In the following paragraphs I do summarize a lot of the text however keep in mind that I did not know any of this information before reading this book. Therefore while I mention a decent amount I will be commenting on the information I present opposed to writing a summary and then commenting afterwards.

At first I did not understand why you chose this book to put on the list, but as I was reading the introduction Elaine Pagels states, “ I want you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and those we call ‘others’…Satan defines negatively what we think of as human.” (xviii), I realized th

at this book is not concisely about where Satan originated but instead is more about how a human being psychologically reflects Satan. In the book Satan is described in numerous ways including the opposition to god, a messenger of god, a quality within ourselves that we project onto other people(which I agree with most), and ultimately all Jewish and pagan people who reject the idea that Jesus was their messiah.

I still do not understand why Pagels decided to start off the book with the chapter she chose, instead of the subsequent. It is in the second chapter where Satan’s origin is actually mentioned. In the original book of genesis that the Hebrew culture followed, Satan is actually ‘one of God’s angels, a being of superior intelligence and status.”(pg. 39) It is in the book of genesis where he is described to be the type of angel who acts as a supernatural obstacle to block the path of anyone who is attempting to either head in a wrong direction or do something that “The Lord” would not like, he only acts as a messenger from god not on his own free will. In the book of Job, Satan is also an intelligent angel who asks god to let him challenge Job in his faith. Job, of course, proves to be loyal to god. If only Satan had remained as that character maybe he would not have such a bad reputation nowadays. It was only after reading the second chapter that I learned exactly what Mark meant by defining Jesus’ antagonists as Satan’s allies.

This book has opened my eyes to a lot of different aspects of Christianity that I never knew, especially about the other sacred books that record Jesus’ teachings that were not discovered until recently. I honestly thought that the New Testament was the only original book that contained the teachings of Jesus. I had no idea that Satan was originally a Jewish character. I really enjoyed the way Pagels described Mark, Luke, John and Matthew. She came very close to defining exactly what they must have been going through at the time of transcription. I never knew exactly how all of the European pagan religions died out until I read this book. I thought that Elaine Pagels did a great job of describing the history of the sequence of events that lead up to the primal rise of Christianity and the belief in Satan. I also loved the way she added comments from religious scholars in each chapter. There was not much of her own opinion in the book, it was based more on comparing and c

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