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Satan

Christians traditionally think of Satan as Lucifer, God’s enemy, who rebelled against Him out of pride and then caused Adam and Eve to sin. But, as Henry Ansgar Kelly shows, this portrayal is not Biblical but a scenario invented by the early Fathers of the Church which became the “New Biography of Satan.” The “Original Biography” must be reconstructed from the New Testament where Satan is the same sort of celestial functionary we see in the Book of Job – appointed to govern the World, specifically to monitor and test Human Beings. But he is brutal and deceitful in his methods, and Jesus predicts that his rule will soon come to an end.

   Kelly traces the further developments of the “New Biography”: Humankind’s inherited guilt, captivity by Satan, and punishment in Hell at his hands. This profile of Satan remains dominant, but Kelly urges a return to the “Original Biography of Satan.”

HENRY ANSGAR KELLY is Emerit Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). His books include The Devil, Demonology, and Witchcraft (1968, 1974, 2004) and The Devil at Baptism (1985, 2004). He is the former Director of UCLA’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the current Editor of the Center’s journal, Viator.

The Fall of Satan as Lucifer. Detail (inverted) of Illustration 7, “The Fall of the Angels,” by the Limbourg Brothers, from the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Musée Condé, Chantilly, France. Reproduced by permission of Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY

Satan

A Biography

HENRY ANSGAR KELLY

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Henry Ansgar Kelly 2006

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First published 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

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ISBN-13 978-0-521-84339-3 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-84339-1 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-60402-4 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-60402-8 paperback

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