The Origin of Satan Read Online Free PDF Page B

rulers.
    While at first glance the gospel of Mark may look like histori-
    THE GOSPEL OF MARK AND THE JEWISH WAR / 13

    cal biography, it is not so simple as this, for Mark does not intend
    to write history, as Josephus had, primarily to persuade people of
    the accuracy of his account of recent events and make them
    comprehensible on a human level. Instead Mark wants to show
    what these events mean for the future of the world, or, in the
    scholarly jargon, eschatologically. Mark and his colleagues
    combine a biographical form with themes of supernatural
    conflict borrowed from Jewish apocalyptic literature to create a
    new kind of narrative. These gospels carry their writers’
    powerful conviction that Jesus’ execution, which had seemed to
    signal the victory of the forces of evil, actually heralds their
    ultimate annihilation and ensures God’s final victory.21
    Many liberal-minded Christians have preferred to ignore the
    presence of angels and demons in the gospels. Yet Mark intends
    their presence to address the anguished question that the events
    of the previous decades had aroused: How could God allow such
    death and destruction? For Mark and his fellows, the issue of
    divine justice involves, above all, the issue of human violence.
    The gospel writers want to locate and identify the specific ways
    in which the forces of evil act through certain people to effect
    violent destruction, above all, in Matthew’s words, “the
    righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel
    to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah” (23:35)—
    violence epitomized in the execution of Jesus, which Matthew
    sees as the culmination of all evils. The subject of cosmic war
    serves primarily to interpret human relationships—especially
    all-too-human conflict—in supernatural form. The figure of
    Satan becomes, among other things, a way of characterizing one’s
    actual enemies as the embodiment of transcendent forces. For
    many readers of the gospels ever since the first century, the
    thematic opposition between God’s spirit and Satan has
    vindicated Jesus’ followers and demonized their enemies.
    But how does the figure of Satan characterize the enemy?
    What is Satan, and how does he appear on earth? The New
    Testament gospels almost never identify Satan with the Romans,
    but they consistently associate him with Jesus’ Jewish enemies,
    primarily Judas Iscariot and the chief priests and scribes. By
    placing
    14 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

    the story of Jesus in the context of cosmic war, the gospel writers
    expressed, in varying ways, their identification with the
    embattled minority of Jews who believed in Jesus, and their
    distress at what they saw as the apostasy of the majority of their
    fellow Jews in Jesus’ time, as well as in their own. As we shall
    see, Jesus’ followers did not invent the practice of demonizing
    enemies within their own group, although Christians (and
    Muslims after them) carried this practice further than their
    Jewish predecessors had taken it, and with enormous
    consequences.
    Yet who actually were Jesus’ enemies? What we know
    historically suggests that they were the Roman governor and his
    soldiers. The charge against Jesus and his execution were
    typically-Roman. The Roman authorities, ever watchful for any
    hint of sedition, were ruthless in suppressing it. The historian
    Mary Smallwood observes that rounding up and killing
    troublemakers, especially those who ignited public
    demonstrations, was a routine measure for Roman forces
    stationed in Judea.22 During the first century the Romans
    arrested and crucified thousands of Jews charged with sedition—
    often, Philo says, without trial. But as the gospels indicate, Jesus
    also had enemies among his fellow Jews, especially the Jerusalem
    priests and their influential allies, who were threatened by his
    activities.
    The crucial point is this: Had Jesus’ followers identified
    themselves with the majority of Jews rather than with a