The socio-political context of early Christianity, with Satan as a backdrop

Review of The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics by Elaine Pagels

This book recapitulates the emergence of Christianity in context, detailed and vivid, from its origins in Palestine to its expansion westward. It focuses on the use of Satan, first as a kind of gadfly or tester of belief in the Jewish and Pauline traditions to the "cosmic war" of later Christianity, according to which opposition from without and within …