"The biggest ruse of the devil is making us believe that he doesn't exist," claimed Baudelaire. On the contrary, argues bestselling historian and critic Gerald Messadié, the true evil lies in the fact that we believe in him at all.
A History of the Devil is a provocative exploration of the personification of evil through the ages and across cultures. Messadié reveals that the Satan of Judeo-Christian mythology-the antithesis of God and good-was a concept unknown to the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese. In fact, the devil was probably invented six centuries before the common era by Persian clergy eager to demonize their political adversaries. Ever since, the image of evil has been a useful tool of the powerful, both religious and secular, from the prosecutors of the Spanish Inquisition to the Cold Warriors of our own time. In seventeen absorbing chapters, Messadié researches the genealogy of the devil in the world's major civilizations, from Asia and Europe to Africa and North America. He examines the devil's role in each culture and the evolution of his various incarnations throughout history.
Abundant in historical references and cultural analyses, A History of the Devil shows that it is precisely the belief in the devil that lies at the root of religious fanaticism around the world today.
| Introduction | 3 | |
| 1 | The Ambiguous Demons of Oceania | 15 |
| 2 | India: Spared from Evil | 35 |
| 3 | China and Japan: Exorcism through Writing | 55 |
| 4 | Zoroaster, the First Ayatollahs, and the True Birth of the Devil | 72 |
| 5 | Mesopotamia: The Appearance of Sin | 91 |
| 6 | The Celts: Thirty-five Centuries without the Devil | 109 |
| 7 | Greece: The Devil Driven Out by Democracy | 125 |
| 8 | Rome: The Devil Banned | 146 |
| 9 | Egypt: Unthinkable Damnation | 162 |
| 10 | Africa: The Cradle of Religious Ecology | 176 |
| 11 | The North American Indians: Land and Fatherland | 193 |
| 12 | The Enigma of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, and the God-Who-Weeps | 206 |
| 13 | Israel: Demons as the Heavenly Servants of the Modern Devil | 227 |
| 14 | The Devil in the Early Church: The Confusion of Cause and Effect | 251 |
| 15 | The Great Night of the West: From the Middle Ages to the French Revolution | 271 |
| 16 | Islam: The Devil as State Functionary | 294 |
| 17 | Modern Times and the God of Laziness, Hatred, and Nihilism | 312 |
| Notes | 329 | |
| Index | 363 |
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 contrary, argues bestselling historian and critic Gerald Messadié, the true evil lies in the fact that we believe in him at all.
A History of the Devil is a provocative exploration of the personification of evil through the ages and across cultures. Messadié reveals that the Satan of ...