New Testament Satanology and Leading Suprahuman Opponents in Second Temple Jewish Literature: A Religio-Historical Analysis
The challenge of reconceptualizing mythological concepts like the Devil in contemporary Christian theology is well known, but some interpreters find a demythologized Devil already within the New Testament. To evaluate this approach exegetically, this study attempts to reconstruct the religio-histori...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2019]
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| In: |
The journal of theological studies
Year: 2019, Volume: 70, Issue: 1, Pages: 21-68 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Devil
/ Old Testament
/ Early Judaism
/ Literature
/ New Testament
|
| IxTheo Classification: | HB Old Testament HC New Testament HD Early Judaism NBH Angelology; demonology |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | The challenge of reconceptualizing mythological concepts like the Devil in contemporary Christian theology is well known, but some interpreters find a demythologized Devil already within the New Testament. To evaluate this approach exegetically, this study attempts to reconstruct the religio-historical setting of New Testament Satanology by exploring leading suprahuman opponents (LSOs) in pre- and non-Christian Second Temple Jewish literature. In contrast to most earlier reconstructions, the present study is methodologically conservative, admitting into evidence only texts that can be confidently assigned to a pre-70 ce date and non-Christian Jewish provenance. The investigation shows that there was no standard Jewish Satanology during the Second Temple period. Moreover, 'Satan' is not clearly attested as a personal name prior to the New Testament and may therefore be a title or Funktionsbezeichnung in most occurrences therein. New Testament Satanology shows significant continuity with earlier and contemporaneous Jewish LSO-concepts but is relatively homogeneous, suggesting that a consolidation of Satanological terminology and concepts occurred very early in church history. This consistency, together with the abundance of concretely mythological religio-historical parallels to the New Testament Devil, suggest that the early church uniformly understood the Satan as a real mythological being-probably an angel. |
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| ISSN: | 1477-4607 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of theological studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/jts/fly165 |