[lbo-talk] Saudi anti-Semitism

[C. G. Estabrook]

The problem is that it's very much a book of its time, making 1970's American 
liberals out the members of an elitist intellectual (hence gnosis) fringe of a 
first-century popular movement.  A much better, wider-ranging (and much longer) 
account of the intellectual milieu is found in Class Struggle in the Ancient 
Greek World (1982) by G.E.M. de Ste. Croix (no friend of Christians).  --CGE

sawicky at verizon.net wrote:
> My taste for this is very limited, but Pagels' Gnostic Gospels was fun to 
> read,
> 
> about gender- and some class struggle among the first Christians.
> 
> 
> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Carrol Cox
>> Sent: 07/17/08 02:30 pm
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Saudi anti-Semitism
>>
>>
>>
>> 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