[lbo-talk] Saudi anti-Semitism

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Jul 17 11:30:05 PDT 2008


andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> My recollection of this is dim and my knowledge is exceedingly thin, but many years ago I read a book by Elaine Pagels, then a prof of religion at Princeton, that impressed me as good deal. It was short, for one thing, and accessible to a nonspecialist. Called something like, The Origin of Hell or The The Origins of The Devil, but the title is misleading. It was all about the relations of early Christianity to Judaism.

_The Origin of Satan_. It really is about the Origin of Satan, but it is a SOCIAL history, and that origin is rooted, among other things, in the xtian/Jewish split you describe. The title of the last chapter is "The Enemy Within: Demonizing the Heretics." It does offer an explanation of the origin and continnuation of anti-semitism, but it is really more concerned with undermining belief in Satan or "The Evil Other."

Carrol



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