Quote:
Originally Posted by SerenityLives
I actually am not sure what to think. The book Awareness sent me was “The Origin of Satan” by Elaine Pagels. I’m only twenty pages in but he has told me he does not agree with some of the points made in the book. But I think it may be a plausibility that the gospel writers made it up. After all, Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, his name literally means betrayer or something like that. I dont think he was a real person but maybe evil personified.
|
What one thinks about this entails a philosophy of religion. Are religious symbols like Satan and God invented by people due to social political forces or perhaps economic forces if you're a Marxist? To say that the New Testament writers invented the Satan narrative to exonerate the Romans in the death of Jesus implies as much. Doesn't it? And how far down can we go with this kind of historical hypothesizing? We know some things about the social political facts of the time. But what would do we really know about the writer of the Gospel of Mark for instance? At what point does knowledge shade into guesswork? What are the limits of the historical method for understanding the Bible? Cuz life is short and we're already living it, and we need to answer now.