan and move this sort of vague, demonic idea even further away from this, from this sort of being that is subservient to God, but somehow out of his favor or angry with him, to this like specific malevolent entity. with power, with power over the world, with power over people, rather than just being some kind of fallen angel or demonic figure, especially in the Gospel of John, Satan becomes this very identifiable character.

That's why I was interested in what I call the social history of Satan, because it's not just about a spiritual battle, it's about a very human. I mean, when people talk about supernatural battles, they say Satan's trying to take over this country. they're not just talking about something up there, they're talking about people. They could give you names and addresses, right? They know who Satan's people are, and it's not whoever speaking to you.

But in John's Gospel, as you say, when Jesus says, look, the ruler of the world is coming, he's pointing to a man, and that man is Judas, into whom Satan has come, and through whom Satan is speaking, betraying. Jesus, right? And then Jesus says, those who turn me over to you have the greater sin. So it is Judas. And then Matthew says, the whole people cried for the crucifixion of Jesus, which I think, and I think most scholars think, is not what happened at all. Because if you read the Gospels up to that point, the crowds are all in favor of Jesus. They can't even arrest him in public. because people would protect him.

Right. So it's a real disconnect in the stories, Alex, that we've missed because of the way the story has a coherence, right? A way it's told, and it becomes the story about the Jews killed Jesus. And throughout the Middle Ages, when you suddenly have, oh, let me just go back and say, as long as Jesus' followers

are being persecuted for 300 years after his death that story isn't dangerous to Jews it protects them Jesus' followers are protected but

when the emperor becomes a Christian in the 4th century as one writer says Christian prejudices against Jews who don't accept Jesus become legal disabilities. Then in the 4th century, you find Christian emperors writing law codes in which converting someone to Judaism, if you're a rabbi, can incur the punishment of being burned to death. That's in the first Christian law courts.

in the fourth century only when Rome is in power does this become dangerous to Jews and then throughout the Middle Ages there are laws against the Jews which I didn't really know about before until I became much more aware

of how deeply this is embedded in Christianity frankly I was shocked and dismayed really upset I went to my professors at Harvard and I said Christian anti-Judism is written right into the Gospels and one of my professors

who by the way had been in the Nazi army and a member of the Nazi party captured by the Allies and in prison during the war and then exonerated he's a famous

professor of Bible, German. He said to me, there's nothing anti-Jewish in the New Testament. That's just not true. He didn't tell the truth. He may not have even known, but he claimed there's no anti-Semitism in it. Even when I spoke with another Christian colleague, she said, but Christianity is all about love.

And I said, at its best it is. but there's an undercurrent in it that allows for hate. And when I wrote this book about this saying, wait a minute, how is this written into the Gospels? They weren't trying to kill other Jews. They were trying to save other Jews who were followers of Jesus. But only when Christians are entirely distinct from Jews and mostly Gentiles and allied with the Roman government,

that becomes really dangerous after Constantine. The game changes completely. So, well, I would love to talk about your personal reactions, your personal motivations for talking about Satan and where this comes from. But I think just to close off our development here, we've sort of gone all the way from the very beginnings of the Hebrew Bible all the way up through John's Gospel. there's also a mention of Satan in the book of Revelation sort of again further develops as a character and Revelation chapter 20 tells us then I saw well this is this is part of the vision that the author

presumably the author of John same author here is having then I saw an angel coming down from heaven he had in his hand a key to the hole without a bottom or to the abyss he also had a strong chain he took a hold of the dragon that old snake, who is the devil, or Satan, and chained him for a thousand years. The angel threw the devil into the hole without a bottom. He shut it and locked him in it. He could not fool the nations anymore until the 1,000 years were completed.

After this, he must be free for a while. So this image of Satan in Revelation is interesting because we have this victory over Satan. He's chained up. He's thrown into the abyss. But there's also this strange reference to him not being able to fool the nations anymore until the thousand years are completed and then he goes free. What's that all about? Well, that is probably a picture that comes, it really comes from someone writing either

right before the Gospels are written, perhaps at the same time as the Gospels. That is written by a devout Jewish prophet who sees Satan in control of the world because the Romans are in control of it when he's writing. And he has this traditional picture that the world is ruling. by Satan, we can see that. Look at the Romans have Roman troops all over Judea. This country of Israel has been destroyed. But in the end time, when the Messiah returns, John sees us Jesus, John Patton. He says, then God is going to destroy that old serpent. And so many apocalyptic people see that the same way. So that picture is really not like

picture of the Gospels of Satan. It's much more like the followers of Jesus in the first century. And do we know what that thousand years is about, the sort of thousand years and then afterwards he goes free for a while? Yeah, I mean, even in the Gospel of Mark, it says that, you know, the son of man in heaven will rule the world after a time. And they don't specify the time. But sometimes apocalyptic writers like to do that? I may say that after I wrote that book, I was really stunned by what I saw. And then James Carroll, I don't know if you know his book, James Carroll was a Catholic priest. He read my book. He was very troubled to think that anti-Semitism had been carried on in Catholic

tradition for thousands of years. And he went back to World War II, and he saw the evidence of this. I believe he left the Catholic priesthood. In any case, he wrote a book called Constantine Sword, which did what I couldn't do. I wished I could take the story of Christian anti-Semitism from the 4th century to the 21st. I can't do that. I'm a historian. I couldn't possibly try to deal with 2,000 years. Carol was a priest, but he connected the dots through the 2,000 years in his book called Constantine Sword, he did a film about it as well with the same title. So if anybody's interested in the history of Christian anti-Semitism through the 21st century, that book takes us through it. Yeah, well, I'll try to remember to link that in the description if people are interested or in the show notes if they're listening.

Do you think where the book of Revelation says there, he took a hold of the dragon, that old snake, who is the devil or Satan, that snake, some people might think is a reference to the snake in the Garden of Eden. Do you think that that is a reference to the Garden of Eden? And do you think that Satan is the snake in the Garden of Eden? I always used to assume so because Christian painters like Michelangelo always picture the serpent as the voice of Satan. Jewish thinkers traditionally didn't do that, but they sometimes do now because they've adopted much of the same imagery of Satan. And so have Muslims. So that is often seen as Satan.

But traditionally, Jews saw the serpent as a cunning snake. Yeah, I mean, I've heard it. But apocalyptic, it might have, yeah. I've heard it said that that might be a reference to another snake. And in other words, it might not be a reference to, I mean, you might think that, well, when Genesis was written, there was no idea that the snake was Satan. The concept of Satan didn't really exist. And at a later point, when the author of John is writing Revelation, he writes about this reference to the snake in order to sort of give that identity to the serpent.

But I have heard that it could also be not the serpent in the Garden of Eden, could refer to something else. But it's also, Alex, in Psalm 27, I believe, in which, no, it's Isaiah, is Isaiah 27? Yeah. In which the prophet calls on the Lord to destroy the serpent, that old serpent called Satan. And the dragon looks very much like a snake. So you can translate serpent as a monster. a monstrous sea serpent, as Babylonians pictured the evil forces. Well, that's what I'd heard was that there's this sort of idea that it might have been the

great sort of sea basilisk that's being referred to here and said it's, I mean, it's pretty cryptic. We don't know for sure. And in fact, I've spoken about this a fair bit. I think my listeners will probably be familiar with this, but there is. a Gnostic Gospel, and I have a hunch that you know a thing or two about the Gnostic Gospels. There's one Gnostic Gospel discovered in the Narcumardi Library, which takes a fairly revolutionary view as to what the serpent in the Garden of Eden was, right? Yes, and that's a reference to the Gospel of John, which says that the serpent was Christ.

And it's referring to the opening of the Gospel of John, which says, when Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness, it was an image of a serpent. staff with a snake, which is the image of medicine, right? The god Asclepius, you know, that's the symbol of this god of healing in Greece. It's still the caduce, they call it, right? The symbol of medical treatment. And so when Moses lifts up his staff in the wilderness with snake on it, there's a healing. And so John's gospel applies that to Jesus. Jesus is the serpent in the wilderness. And that's where that, those connections are made. John says, you know, as Moses lifted the serpent, so I must be lifted. So, so sort of identifying Jesus with a serpent, at least. Jesus on the cross is identified with exactly that serpent of Asclepius

who brings healing. Isn't that amazing? Now, that's the serpent that Moses is talking about, but this, this Gnostic gospel I'm talking about, the testimony of truth. goes back to the Genesis story and looks at this serpent who finds his way into the Garden of Eden and sort of tells Adam and Eve, look, you know, you're not going to die. You'll just become like God, knowing good and evil, and they eat the fruit, and that's exactly what happened. It's like the serpent didn't even seem to tell a lie. And so the author of this testimony of truth, it's called, is like, what God is this? What God is this that lies to Adam and Eve? I mean, who is this serpent that's basically coming in and telling the truth? And, well,

the author tells us, right? Yes, that author is very hostile to Jewish tradition and saying, yes, the whole tradition is not true because the serpent was saying, if you eat from that fruit, you will become wise. And that's what happens. They don't die. They become wise. That's what the story says.

So the serpent was right all along. And it's another instance of identification of... the serpent with Jesus, as if to say, and in the Gnostic tradition, we've done a whole episode on this, I've talked about the Gnostic ideas quite a lot now. In a lot of Gnostic thought, the creator of the material world is this sort of evil demiurge type figure. And so the god of the Garden of Eden, of Adam and Eve, this figure who walks through the garden and tells them not to eat at the tree, is this sort of evil or malevolent or maybe just incompetent figure. And so the snake is the mechanism by which the true God,

Jesus, is able to sort of come and bring the message of salvation to Adam and Eve by giving them sort of like opening their eyes spiritually. So it's this total reworking of the idea of Satan as the serpent. It flips it on its head. Well, you're beautifully illustrating how people play with these texts. You know, they can turn them every way. and turn them around and say, oh, yes, and the opposite is true. And it works this way instead.

And so these texts regarded as scriptures get played like instruments with very different tunes, just as you said. Just before we wrap up here, because we've done, our history of Satan is essentially complete. Of course, we've only just skimmed to the surface, and you have an entire book. I've already mentioned the origin of Satan on all of this kind of stuff. But we've gone from Genesis and Exodus, we've talked about Job and Zechariah, we've gone through the gospel, through to Revelation. This seems to be something that, well, you've written about it, you know a lot about it. Why Satan? It's a bit of an odd subject to choose to focus on, no?

Well, I don't know. It does seem to me that when I look at the way people polarize the world and human, groups between good and evil, it can be very misleading, you know. I mean, it made me think that I wouldn't call most human beings good or evil, because most people are quite mixed. But that's not to say it's relative. I would say when it comes to acts, Ellis, pardon me, when it comes to acts like the slaughter of innocent people. slaughter of children. I know that's evil.

You know that's evil. Just instinctively, there are evil acts that people do. But to call people evil, I think, can really lead to extreme stereotyping and extreme hostility, which is unnecessary in most situations. I mean, I would say those acts are evil, but does that make all those people evil? Not necessarily. Sometimes terrible things are done. What's the take-home message from our sort of investigation to Satan

and realizing that this is a character who has socially evolved, who has been used by different people for lots of different reasons, be it a sort of theological tool for explaining evil or a narrative character or a social factor as helping to sort of, attress, the anti-Semitism that has riddled the history of Christianity, what's the take-home message from realizing that this Satan character is not as straightforward as people might think? Well, for me, it says that when we're dealing with conflict today, whether it's social, political, personal, labeling one side is good and the other as evil is far too simplistic, and I think

it's a false way to deal with conflict, that I think conflict between human beings is much more complicated than that, almost always, unless somebody is advocating some acts that are atrocious, you know, like massive rapes, massive killings, destroying innocent people. So I just would like to set aside and say, that is mythological language. folks. And it has its functions. But I think when we're dealing with social and political issues, let's talk about the real stakes here on earth for both sides and not label each other in that way, which can lead to much more intense conflicts than otherwise. Certainly. Well, as I say it, and I'll say it for the third time, the book is The Origin of Satan

and it will be linked in the description down below. I hope people will go and read it if they're interested. And hopefully, we've learned a thing or two about Satan. I know that I have in preparing for this episode and in speaking to you now. So Elaine Pagels, thanks again for taking the time. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you. It's been wonderful talking with you.