The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth Book

It's not possible to adequately summarize this book. Forsythe traces the myths of the origin of evil from Assyrian and Babylonian myth up to the theological synthesis of St. Augustine of Hippo. The whole concept of an "adversary" is shown to be ambiguous. When is a person or a deity and adversary? The Sumerian myth of Huwawa that starts us off is a far cry from the cosmic adversary of Zoroastrian and Christian myth. Huwawa seems to be a forest spirit who is defending the forest from the destruction of Gilgamesh who wants to cut down the forest to build the royal palace. These days, many ecologically sensitive readers would think Huwawa was the good guy, not he hero Gilgamesh. When Forsythe trace Near Eastern and Greek myths, showing many signs of mutual influence, the distinctions between deity and rebel are constantly blurred. Zeus, for example, rebels against Chronos and then is the object of rebellion. When he examines Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity, Forsythe recounts the torturous history of the origin of evil. The myth of the Watchers in Enochic literature, for example, cites evil's origins in the sexual lust of the Watchers for human women, a myth alluded to in Gen. 6: 1-4. Other myths, especially Zoroastrian and Christian, put evil's origin in pride. Looming over much of the mythology is the theme of fraternal strife as cosmic strife. Zoroastrian myth comes across to me as strife between two siblings at the origin of the cosmos. As one who works extensively with the thought of René Girard, the anthropological dimensions of these myths is of great interest. It is interesting, and congruent with Girard's theories, that the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, tend to move in an anthropological dimension. In Genesis, for example, we have Cain vs. Abel rather than Ahura Mazda vs. Angra Mainyu. Christianity inherits a confused tradition for the origins of evil and the gaping holes in the Hebrew Bible are filled in with much speculation. Accounting for evil in a way that is not hopelessly fatalistic proves to be a huge challenge. Augustine's synthesis of all the threads known to him is an impressive accomplishment but one fraught with paradox and ambiguity. I hope that these admittedly fragmentary remarks picque a reader's interest in a detailed and exhausting survey of a most important topic.