This massive work on the history of evil, particularly as symbolized by the Christian devil, was written on the cusp of the 20th century by Paul Carus.
At that point in history it seemed apparent that evil would soon be eliminated by the onrushing forces of rationalism and modernism. The devil had been reduced to a literary character, always ready to make a silly bargain for a soul. This trivialized image is perpetuated to this day. Satan in the cinema is either represented as a hideous special effect or a comic, bumbling trickster. Long gone is the noble adversary of Jehovah, as portrayed in the Bible, Milton or Dante.
However, the 20th century brought total war; genocide; death camps; nuclear, biological and chemical weapons; mind control; double-speak; ecological destruction; and finally indiscriminant mass terror. Evil was back and it was unmistakable. No wonder that opinion polls in the United States show that a large proportion of the population believe in the existence of the devil.
Contents:
List of Illustrations
Good and Evil as Religious Ideas
Devil Worship
Ancient Egypt
Accad and the Early Semites
Persian Dualism
Israel
Brahmanism and Hinduism
Buddhism
The Dawn of a New Era.
Early Christianity
The Idea of Salvation in Greece and Italy.
The Demonology of Northern Europe
The Devilīs Prime.
The Inquisition
The Age of the Reformation
The Abolition of Witch-Prosecution
In Verse and Fable
The Philosophical Problem of Good and Evil
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link to www.sacred-texts.com]
