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How You Have Fallen: Exploring the Benevolence of an Early Christian God as Seen Through a Progressively Embodied Satan

This paper attempts to explore the creation of Satan as an embodiment of evil in Early Christian theodicy. I use Greco-Roman myth and the Old Testament Book of Job to explore "duality," a system in which good and evil are encapsulated in gods or God. I attempt to trace the trajectory of a shift from this duality to a system of Christian cosmic "dualism," in which good and evil are separated as opposing forces. This shift is explored through the intertestamental Pseudepigrapha of 1 Enoch and Jubilees, towards the New Testament story of the Temptation of Christ in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Finally, exploring post-New Testament Christian ideas with Origen's seminal work On First Principles and the martyr text of Perpetua to investigate the Early Christian community's ideas of good, God, evil, and Satan.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:CLAREMONT/oai:http://scholarship.claremont.edu/do/oai/:scripps_theses-1211
Date01 April 2013
CreatorsGeiger, Kari J
PublisherScholarship @ Claremont
Source SetsClaremont Colleges
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceScripps Senior Theses
Rights© 2013 Kari J. Geiger

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