The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics - Paperback

by Elaine Pagels (Author)

From the National Book Award-winning and National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels comes a dramatic interpretation of Satan and his role on the Christian tradition.

"Arresting...brilliant...this book illuminates the angels with which we must wrestle to come to the truth of our bedeviling spritual problems." --The Boston Globe

With magisterial learning and the elan of a born storyteller, Pagels turns Satan's story into an audacious exploration of Christianity's shadow side, in which the gospel of love gives way to irrational hatreds that continue to haunt Christians and non-Christians alike.

Author Biography

ELAINE PAGELS is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and the author of Reading Judas, The Gnostic Gospels--winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award--and the New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.