The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Cornell Paperbacks)

Rating:
Summary: A Historical Book Not a Religious Book
Review: It is rare for me to find myself giving a book a very bad rating. For one thing, I reserve one star for books that do more harm than good, and there are really few works that have no redeeming value. For another, I make a real effort not to buy books in that category, since it's a waste of my time. This book, "The Devil," caught me by surprise. I expected one thing and got something else entirely. I'm not sure if it's my expectations or the book itself that are the source of my disappointment, but I will go with my instincts for now.

What did I expect? A good historical and anthropological study about the role of the devil or devils in human history up to the beginnings of Christianity. In particular, I was interested in demonic legends in first millennium BCE Israel. What did I get? I guess the best way to put it is that, had the subtitle should have been "Jeffrey Russell's Perceptions of Evil..." I would have been less surprised.

The reader gets an early warning when, in the preface, Russell starts out with "This is a work of history, not of theology" and then immediately begins discussing theological and metaphysical issues. Russell's style is reminiscent of a Victorian churchman/academic, rambling from one subject to another in mid-paragraph, regularly making portentous statements that seem to have no basis in fact. In fact, one of his most unusual quirks is to state a premise, actually indicate that there is either no or conflicting evidence for it, and then go on to use it for further logical gyrations. This is an argument style better suited to politicians than academics.

Gradually it becomes clear that Russell has at least one hidden agenda. He is intent on making a case for the dualistic nature of God. This causes him to flit from one isolated fact to another, skipping over any material in between that it in conflict with this theory. The worst examples of this are in the section entitled "Hebrew Personifications of Evil." As most people know, outside of the Job and the unfortunate snake, the Old Testament makes very little mention of the demonic. There were some beliefs, but they are discussed more in sacred materials external to the Bible, dating from the Babylonian Exile onward. Russell misses that material, pays attention to Job, and then focuses entirely on several books of the Apocrypha as evidence of Hebrew dualism. In the process he skips an entire millennia or so of Jewish thinking. This is not exactly history.

I don't know quite what to make of an academic historical text which, in the end, turns out to have been a soapbox for a writer's own orations on the nature and place of evil (with a capital E). But I do know that I don't like it one bit. If the volume have been clearly labeled as philosophy or theology, I would have gone on to find something else, and this problem would not have arisen.

The book attempts to cover ancient, classical, Hebrew and early Christian civilization. As it is, regardless of Russell's qualifications as a medievalist, he seems a bit out of his depth in the fields of ancient and biblical history. There is an extensive bibliography, of which I know many of the citations. Surprisingly, it appears that Russell's sources are much less biased than he is himself. If you must buy this book, I suggest you use it to key into other authors and thinkers rather than as a conclusive resource on it's own.

Rating:
Summary: It's Not In The Details
Review: It is rare for me to find myself giving a book a very bad rating. For one thing, I reserve one star for books that do more harm than good, and there are really few works that have no redeeming value. For another, I make a real effort not to buy books in that category, since it's a waste of my time. This book, "The Devil," caught me by surprise. I expected one thing and got something else entirely. I'm not sure if it's my expectations or the book itself that are the source of my disappointment, but I will go with my instincts for now.

What did I expect? A good historical and anthropological study about the role of the devil or devils in human history up to the beginnings of Christianity. In particular, I was interested in demonic legends in first millennium BCE Israel. What did I get? I guess the best way to put it is that, had the subtitle should have been "Jeffrey Russell's Perceptions of Evil..." I would have been less surprised.

The reader gets an early warning when, in the preface, Russell starts out with "This is a work of history, not of theology" and then immediately begins discussing theological and metaphysical issues. Russell's style is reminiscent of a Victorian churchman/academic, rambling from one subject to another in mid-paragraph, regularly making portentous statements that seem to have no basis in fact. In fact, one of his most unusual quirks is to state a premise, actually indicate that there is either no or conflicting evidence for it, and then go on to use it for further logical gyrations. This is an argument style better suited to politicians than academics.

Gradually it becomes clear that Russell has at least one hidden agenda. He is intent on making a case for the dualistic nature of God. This causes him to flit from one isolated fact to another, skipping over any material in between that it in conflict with this theory. The worst examples of this are in the section entitled "Hebrew Personifications of Evil." As most people know, outside of the Job and the unfortunate snake, the Old Testament makes very little mention of the demonic. There were some beliefs, but they are discussed more in sacred materials external to the Bible, dating from the Babylonian Exile onward. Russell misses that material, pays attention to Job, and then focuses entirely on several books of the Apocrypha as evidence of Hebrew dualism. In the process he skips an entire millennia or so of Jewish thinking. This is not exactly history.

I don't know quite what to make of an academic historical text which, in the end, turns out to have been a soapbox for a writer's own orations on the nature and place of evil (with a capital E). But I do know that I don't like it one bit. If the volume have been clearly labeled as philosophy or theology, I would have gone on to find something else, and this problem would not have arisen.

The book attempts to cover ancient, classical, Hebrew and early Christian civilization. As it is, regardless of Russell's qualifications as a medievalist, he seems a bit out of his depth in the fields of ancient and biblical history. There is an extensive bibliography, of which I know many of the citations. Surprisingly, it appears that Russell's sources are much less biased than he is himself. If you must buy this book, I suggest you use it to key into other authors and thinkers rather than as a conclusive resource on it's own.

Rating:
Summary: A Historical Book Not a Religious Book
Review: This is a wonderful book that shows how the Christian conception of the Devil can be traced to previous cultures through myths, symbols, and philosophy. The book starts will the definition and how the word has been interrupted through various cultures, including current Jung psychology which Russell favors. The book then progresses through how east and western cultures view the idea of evil. Summerian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Cannanite, Hiittie, Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Greek, and Roman mythology and cultures are used for comparison. The book ends with Hebrew personification and the Devil in the New Testament. Many references are mentioned regarding the Inquisition, which Russell picks up in the next book of this series.

Christian readers will probably be offended by Russell's conclusions, because he indirectly shows that ideas presented in the Bible have been presented in other cultures pre-dating Christianity. This historical approach is taken by other authors, but may jar Christians who have not been subjective to this line of thinking. This is my guess why this book has received bad reviews here at Amazon, but receives great reviews on history book lists. Granted that some of Russell's conclusions are subjective, but the history is solid and that is why it's a standard work.

Rating:
Summary: The Devil vs. The concept of Evil
Review: This is an old book(1977). It is also a disappointing book. It is disappointing because it does not really analyze the concept of the Devil as an Anti-God. Rather,it chronicles the various destroying gods of ancient mythologies (including American Indian gods which had no bearing on the development of primitive Christianity) and how these related to the concept of evil in Christianity.

Russell states that " This is a work of history, not of theology"(Preface). Despite this, he begins the book by expounding his personal concept of evil: "The essence of evil is abuse of a sentient being,a being that can feel pain."(Chapter I) While one can sympathize with this feeling, it is hard to defend if one considers animals to be sentient beings ( and even have souls, if Anatole France can be believed in Penguin Island). Further it raises the question of whether the ways of God are completely understood by man. Thus despite his denial, we are immediately plunged into theology.

He also has difficulty with his history of the personification of evil as exemplified by the Devil. Occasionally this type of evil can be personified in a demon, but often not. For example, in discussing Plato, he notes that "evil has no real being at all".

More frequently he focuses on the dualistic nature of good and evil. In this discussion he loses his way in the complicated theology of whether this means that there are two equal forces managing human affairs, or whether there is one supreme force, with a subsidiary counter force, or whether there is only one force whose ways are inscrutable to man. These discussions are not particularly helpful to us in analyzing mythology or theology. Both have been done better and in greater detail by others.

The one virtue of this book is its brevity. It can serve as an introduction to students who are not familiar with the antecedents of Christianity or of the various struggles that theologians and philosophers have had with the issues of good and evil.