The Devil: A New Biography

Guess who made me do it?

The Devil: A Biography by Philip C. Almond (Cornell University Press, $29.95).

He’s a character we could do without. Seriously, fear of the devil—and excuses for our own bad and/or crazy behavior—have certainly caused more trouble than the concept of a personified adversary for the holy is worth, not to mention setting us up for a Manichean perspective that diminishes our ability to see nuance and shades of gray.

That said, we’re stuck with him. We’ve gone to the Devil.

In Philip C. Almond’s new biography of a personage who encapsulates an idea fills a particular niche. A professor of humanities at the University of Queensland in Australia, Almond has pulled off quite a feat: He’s created a book that show more is solidly academic in its precision and research, yet remains accessible to the general reader.

The story of the Devil begins a good four centuries before Christ—although the Satan of the Hebrew Bible differs in many regards from the Christian Devil, as Almond makes clear, and that differs even more from Iblis, the Islamic Devil.

Including both the canonical Bible and non-canonical works such as the Book of Enoch (the source of the “Watchers” in the recent Darren Aronofsky movie, Noah), as well as non-biblical texts, Almond shows how the Devil as we’ve come to understand it evolved from the earliest representations, including a betting adversary hanging around heaven with God in the book of Job.

The concept of the Devil as God’s enemy is—as these things go—fairly recent, first occuring in the book of Zecharia, and going from there. Up until this point, though, the Devil was an agent of God; in short, he did nothing without orders and approval.

Bottom line: The “tempting” Devil of the New Testament, God’s sworn enemy, didn’t really exist before the first century after Christ, and probably owes much of his/her/its existence to non-canonical literature. What’s more, the imagery we associate with the Devil—cloven hoofs, red skin, horns, a tail and a pitchfork—came much, much later, and owes far more to European bogeymen than it does to anything in the actual Bible.

The Devil’s purpose has mostly been the same as the bogeyman: To scare the (literal) bejesus out of people so that they’ll toe the line of whatever religious hierarchy is in charge. To that end, he/she/it has changed form and fashion just as culture has over the centuries, from monster stalking the night to unseen demonic force emanating from rock music, as the case may be.

The biggest advantage to Almond’s volume is that it makes wide use of all available scholarship, but does so in a very friendly way for the non-academic. Organized chronologically, it also includes some fascinating art that illustrates the changing face of an idea. That makes it a nice addition to the shelf of anyone who is interested in religion, belief and superstition.

Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com show less

In The Devil: A New Biography, Philip C. Almond seeks “to bring modern readers to a deeper appreciation of how, from the early centuries of the Christian period through to the recent beginnings of the modern world, the human story could not be told and human life could not be lived apart from the ‘life’ of the Devil” (pg. xviii). In that way, “This book is a new ‘life’ of the Devil, one that locates his life within the broader Christian story of which it is inextricably a part” while, “at the same time, this book tells another story. Woven throughout the account of the Christian history of the Devil there is another complex and complicated history, one that precedes, parallels, intersects and overlaps with the show more Christian story – that of the ‘idea’ of the Devil in Western thought” (pg. xvi).

Discussing the 3rd century Alexandrian scholar, Origen, and his contribution, Almond writes, “In terms of the story of the Devil, Origen’s legacy was twofold. He had given a new name to the Devil – Lucifer – through his identification of the Devil with the Day Star of Isaiah 14. And, perhaps more important, his locating of the revolt of Satan and his angels before the creation of the world as the result of the sin of pride became a commonplace” (pg. 46). The Gospel of Nicodemus linked Satan with the harrowing of Hell. According to Almond, “for the first time in Christian demonology, we have demons in hell both tormented and tormenting the damned. Satan has at last, in principle at least, assumed the role of the overseer of the punishments of the damned in hell” (pg. 59). Demonology grew during the thirteenth century. According to Almond, “this was the consequence of four intellectual moments during that period: first, the rise of the Cathars; second, the rise of academic angelology and its demonological counterpoint; and third, the arrival in the West of Arab learning and the occult sciences. Finally…it was the result of an apocalyptic thematic in the theology of Joachim of Fiore” (pg. 70).

Discussing witchcraft, Almond writes, “In the 1430s, there developed the notion that magicians were part of a secret heretical sect that rejected Christianity, gathered regularly in the presence of the Devil to worship him and performed evil deeds by magic. From this time onwards, in the history of Western thought, magic and witchcraft developed along separate intellectual paths” (pg. 96-97). Works like the Malleus Maleficarum linked witchcraft with femininity as, “no longer the involuntary victims of Satanic assaults, female witches were now willing participants in Satanic sex. Thus, female sexuality and evil were intimately connected” (pg. 103). Furthermore, “the pact between the Devil and the magician or the witch was perceived as a precondition of any and all magical powers. Following Augustine, superstitious practices in general, and witchcraft and sorcery in particular, were viewed as originating in a compact between men and demons. The pact could be either explicit or tacit” (pg. 129).

Later Protestants identified “the papacy with the Antichrist, together with an historicist approach to the book of Revelation, [which] became the key to Reformation Protestant readings of history and its completion. Secular and sacred history, the history of kingdoms and the Kingdom of God coalesced. As a consequence, the book of Revelation assumed an importance it had not previously had” (pg. 184). By the eighteenth century, “the gradual exclusion of the spiritual – both the supernatural (miracles worked by God) and the preternatural (wonders, often worked by demons) – from the domain of the natural. It signalled [sic] the development of new forms of Christian spirituality that grounded personal faith and religion not in divine revelation, Scripture or the presence of the divine or the demonic world, but in the rational contemplation of a disenchanted world” (pg. 198). Almond writes in the wake of this tradition, showing how the Devil, as an idea, continues to influence our culture through these various permutations he experienced over the centuries. show less