The Birth of Satan Tracing the Devils Biblical Roots
In The Birth of Satan, T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley explore howand whya rather innocuous Old Testament character morphed into The Titan of Evil. Wray and Mobley guide the reader through subjects ranging from the Old Testament to contemporary belief systems. They begin with an examination of the first glimmers of Satan found in the Bible within the personality of God. They move to a discussion of different views of Satan in the New Testament providing the reader with examples from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Wray and Mobleys interpretation ends with a look at the modern versions of Satan and how his career still flourishes beyond the pages of the Bible. Engaging and informative, this book rivals Elaine Pagels work on the subject.
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Star Amateurish and Unscholarly on Every Level
The authors use a great deal of artistic licence in interpreting many texts of the Bible, they put forward many questionable interpretations as evidence for their thesis. I really have never read such distortions and fabrications of a text as the authors do with the Bible.
One has to really question the credibility and motives of the authors in many parts of this book. The authors criticise believers for making many assumptions, yet throughout this book the authors are forced to make so many more assumptions, and assumptions which are far less plausible. The authors often ignore the most likely explanations in favour of their obscure and invalid ones merely to suit their increasingly dubious thesis. This type of reasoning may be acceptable if this explanation was merely advanced as a possible explanation, but instead the authors assert that theirs is THE explanation. This is far from being an impartial and unprejudiced the study, the authors have a thesis to adhere to and it seems that not even dubious and unqualified assumptions will make them diverge from this line of reasoning.
The authors often quote from the authoritative volumes written by Jeffrey Bertrand Russell in support of their thesis, but having read these volumes myself it is clear from the below quote that Russell repudiates their thesis rather than affirming it:
“the common assumption that Satan was one of god’s functionaries whose morals and motivations continually declined is less an explanation than a description that fails to say why this process should have occurred”, The Devil pg 176.
This quote from Russell makes it clear that these kinds of explanations, which the authors assert, are no explanation at all, straight from their mentors mouth!
The first thing that I noticed about this book is that it was endorsed by John Shelby Spong. After seeing this I immediately had a good idea of what I was in for. But this is not a good thing, Spong is one of those Christians who feel intellectually obliged to appease every word or idea that the secular/atheist society has, thus religious fidelity becomes secondary to secular appeasement. Employing this belief in any study of Biblical history is bad enough, but when one does so with the history of satan and sin then the whole Christian theology crumbles. The very genesis of satan and sin is the temptation of Adam and Eve by satan, and when one denies this historical truth then your whole basis of the study of satan and sin is largely negated, and the thesis that you develop becomes intrinsically vacuous.
And this is what the authors have done, within a couple of words into the book they have disavowed the start of the book of Genesis. I myself can’t see the point in trying to explain evil in the Biblical context when you throw out the most fundamental part of the Christian theology; the Fall from the Garden of Eden. I believe that you have to either take the Bible the way it is, or just ignore it completely, once you start changing things and eliminating other things then the whole construct of Christian theology falls apart, and you waste everybody’s time trying to explain it, because it becomes increasingly incoherent, as it does for this book.
This appeasement is further displayed by the fact that they have discarded the very reliable and universal BC/AC dating scheme in favour of the politically correct BCE/CE scheme. This just isn’t necessary, why discard a system that isn’t broken in favour of one that not many people are familiar with, or even prefer? I can’t understand why they would do this, considering the target audience of this book is layman anyway, not scholars!
I was left bewildered by the apparent intentions of this book. Despite the title and their stated thesis of this work, the authors spend a large portion of it devoted to `Bible bashing’. The first quarter of this book was spent telling us how crap the Bible is and why we shouldn’t believe it. And whether this is the case or not, it is entirely irrelevant to what this book is supposed to be about. And in the end, those 50 odd pages of attempting to discredit the Bible clearly could have been dropped without ANY effect on the author’s thesis.
For the educated reader the unscholarly nature of the book manifests itself in many ways. Only one of which was the common theme of the authors often assuming many details, just so they can build other invalid assumptions. And to top it all off, none of these aberrations from orthodoxy are ever credited with any kind of explanation, reference or justification at all.
As the saying goes; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This book just fails on so many levels, not least of which is the amateurish aura that pervades this book. If you want a more authoritative and substantive work on the history of satan, then you can’t go past the series by Jeffrey Burton Russell.
One star.
2 Stars Some good information, but rather annoying to read
I was rather disappointed with this book, which began when I flipped to the postscript, entitled ‘Is Satan Real?’ Since so much of the book is devoted to trying to paint the ‘development’ of human thinking on satan apart from any divine or even experiential influences (its all just rabbis and theologians coming up with petty arguments), you’d think they’d have the courage to stand by their own material and say something like, ‘there is evil, but no satan.’ Instead, they waffle and give a non-answer. Political campaigns take note: here are two scholars ready to help you avoid answering the public, while sounding authoritative at the same time.
The overall style of the book, one should be warned, is supposed to be ‘engaging’ (the back matter says something to that effect). Frankly, I found it annoying and surprisingly immature coming from scholars who should know that the term ‘pious’ is not a pejorative term, unless you are a tenured professor trying to make like you are still a ‘counter-cultural warrior.’ Yes, their idea of being engaging is to offer a few cheap shots at people who believe in ways less enlightened than themselves. I’ve come away quite certain these two gentlemen are very, very amused with what amounts to, in their minds, the delusions of others.
What is most indicative of the problematic conclusions of the book stems from this post-modern focus on anthropocentric logic. Just for clarification, this means that the human is the center, as opposed to God. Therefore, their definition of evil and good has to do with our personal perspective as opposed to seeing each person as part of an overall universe in which God is at the center. Obviously, this type of theological ‘infantile omnipotence’ not only makes one narcissistic, but incapable of understanding the actual mindset in which the Scriptures were written. It is the Zeitgeist of the Baby-Boomers, also known as the ‘Me Generation.’
An example: they quote Isaiah 45:6-7 (p. 32) where God claims credit for creating ‘woe,’ go on to describe many similar passages throughout the Old Testament, but then suddenly arrive at the conclusion…”Satan’s greatest virtue is to serve as the cosmic scapegoat, saving God from the blame for evil.” (p. 176). Huh? Did the good doctors fail to read their own book? There are many occurrences, all dutifully cited in their book, that prove that God takes full credit for everything.
However, the book does offer some genuinely helpful scholarship in the matter, when one can overlook the silly way in which it is presented and analyzed. It would seem that the professors had their minds made up long before they actually wrote the book, and were not going to allow mere facts to stand in their way. Sadly, it appears that they have fallen victim to the ‘contempt prior to investigation’ mentality they so relish in pointing out in others.
4 Stars Very Textbook Oriented
This book was a great concept. It helped me to understand what I had learned growing up about Satan. Was it Biblical or not? Was it literature? This book explores is Satan real or is he just made up by people so that God isn’t seen as doing things to humans that are bad. It goes into the fact that most people want to believe that God is a loving god but not the punishing vengeful god, so was Satan created to combat that? The book starts off asking all these questions and more. Then it explores Satan in the Old Testament, between the testaments and then in the New Testament. It goes through the passages and what was going on at that time. It also talks about where the concept of hell comes from. Is it the Book of Revelation or is it from Dante’s Inferno or Milton’s Paradise Lost? I found it to be fascinating. However, I was shocked in parts to find that it was wrote almost like a textbook in places and on a higher level than I was ready for. I would recommend this book to people wanting to think on a deeper religious level.
5 Stars birthofsatan
this is a good book well written and very indepth interesting view points
as well for one studying differant concepts of satan.I would recomend this book to anyone who likes to study.
4 Stars The Birth of Satan
Very good introduction to the subject. Easy to read even for neophytes, although chronological indications can be hard to follow at times. Good synthesis of the sources involved in the birth of diabolical characters in the Bible. Satisfactory notes and bibliography.
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