includes bibliographical references

Who is Satan in the New Testament, and what is the evil that he represents? In this groundbreaking book, Elaine Pagels, Princeton's distinguished historian of religion, traces the evolution of Satan from its origins in the Hebrew Bible, where Satan is at first merely obstructive, to the New Testament, where Satan becomes the Prince of Darkness, the bitter enemy of God and man, evil incarnate. In The Origin of Satan, Pagels shows that the four Christian gospels tell two very different stories. The first is the story of Jesus' moral genius: his lessons of love, forgiveness, and redemption. The second tells of the bitter conflict between the followers of Jesus and their fellow Jews, a conflict in which the writers of the four gospels condemned as creatures of Satan those Jews who refused to worship Jesus as the Messiah. Writing during and just after the Jewish war against Rome, the evangelists invoked Satan to portray their Jewish enemies as God's enemies too. As Pagels then shows, the church later turned this satanic indictment against its Roman enemies, declaring that pagans and infidels were also creatures of Satan, and against its own dissenters, calling them heretics and ascribing their heterodox views to satanic influences.
在一九八七至八八年間,本書作者帕格爾斯的丈夫和兒子相繼去世,這些悲劇性經驗促使她開始《撒但的起源》的研究。她開始思考不同宗教傳統描繪不可見世界的方式,以及我們對於不可見世界的想像如何影響我們對待周圍的人、事以及自然世界的方式。她同時思考希臘、猶太教和基督教傳統的人們對待不幸和失去的不同方式。從思考不同宗教傳統描繪不可見世界的方式,她發現早期的基督徒並不將惡歸因於「上帝的意志」,卻認為人類的許多不幸以及自然災難都是由「邪惡的撒但」引起的。 基督教正統在形成過程中,教會逐步把上帝與撒但的對立運用到現實的宗派衝突中,從而使天上的撒但寓身於地上的對手。他們把對手指責為撒但的化身,使派別之爭變成不可調和的生死搏鬥,從而成為群體迫害等罪惡的源頭。 《撒但的起源》圍繞猶太－基督教群體的古代論爭,提供了對福音書的一種非凡的解讀,細緻分析了撒但從彌漫的邪惡力量演變為上帝和人的人格化敵人的過程。本書不僅對我們研究與宗教相關的群體暴力和迫害有積極意義,對於研究現代社會、政治運動乃至國際衝突中的世俗啟示論也很有價值。 作者簡介： 帕格爾斯（Elaine Pagel, 1943- ）是普林斯頓大學宗教學教授,以諾斯替經書方面的研究聞名。她是諾斯替經書《那戈．瑪第抄本》（Nag Hammadi Library）研究隊伍中的重要成員之一。人們也經常讚揚她的文風平易近人,能夠把早期基督教的歷史向非專業人士講述得引人入勝。 譯者簡介： 張新樟現為浙江大學思想政治教育系副教授,漢語基督教文化研究所特邀教授。著有《「諾斯」與拯救》,譯著有《諾斯替宗教》、《論靈魂與復活》等