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Title: A History of the Devil by Gerald Messadie, Marc Romano ISBN: 1-56836-198-X Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (8 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Book of History
Comment: I found it to be well written, though a bit dry but acceptably sarcastic in places. If you're looking for a book to strengthen your religious faith, you shouldn't be reading a history of the Devil. This is a non-religious book - that is, written from the point of someone not confined to any ideology or noticeable religious bent. It's a book from the view point that the Devil is a character of human creation and the timeline that this character's changes and developments follow. And as to that it covers the territory well.
If you believe the same way you'll enjoy this book immensely. If you're strong in a belief of an organized religion, you'll be offended once again.
Rating: 5
Summary: Review of the Reviews and of the book
Comment: I've read the book; and subsequently have read the earlier reviews on Amazon.
This is the best book on comparative religions I've read (over 3/4s of a century). Having been educated by the same robed priests as the author, and having subscribed (without the benefit of exposure to a classical world as he has) to a structured religion for more years than he, I found much empathy with M. Messadie's book. Having read extensively in other "religions", I believe that this is, on an objective exploratory and historical outline basis, the best of the bunch.
The reviews that take exception to the fact that Messadie doesn't speak to horror movies, or satanic cults at length may have been misled by the title of the book, but have little substantial critique to contribute. His comparison of Christ to Zoroaster is another example of the extension of myths that can be read well back into primitive cultures. That is his point...not to suggest that one is the avatar of the other.
The central issue is Good and Evil...and the fact that structured religion can't exist without positing good and bad before proceeding to preach how to behave. Good and bad doesn't appear to have existed (excepting in the sense of man-defined acceptable behavior) until it was introduced into the middle east about 700 BC. Messadie has done a superb job making one think about this fundamental concept.
Rating: 1
Summary: Not about the devil . . .
Comment: Of all places he could have chosen, Messadie decides to start his search for the devil in the islands of the Pacific. Of course, he does not find the devil there, so he wanders on to China, India, and Africa; he studies several Native American religions and he looks at the Celts, the Egyptians, and the Romans, but the devil continues to eludes him. Finally, Messadie locates the devil, right at the heart of Christianity (isn't he always in the last place you look?), but at that point, it's too late. The author's endurance has run out. While he does an admirable job exposing the hypocrisies of Christianity, when he gets face-to-face with the devil, Messadie just turns and runs screaming. He offhandedly dismisses occult practices such as astrology, tarot, Wicca, and witchcraft. He associates LaVey Satanism with a "cathouse mentality" and literally relegates Aleister Crowley to a footnote. He passes over horror literature, and doesn't even mention the popular depictions of the devil in horror films. One would think that a philosopher would understand the devil's influence on aesthetics, but Messadie is too much above discussing any such "nonsense." Of modern Satanic cults, he simply says: "I had collected documents about these sects, but they reflected things so impenetrable, mean-spirited, and hopelessly naive that I tossed the material out with the trash." Now I am willing to accept that the devil's relationship to the occult is rooted in fictions and the ravings of madmen, but Messadie asks us to accept this conclusion without presenting any evidence. This book is filled with so many incidental facts about the world's religions that it might make a good coursebook for an intro to theology, but it is truly disappointing in its treatment of the devil's history, and for the most part simply avoids it altogether.
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Title: The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels ISBN: 0679731180 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 30 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: A History of Heaven by Jeffrey Burton Russell ISBN: 0691006849 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 14 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The History of Hell by Alice K. Turner ISBN: 0156001373 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 13 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Paul Carus ISBN: 0875483070 Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: February, 1991 List Price(USD): $28.95 |
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Title: In Search of Zarathustra : The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World by PAUL KRIWACZEK ISBN: 0375415289 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 11 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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