SOURCE: "A Social History of Satan," in Chicago Tribune Books, July 30, 1995, pp. 6-7.

In the review below, Gray writes that Pagels's efforts in The Origin of Satan to link early Christian ideas to the present are hampered by her failure to include cultural history and psychology in her analysis.

In what she terms the social history of Satan, Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, finds the roots of the need to demonize one's enemies. The practice of explaining adversity or conflict by reference to demons reaches back, Pagels notes, into Old Testament history. But she argues [in The Origin of Satan] that it entered a radical phase when the small sect of 1st Century Jews who declared Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah proceeded to demonize their enemies.

In claiming that Satan inspired their opponents—largely the Temple authorities and other established Jewish leaders—those proto-Christians...