Neil Forsyth (1)

Looks at proto-"Satan" figures in several cultures and asks which were the older god(s) and which was really the usurper?

Ch. 1. Good on the combat with Gilgamesh vs. Huwara.

Ch. 3,Good on Greek combat:
“It sounds very much from the passage about Styx's children - although Hesiod is careful not to say so - as if Zeus and the younger gods were the aggressors. Otherwise they would have already been on Olympus. " (p. 85-6)

Good on gnosticism. Though if you view gnosticism as an obscure heresy of show more interest only to LARPers on obscure anonymous imageboards, then the book's argument might not cut much ice with you:

“Amid all the excitement and intrigue generated by the discovery at Nag Hammadi in Egypt of various Gnostic documents, this ancient orthodoxy [Christianity] has revealed its continuing power. Only with great reluctance has it been conceded that one or two of the Gnostic "gospels" may derive from traditions older than the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It is now possible, however, in the light of these finds and the prodigious scholarly labors they have stimulated, to recognize that the conventional picture of early Christianity was invented to serve the purposes, both doctrinal and political, of what became "establishment" Christianity. "

Good on the following Christian theological offensive:

" The counterattack against belief in a bungling demiurge took place on several fronts at once" (p. 333, ch:19,Irenaeus :Refutation of the Demiurge). show less

The story of the great English poet.