'Strange Rites' by Tara Isabella Burton

Of the books I read during my Religion Phase, 'The Case for God' by Karen Armstrong was one of my favourites. It was marketed as a rebuttal to the various New Atheist books in vogue at the time; the cover is similar to that for 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins, but blue where Dawkins is red. I imagined the books battling each other to the sound of Star Wars' 'Duel of the Fates' whenever I left the room.

However, the book largely sidesteps, or indeed implicitly agrees with, many of the New Atheist arguments. Instead, via a potted history of religion and theology, mainly focused on the Judeo-Christian traditions, the book argues that religiosity is an incredibly important part of human nature, going far beyond the crude literalism attacked by the New Atheists, whose understanding of theology she derides as 'poor' but also 'not radical enough'. For Armstrong, supernatural entities are not the basis of religion: the search for transcendence is.

As much as I liked the book, I also found it frustrating because it was, ironically, not radical enough. A former nun, Armstrong's immersion in the traditional religions had left her oblivious to the various ways the religious behaviours she celebrates are expressed by the nominally irreligious. I wanted her to go further in exploring religiosity as human nature, but at the time I could find no book that delivered on what I wanted. I remember finding a conference on the subject, but being unable to attend due to my limited budget. George Steiner's 'Nostalgia for the Absolute' scratched the itch a bit, but it wasn't enough.

Eight years later, I've found the book I wanted: 'Strange Rites' by Tara Isabella Burton. I first heard about the book and its core argument via the BBC Sounds podcast 'The New Gurus', on which the author was a guest (the podcasts cover art also uses a similar stained-glass art-style to the book cover). 

Burton compares the World Wide Web to the printing press which was the essential catalyst behind the Protestant Reformation in Europe: those who disagreed with the established church could print and propagate their ideas, leading to Christianity fragmenting into many smaller sects. The World Wide Web is like a Super Printing Press, enabling everyone with access the ability to spread their own ideas, or find whatever beliefs suit them. Together with cultural shifts towards individualism, emphasizing the importance of the self and growing distrust of institutions, this has led to us living through a Super Reformation (or, to use Burton's more America-focused term, a new Great Awakening), in which an increasing number of people are 'religiously remixed', combining ancient and modern beliefs and practices in heavily individualised ways.

An early chapter establishes Burton's understanding of what religion is, based on the works of sociologists Emile Durkheim, Peter Berger, and Clifford Geertz. For Burton, religions fulfil four needs: meaning, purpose, community, and ritual.  

The grand narratives of religion provide an explanation as to why things are the way they are, imbuing reality with meaning and putting adherents lives into a wider context. Adherents are also given a role, a purpose, in the grand narrative, and asked to change their behaviour in various ways: personal decision-making, for even the small and mundane, is linked to and influenced by the universe-spanning narrative. Groups of adherents together form a community (physical or online), with all the psychological benefits that belonging to a community brings. Rituals help re-affirm the grand narrative, bind the community together, and mark the passage of time. 

A single religion in a person's life can cover all four needs, as historically was the norm, but modern individualism encourages a more 'pick and mix' approach to cover all the bases. For example, someone could pray to the Christian God on Sundays, practice meditation on Mondays, go to a Yoga class on Wednesdays, profess a belief in Karma, and make changes to their diet based on the perceived 'Vibrational Energy' of the food.  Religions have always influenced each other, sharing ideas and practices, or splintering into new sects, but the process is happening faster than ever before, in our Internet-connected globalised world. (I once knew someone who believed that Jesus went to India and learnt Yoga during the 'Missing Years' not covered by the Bible.)

The bulk of the book then explores various modern religions identified by the author: fandoms, with particular emphasis on the extremes of the Harry Potter fandom ('Snapewives'); Wellness culture, which utilises spiritual and religious practices to sell products and create a loyal customer base; modern Witchcraft; sexual subcultures; social justice activism; techno-utopianism; and the many regressive, atavistic online cultures from across the online 'Manosphere'. The chapters are engaging but somewhat superficial, giving an overview with varying amounts of depth, but paint a convincing picture of these subcultures as neo-religions.

There's an interesting comment in the chapter on social justice activism about how its opponents deride it as a religion, without realising how accurate they may be, and I would have preferred this to lead into a greater examination of the religious nature of political ideologies more generally. In popular parlance that nature is usually only identified by opponents: socialists and communists deride capitalism and neoliberalism as religions which put their faith in the Invisible Hand.

It's a relatively short book, so an easy criticism is that there is plenty more which could have been included, but I prefer a book to leave me broadly satisfied if eager for more, to one that overstays its welcome. I'm extremely happy to have got hold of this, and highly recommend it, especially if combined with the other titles mentioned at the start of this review.

'Inventing Hell' by Jon M. Sweeney

Our popular conception of Hell is very medieval rather than biblical: it owes more to Dante than to the Bible, and Dante's Hell owes more to Greek myth than it does to the Bible. In this slim volume, Sweeney takes us through the development of the Medieval Christian view of Hell, which finds its ultimate expression in Dante.

In the Old Testament, there is very little mention of the afterlife. Sheol, the ancient Israelite underworld, is a dark, gloomy, underground place where people go to 'rest with their ancestors' after they die. It's an inevitable, bland destination, not a place of reward or punishment.

The afterlife changes with the influence first of Zoroastrianism, then with Greek myth and philosophy. The Greek god Hades, a colourful character rules a slightly sadistic underworld with ironic punishments. The Elysium Fields, where the chosen of gods go for an afterlife of happiness.

Platonic philosophy teaches the immortality of the soul in more detail than the Bible. There was already monotheism in the Roman Empire by the time Christianity arrived, but Plato's religion was elitist, reserved for the rich higher-ups. Christianity popularized Platonic monotheism; the Gentile converts to Christianity knew little about the Jewish traditions they were supposed to be succeeding, and so turned to what was more familiar to them: Greek Philosophy. Early theologians thought Socrates et al were precursors of Jesus, sent by God to prepare the gentiles for Christianity. Paul, in his letters, and Socrates, in his dialogues, seem to echo each other - Judah had been conquered by the Greeks, who had attempted to Hellenize their culture. The Romans, who had adopted Greek culture as their own, continued to spread its ideas and myths to the Jews. Paul was a well-educated 1st century Jew.

Early and Medieval Christianity expanded on the Jesus myth with a range of apocryphal gospels and 'expanded universe' stories. On Holy Saturday, after his death but before Resurrection, Jesus descended into Hell to rescue the righteous who lived and died before him (they would have been automatically ineligible for salvation) - confronting, overpowering, and therefore enraging Satan in the process, leaving him more resolved to make the sinners suffer, taking his anger out on them. Before Dante, there were a bunch of other 'tours of the afterlife' narratives which are almost short prototypes for the Divine Comedy.

Scholastic theologians, Thomas Aquinas chief among them, spent a long time thinking about angels and demons. Aquinas was a massive influence on Dante; Aristotle was a massive influence on Aquinas. More Greek philosophy, merged with Christianity over a millennium after the crucifixion, re-introduced to Europe by way of Arabic translations of the original Greek re-translated into Latin. Christianity becomes not just Platonic monotheism repackaged, but Aristotelian theology re-interpreted with biblical images.

The Prophet Muhammad turns up in Dante's Inferno. Arabic translations had brought Aristotle back to Europe. By Dante's time, there were at least two (known) Latin translations of the Qur'an. It is not, therefore, impossible that Dante was inspired by the Qur'an's many, many, many descriptions of a fiery tortuous afterlife for sinners.

Inventing Hell's overview of these Hellish sources of inspiration is enjoyable, fast-paced, and actually quite fun. Sweeney's writing style is chatty and easy-reading, and the jokes are not cringeworthy. The book is, however, obviously very simplified for a popular audience, and felt a little too short. It is not a work of scholarship, but as an introduction or a refresher, it is really very good. I would have been quite happy if it was a bit longer, with more details on the sources, the philosophy, the myths, the 'expanded universe' stories, etc. 

The final chapter, in which Sweeney explains why he doesn't like Dante and hopes Hell will become less important to the Christianity of the future, felt like a rushed conclusion. The author is too eager to distance the Bible and Christianity from Hell, minimizing the fact that, despite the manifold extra-biblical influences on the idea of Hell, a punishing afterlife is still part of the New Testament. If you were able to remove the legacy of Dante and the Medieval Hell from Christianity, the fires of torment are still there. Sweeney comes across as in denial about the Bible's contents, wanting to push the aspects of Christianity he dislikes onto Dante.

"Ultimately, I choose not Dante's vengeful, predatory God who is anxious to tally faults, to reward and to punish. Instead I choose the God who creates and sustains us, who is incarnate and wants to be among us, and the God who inspires and comforts us. That God is the real one, the one I have come to know and understand, and that God has nothing to do with the medieval Hell."

This sounds nice, but ignores the vengeful, predatory God of the Old Testament (see Leviticus chapter 26 for one example of many), who obviously doesn't originate with Dante. It ignores Jesus' God, who will throw the goats into the fire, will burn the chaff of humanity in a big bonfire. It ignores the God of the epistles, who will do similar. It ignores the Jesus of Revelation, who will slaughter his way across the Earth, crushing people in 'the great winepress of the wrath of God', etc. Yes, Dante's sadistic afterlife isn't very nice, and the God who oversaw it wouldn't be very nice, but if you could strip Greek myth and philosophy from Medieval Christianity, leaving only the biblical influences, you'd still have a vengeful and capricious God. Sweeney comes across as someone who wants to be Christian because they've always been one, but, now they've matured, they don't want to be associated with all the crueler, sinister aspects of the Christian and Biblical traditions, so shift the blame for that onto something - in this case, Dante and his Greek influences - which they feel they can reject while leaving their faith broadly intact. It's an amusing, but unconvincing, display of mental gymnastics.

In conclusion: this book is good for its quick summary of the evolution of Hell, but unconvincing in the author's goal of distancing Hell from the Bible and Christianity.

Revelation 13: The Beasts

Straight after the vision of the Woman and the Dragon (see previous post), John is stood on the coast, watching a beast with 7 heads and 10 horns rise out of the sea. It is like a leopard with the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion. The dragon (Satan) gives the beast power and authority over the earth.

One of the beast's 7 heads is mortally wounded, but mysteriously heals.

The beast uses its earthy power to spew blasphemies against God and make war on his servants.

John sees a second beast rise from the earth: it is like a horned lamb which speaks like a dragon, and uses the power of the first beast to make the people of earth worship the first beast and blaspheme God. The second beast performs miracles, which convince the people to worship the first beast.

'And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.'

What are we to make of all this?

The Old Testament prophet Daniel has a dream of four beasts rising out of the sea; he is told these beasts represent four kingdoms. A beast like a lion represents the Babylonian Empire. A beast like a bear represents the Persian Empire. A beast like a leopard represents the Greek Empire. The fourth beast, with ten horns, represents the Roman Republic.

Daniel's dream sequence ends with the 'one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven... And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion.' The Messiah descending from Heaven to conquer the world.

The Babylonian Empire (lion) was conquered by the Persians (bear). The Persians were conquered by the Greeks (leopard). And the Greeks were conquered by the Romans (ten horns). The Roman Republic became an empire.

John's Beast from the Sea is a composite of Daniel's four beasts: leopard, bear, lion, ten horns. It represents the new and expanded Roman Empire.

The seven heads represent the emperors who had ruled since the transition from republic to empire: Augustus onwards. Although there is considerable disagreement among scholars as to exactly which emperors they are supposed to represent.

There are some clues that one of emperors is Nero. One of the beast's heads recovers from a mortal wound: there was a popular rumor that Nero had been killed by his own sword. It was a surprise when it turned out false. There is also the numerological evidence: the numbers of the letters in the Hebrew spelling of Nero Caesar add up to 666.

Nero is the emperor most famous for persecuting Christians - he burnt Christians alive as torches to illuminate his garden.

So, the first beast, the Beast of the Sea, is the Roman Empire.

The second beast, the horned lamb performing miracles, is the Roman pagan cult, which treated the emperor as a god. The mark of the beast, without which one cannot buy or sell, could be Roman currency, which was printed with the heads of the emperors. Elaine Pagels, whose book is my main source for the historical context for Revelation, speculates that it could represent some bureaucratic stamps or marks necessary to buy or sell.

I have to go to work now, so am ending this post here!

Revelation 12: The Woman and the Dragon

After seeing God's Heavenly Temple opened for business, John's next vision is a sequence of achronological historical flashbacks, rather than a continuation of the ongoing End of Days vision.

John sees sees a pregnant woman in Heaven, sent down to earth, wearing a crown of 12 stars. In various Jewish prophetic works, the nation of Israel is imagined as a woman, God's bride (or, when Israel has been worshipping other gods, a adulterous whore). Her crown of 12 stars represents the twelve tribes of Israel; she is pregnant with the messiah. This is an allusion to a passage in the Book of Isaiah, Israel struggling to give birth to the messiah: 'Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O Lord.'

Later Christians interpreted the woman as Mary, mother of Jesus, immaculately conceived in Heaven. Later still, some interpreted it as the mother of the future Second Coming of Jesus.

John sees a great red dragon in Heaven, whose tail drags a third of the stars to earth. The great red dragon is Satan; a third of Heaven's angels fell with him.

The dragon stands before the woman, waiting to eat the newborn child, 'who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron'. The child - Jesus - escapes and ascends to God.

'And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.'

Ideas about fallen angels had been developing for a few centuries before Revelation was written; the idea had become popular as a way to absolve God of blame for evil in the world. In the Book of Enoch, a group of angels falls from Heaven because they lust after human women. In the Book of Jubilees, 9 out of 10 angels fall with the Evil One, and vow to obstruct God's will for the rest of time. The the Life of Adam and Eve, Satan, the brightest angel, is cast out of Heaven for refusing to bow down to Adam. Thus to Jews familiar with these then-popular books, fallen angels were associated with lust, pride, and a stubborn will to stop God's good works.

Revelation adds more references to the mix. In many ancient Mesopotamian creation myths, the greatest god in the pantheon defeats the chaos dragon before he can fashion the universe, often from the serpent's corpse. Order from Chaos. The gods did not fashion the universe out of nothing: in the beginning, there was chaos, normally imagined as a vast ocean, ruled by the primordial chaos dragon, who went by many names: Tiamat, Leviathan, Rahab, etc. In ancient Mesopotamia (and many other parts of the world), the Cosmos, created and managed by the gods, was seen as constantly under threat from the forces of Chaos, led by the great dragon of the waters.

There are a few scattered remnants of the ye olde Israelite version of this myth scattered through the Bible. Psalms celebrate God's defeat of the serpent Leviathan, or Rahab. Ezekiel likens the king of Egypt to the old dragon, who God is totes gonna destroy.

In Isaiah's allusion to the ye olde myth, he suggests that God did not properly destroy the chaos dragon in the beginning, but will do so... 'on that day'.

The creation story that now opens the Bible, written during the Babylonian exile, is intended to subvert ye olde combat myth. Reading it closely, we see that God does not create the universe from nothing, as later Jews and Christians tended to assume.

'And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'

The primordial chaos waters are there in the beginning, but there is no combat. God merely has to speak the light and the earth and the living creatures into existence. So this myth one-ups the combat-based creation myths that preceded and competed with it: God is so powerful, he doesn't even need to fight a chaos serpent before he can get to the business of creating.

And, if there are any great sea dragons that you might think of as primordial chaos serpents, God created them: Genesis specifically mentions that 'God created the great sea-monsters'. None of them existed before God made it so; none of them was an obstacle to his creative power.

The Book of Job alludes to this re-imagined Leviathan, who has gone from primordial chaos serpent to one of God's playthings: in his speech to Job, God implies he could quite easily catch Leviathan with a hook, play with him, and cook him up as a banquet.

The Book of Revelation fuses the fallen angel myths with the chaos dragon combat myth, and ties it to the history of Israel.

After Satan, the dragon, the serpent, is cast out, a voice in Heaven cries out, "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

The dragon spends his earthly time persecuting the aforementioned woman, Israel, who flees into the wilderness. Being 'in the wilderness' is a recurring motif in Jewish texts: Moses led the Israelites for 40 years in the wilderness, under God's protection. After the Babylonian exile, the Jews were once again 'in the wilderness' - they were no longer in their homeland. A few years before Revelation was written, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, and many Jews were exiled from the Holy Land - once again, they were 'in the wilderness'.

The serpent spews water from his mouth - chaos water from the chaos serpent - hoping to kill her with a flood, but she is saved by the Earth. The dragon is angry, and declares war on the woman's offspring: those who keep God's commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

(To be continued...)

Revelation 1-5: Ascending to Heaven

Over the past few days I've been re-reading the Book of Revelation. When I read through the Bible a few years ago, I sped through Revelation, not taking it in very well. It's a trippy, angry, difficult book - not one of my biblical favourites. But it has now become extra-relevant to the fiction-in-progress, so here I am, re-reading and organising my thoughts on it.

The book is a letter, a history, and a prophecy of the future; three books in one. Written and circulated around 100CE, Revelation contains references to events and politics of the time, obscured by symbolic imagery and numerology. At this time, Judaism and Christianity were not so thoroughly split: this book, like the Gospel of Matthew, belongs to the Jewish Christian tradition which emphasizes the importance of the tribes of Israel, and looks down on Gentile converts to Pauline Christianity. It is steeped in Jewish lore, chock full of references to other Jewish prophetic works. Hidden meanings and obscure references make it difficult for the modern reader.

In the first chapter, John describes his meeting with Jesus on the isle of Patmos:

"one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and this face was like the sun shining in full strength."

Jesus dictates instructions to the 7 churches of Asia Minor, and commands John to write about his coming visionary experiences in a book. The epistolary prologue doesn't interest me very much. In the section addressed to the church of Pergamon, John's Jesus commends the congregation for holding on to their faith while living in the shadow of 'Satan's Throne': historians believe this refers to the Great Temple of Zeus, the Pergamon Altar, which was once the pride of the city. Early Christians believed the pagan gods were demons tricking humanity away from the true God.

Once John's Jesus is done telling off or congratulating the 7 churches, our narrator turns around and sees a door leading to Heaven. He ascends and sees the throne of God, which is similar in appearance to when it was seen by the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel:

'A throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne. And he who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald... From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and... before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say,

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty."'

In front of the main God Throne there are 24 smaller thrones, where 'elders' sit, wearing white robes and gold crowns.

At God's right hand there is a scroll, sealed with seven seals, and none could be found to open this scroll containing the future, and our narrator was sad.

“Weep no more", says one of the elders, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Oh great, thinks our narrator, the conquering Jewish Messiah has come. Those familiar with Jewish lore of the time would have understood the Lion of Judah to be a reference to the expected Messiah, a fierce warrior who would restore Israel to glory.

John looks up, and sees a slain Lamb take the book, causing the divine assembly to burst into song: "for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation," etc.

In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion, ideas about the Jewish messiah had to change. The conquering Lion messiah had not come; instead there had been Jesus, a Lamb slain on Passover, a sacrifice whose blood washed away sins and redeemed humanity. John's vision here illustrates these changing ideas, and confirms Jesus the Lamb as identical to the expected Lion. But his conquest is not over the living enemies of Israel, but over Death and Sin. The Messiah has already come.

The Lamb starts opening the seals...

(To be continued...)

'The Prince of Darkness' by Jeffrey Burton Russell

In The Prince of Darkness (1989), Jeffrey B. Russell has condensed his academic quartet on the history of the concepts of evil and the Devil from antiquity to the modern world - The Devil (1977), Satan (1981), Lucifer (1984), and Mephistopheles (1986) – into one slim book intended for a popular audience. The academic quartet has a total page count of 1223; The Prince of Darkness is only 288 pages including appendices and index. There is an astonishing amount of information in this small volume.

Burton begins with the ancient world mythologies, looking at the elements in them which influenced the Devil concept, such as: the chaos monsters including Leviathan and Tiamat; conflicts between gods, such as the Greek war between the Olympians and the Titans which ended with the Titans imprisoned in Tartarus; gods and spirits of death and destruction; and Zoroastrianism, with its good god and bad god in conflict across the cosmos until the end of time. 

Following this, we get an overview of the ancient Hebrew tradition leading to the development of fallen angels: the early Hebrew monotheists ascribed both good and evil to the One God, but the Jews later wanted to distance evil from the God they worshiped, to absolve him of blame, so they had God delegate some evil to the angels, loyal servants under his command, such as the satan in the Book of Job (this is modern Judaism's view of Satan: a loyal servant of the good-bad God). This delegating God calls for angel volunteers to act as tempters, satans: 1 Kings 22:19-23:

'And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the LORD said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you.”'

Delegated angels became rebel angels in Judaism's apocalyptic period, when the the Jews were convinced the world was going to end any day now. During this period a lot of texts, now considered apocryphal, developed different versions of the fallen angel myth. In some stories, Satan is kicked out of heaven for refusing to bow to newly created humanity. In others, angels fall to Earth lusting after human women. In others, the evil lord Mastema, Prince of Evil, leads an army of evil against God, constantly trying to thwart God's good plan. 

Early Christianity was a branch of Apocalyptic Judaism; the New Testament further developed apocalyptic and diabolical concepts. The early Christians believed that Satan was ruler of the world, 'the prince of this world', who would be punished at the end of time (any day now) by being shoved into Hell. Jesus' sacrifice had broken Satan's complete hold over humanity: those that turned to Jesus were saved. The pagan gods existed, but they were fallen angels who ruled the Roman empire. In the second century, Justin Martyr developed one of the first fully fleshed-out Christian cosmological worldviews: in it, he described 3 categories of evil beings: Satan, a great angel, who fell from grace through sin at the beginning of time; the rest of the fallen angels, who fell from heaven when they lusted after human women; and demons, the hybrid monsters of illicit angel-human interspecies sex. The evil ones had control over the world; Jesus' first coming signaled the beginning of the end of their reign. At the second coming they would be cast into Hell.

Over the centuries this worldview changed. There were stories about Christ's descent into Hell during the 3 days between death and resurrection: he breached the doors of Hell, preached to the righteous (who were only in there because they happened to be born too soon to convert to Christianity in their lifetimes), and locked Satan&Co up, turning their old Kingdom of the Dead into their prison. Satan&Co did not have complete free reign on earth; they had been imprisoned by Jesus, who would finish the job at the second coming. 

The earlier threefold division between Satan, fallen angels, and demons was abandoned: they all became the same, angels who fell with Satan at the beginning. Satan's power over earth and his imprisonment were combined somewhat contradictorily, both simultaneously occurring straight after his fall: Satan&Co were imprisoned in Hell after their rebellion, but also have considerable powers over the Earth.

There are chapters covering: the entertaining mythologies of Gnosticism and Manichaeism, both dualist cosmologies with a good god and a bad god; early Christian heresies, and how Satan became associated with them; the Desert Fathers, monks who believed the Devil was constantly tempting them; various theologians and how they reconciled evil with a good God – these early theologians culminated in Augustine of Hippo, who synthesized their ideas into the classical view of Western Christianity. 

Medieval Christianity is the next stage of Burton's history. As Christianity became popular, it got mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions (Saturnalia was a pagan festival of gift-giving over the Winter Solstice. Eostre was pagan deity of Spring who had a festival at the Spring Equinox.), and so the Christian Devil got mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions: he gained horns and cloven feet from the god Pan; he enjoys Pagan-style celebrations, sacrifices, the Wild Hunt. Lilith is Lucifer's mother. The Devil of Medieval folklore has a lot of strange similarities to Santa Claus. Throughout history there has been a divide in religions between the popular/folk religion of the masses, and the reasoned out religion of the elites. This divide was far wider in olden days, when literacy levels were extremely low and so the masses could not read sacred texts for themselves. 

We get an overview of Medieval theologians such as Anselm, Eruigena, and Aquinas, and a look at Cathar dualism (a medieval gnostic Christianity). And then along came Dante, who created one of the most important depictions of the Devil: trapped deep in the Earth, at the centre of the universe, farthest from God, in a cold, dark, place; immobile, bestial, pathetic. Dante's Satan is contrasted with the brightness, warmth, and lively mobility of Heaven. To many theologians, evil is nothingness, non-being: Satan's pathetic immobility shows him as the personification of evil as lifeless non-being.

In the Middle Ages, clerics wrote mystery plays to bolster the faith of uneducated laypeople. Some told the stories of Satan's rebellion, Adam and Eve in Eden, and on through Old Testament scenes. The plays end with the passion, and therefore triumph, of Jesus over Satan. Satan in these plays, while evil, is also made into a comically inept supervillain whose plans are foiled by God.

The witch hunting craze influenced popular perception of the Devil. How the Devil was thought of during the Reformation. The early development of the Faust legend; diabolical themes in the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Doctor Faustus and Hamlet, respectively). A whole chapter is devoted to Milton's Paradise Lost, because it is one of the best things ever written and massively important in the history of the Devil idea. 

And then we get to the rise of unbelief in the Age of Enlightenment. Rationalism and empiricism weakened Christianity, belief in God and the Devil. Some branches of Christianity tried to adapt to this by almost eliminating the Devil from their theology. God and the Devil were seen as primitive superstitions. The Marquis de Sade, from whom we get Sadism, used the atheist argument to advocate cruelty and hedonism: if you enjoy torture, do it, because pleasure is good. Geothe wrote Faust, presenting a new Devil for a new world ('Mephistopheles in the most important literary Devil since Milton's, but the difference between Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephisto is the difference between a basically Christian and a basically secular world view').

A Romantic movement arose in response to the Enlightenment. They valued emotions and feelings over reason and logic. They gave new meaning to traditional symbols. Satan, fighting against Jehovah, was a heroic figure fighting for freedom from illegitimate authority. Jesus, against Satan, was a hero fighting unjust worldly authority. Thus in Romantic eyes Satan could represent heroism, individualism and the strive for freedom, but also isolation and selfishness. The artists of this period played with the Devil concept in interesting but often incoherent way. William Blake's mythology, especially The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Lord Byron's Cain: A Mystery. Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, which combines the Greek Prometheus with the loving Jesus and the heroic Satan. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel, about a man gaining Godlike powers, creating life: diabolical imagery surrounds the monster, but Frankenstein replaces supernatural horror with scientific horror. Victor Hugo's The End of Satan.

Romanticism split into Naturalism, which spurned the supernatural in favour of realism, and Decadence, an exploration of human sensuality. The latter led to a rise of occultism. Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil. Lautreamont's The Chants of Maldoror. J-K Huysman investigated the occult Satanism of his day and wrote the novel The Damned, a fictional account of his experiences in this secret world. Huysman was so repelled by what he witnessed that he converted to Catholicism. 

After being attacked on scientific and historical fronts, religion was then attacked by psychologists: Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Carl Jung. Freud argued that the Devil was the personification of repressed unconscious desires. Klein argued that since children easily divide the world between good and bad, while adults learn ambivalence and shades of grey, the religious divide between good and evil is a sign of psychological immaturity. Carl Jung saw the Devil as an important psychological symbol that helped us face up to the existence of evil. Dostoevsky's The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov defends religion while facing up to problem of evil and presenting compelling evil characters. Twentieth century horrors re-emphasized the problem of evil. Satan in modern literature: Tolkien, CS Lewis, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, etc. The Devil in pop culture and music. LaVeyan Satanism ('their Satanic Bible is a melange of hedonistic maxims and incoherent occultism').

Burton believes that a lack of belief in a transcendent evil force makes the world more dangerous, and he looks at the arguments on both sides. My own opinion on this matter is undecided.

This is an astonishingly erudite book, and contains an incredible amount of information for less than 300 pages. My only complaint is that the Devil in Islam is not explored: Burton says in his introduction that this is treated in the Lucifer volume of his original quartet, but I feel like he could have fit even a short chapter on Islam's Devil into this book. Nevertheless, I thoroughly recommend this book for a relatively easy-reading history of the Devil and evil in human thought. 

'I, Lucifer' by Glen Duncan

Since finishing the Bible I've read quite a few books which play around with Biblical mythology in some way: if the Apocrypha and Talmud form the primary level of the Bible's expanded universe (EU), these more recent works form its secondary level. Some of these books are sympathetic towards Satan, the Adversary, the Prince of Darkness.

This tradition (probably) begins with Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), a cinematic poem (it features montages, epic battles, giant monsters, a sex scene, etc: it is a cinematic poem) retelling the War in Heaven and Creation myths. Satan is the poem's anti-hero protagonist, on a vengeful quest against a tyrant God. Milton, a Protestant Christian, was a republican who supported Cromwell & Co against King Charles I in the English Civil War; consciously or not, Milton's political views were channeled into his portrayal of Satan the freedom-loving rebel, making him the most endearing character in the poem. 

Milton's Satan is tempting because he is well-drawn and understandable, but his evil nature - he is supposed to be the personification of evil, after all - is not well fleshed out. He is evil because he opposes God, because the narrator repeatedly insults Satan and tells the reader that he is evil, and because he makes an evil speech worthy of a cartoon villain:

'Doing or suffering: but of this be sure,

To do ought good never will be our task,

But ever to do ill our sole delight,

As being the contrary to his high will

Whom we resist. If then his providence

Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

Our labor must be to pervert that end,

And out of good still to find means of evil'

The poem is ambiguous over who the reader is supposed to support: we are drawn in to the questing and characterization of Satan the Protagonist, even though he is supposed to be the bad guy. A Satan character only works when he is a genuinely tempting figure: an obviously wrong Satan would never have convinced enough Angels to side with him in the Heavenly Civil War, etc. Here, as well as in many other areas, Paradise Lost succeeds.

The Revolt of the Angels (1914) by Anatole France recasts the fallen angels as somewhat comically inept radical revolutionaries trying to start a second rebellion against a tyrant God ("we shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful democracy"). France's narrative is not ambiguous over who the reader should be supporting: the Fallen Angels are the good guys, God the tyrant is the bad guy (France was an atheist socialist). Satan's appearance is only brief: the novel follows angel and human characters in early 20th century Paris. Four middle chapters tell the history of Heaven and Earth from a fallen angel perspective, with the rise of Christianity being a very negative event ("The Christians burnt books, overthrew temples, set fire to the towns, and carried out their ravages as far as the deserts"). The novel is a wonderful satirical fantasy of war, politics, and religion.

To Reign In Hell (1984) by Steven Brust is an intensely irritating retelling of the War in Heaven myth. The plot is carried by a series of frustrating misunderstandings; the characters are poorly developed, and have annoying gimmicks; the dialogue is shit; it feels like a high school drama which happens to set in Heaven at the beginning of time. 

Michael Moorcock's The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981) has Satan send a mercenary (The War Hound) on a quest for the holy grail, which could be used to cure the world's pain: Satan hopes this benevolent act will earn him God's forgiveness. Other fallen angels are not too keen on the idea, and oppose the War Hound's quest. I actually read this quite a few years ago, so it is not fresh in my mind: I remember finding the idea more interesting than the execution: it is not one of my favourite Moorcock novels.

And then there's I, Lucifer (2002) by Glen Duncan: a novel told from the Devil's first-person perspective. He's been offered a deal: swap his life as a Devil for a life as a human and get a chance at redemption, Heavenly re-entry, with a month's free trial to help him decide. A month's very debauched free trial. The story alternates between the present day (the month's free trial) and Lucifer recounting past exploits (War in Heaven, Garden of Eden, the Crucifixion, the Inquisition, Nazi Germany, etc). 

Duncan's Lucifer is, like Milton's, very tempting: we can sympathize with his point of view. He is a libertarian Devil celebrating freedom from God's authority, but he is also horrifically evil: he celebrates genocide, torture, rape, paedophilia, etc. He is a thoroughly unpleasant, genuinely terrifying personification of evil. And yet he is tempting and seductive and understandable. A very successful characterization of the Devil: evil and charming, seductive and terrifying, horrible yet tempting. 

I found it hard to put this book down: to me it was one of those books that illustrates the Reader's Paradox: I wanted to keep reading, but I also didn't want it to end. The horror and the humor, the Biblical retellings and the modern day debauchery, it was all so mesmerizing. I don't think it would have worked if was just Biblical/historical Devil anecdotes, or just the modern day narrative: either of those would probably have been boring on their own. The novel's two alternating aspects are needed to keep it interesting and fresh.

I, Lucifer reminded me of Money (1984) by Martin Amis, who Duncan cites as one of his influences. Money's hedonistic protagonist, John Self, narrates a series of debauched anecdotes about him getting drunk, womanizing, wanking, eating unhealthily, taking drunks, and generally being an unpleasant person. I found Money entertaining for a while, but it didn't have enough variety to keep me reading. After about a hundred pages I found myself losing interest, thinking Alright, I get it, he drinks a lot and has problems with women, and wants to make lots of money. I decided to abandon it.

Duncan built on Milton's Devil, making him genuinely terrifying as well as relatable, and on Amis' unreliable hedonistic narrator, adding fantastical elements and a huge backstory (thousands of years), to break up the debauchery and keep the narrative interesting.

Lucifer knows an awful lot about being the Devil, but very little about being human - from our perspective - when he starts his free trial. Over the month he learns a lot about human nature and experience, which he tries to interpret from his earlier angelic perspective. Duncan took the story somewhere I was not expecting, and I'm glad for that.

(There is a story from an old Jewish source about a Rabbi having a friendly conversation with Satan - who in Judaism is a servant of God, not a Fallen Angel. The Rabbi chastises Satan for his harsh judgement of humans, arguing that if he were a human and not an angel, he would struggle to cope with human nature and experience. I'm sure that I have this story in one of my books, but I'm not sure which one.)

I haven't mentioned Duncan's prose yet. It's delightful and witty.

On the London Underground:

'The London Underground depresses God. The Paris Metro is rescued by bubbles of romance and intellectual flimflam (He can tune in for ten minutes and get something); the New York subway is a toilet, obviously, but it looks like the movies, you know, hip, famous, cool; Rome's Metropolitana - well, Rome's got a special dispensation, not surprisingly - but London, the London Underground gets Him down. The Lloyd-Webber ads; the cadaverous drivers with their deep-sea eyeballs and miles of unfulfilled dreams; the Lloyd-Webber ads; the puking office juniors and passed-out tramps; the death's-door beggars with their raw ankles and shat pants; the Lloyd-Webber ads; the buskers; the evening's fractured make-up and the morning's frowsty breath; all this and more - but chiefly the surrender to despair or vacancy the rattling tube demands, chiefly the tendency of London's human beings to collapse into a seat or hang from a rail in a state of bitter capitulation to the sadness and boredom and loneliness and excruciating glamourlessness of their lives. The only thing He sees on the Underground that cheers him up is blind people who have friendly relationships with their guide dogs.'

On Archangel Michael:

'He's might fond of his own name, needless to say, which he translates at parties as 'who is like God'. I wonder the Old Bugger lets him get away with it, since the correct - and far less flattering - translation is a rhetorical question: 'Who is like God?' Used to piss him off no end in the old days. Every time someone said, 'Er, Michael?' I used to cut in straight away with, 'Me.''

On smelling a bathroom for the first time:

'A lawless horde of smells: soap, chalk, rotting wood, limescale, sweat, semen, vaginal juice, toothpaste, ammonia, stale tea, vomit, linoleum, rust, chlorine - a stampede of whiffs, a roistering cavalcade of reeks, stinks and perfumes in Bacchanalian cahoots... all are weeyulcum... all are weeyulcum... Yes, they certainly were, though they fairly gang-banged my virgin nostrils. I sniffed, recklessly, the draughts long and deep; in went Gunn's Pantene for fine or flyaway, wreathed with his shit's ghost-odour, veined, too, with faded frangipani and sandalwood from ex-girlfriend Penelope's incense sticks he burns bathside as pungent accompaniment to the pain of remembering her.'

I should mention a negative. While Duncan's prose is fun and witty, it can sometimes be wrong: grammatically incorrect, with a comma missing or a comma in the wrong place, etc. A few times I had to re-read the sentences a few times to figure out what he was trying to say. He could've done with a better editor. These errors did not detract much from my overall enjoyment of the book though. I intend to read more of Duncan's novels, when I have read enough of my current to-read pile that I can justify buying more books.

If you're unsure whether you want to read it, here's the opening paragraph to, er, tempt you:

'I, Lucifer, Fallen Angel, Prince of Darkness, Bringer of Light, Ruler of Hell, Lord of the Flies, Father of Lies, Apostate Supreme, Tempter of Mankind, Old Serpent, Prince of This World, Seducer, Accuser, Tormentor, Blasphemer, and without doubt Best Fuck in the Seen and Unseen Universe (ask Eve, that minx) have decided - oo-la-la! - to tell all.'

Paradise Lost (Again)

I've been re-reading 'Paradise Lost', because it's damned good. I felt like writing something about it again, because when I wrote about it two years ago I was still very giddy about how good it is, was still hyper from the discovery that reading a poem could be an immersive cinematic experience, and the thing I wrote back then is very unsatisfying to re-read: my 'ZOMFG I cant tel u how awsum it is' fanboying makes me cringe.

So I started to write about it again, thinking that re-reading it two years on I would be able to do it more justice, perhaps a little calmer, perhaps with some more analysis. For those that don't know: 'Paradise Lost' is a 17th century epic poem by John Milton, which tells 'Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe, with loss of Eden'. It is a retelling of the the War in Heaven and creation myths from Judeo-Christian mythology. And it's so good: one of the greatest works of English literature.

There was going to be more to this. I was going to go through the whole thing in a series of posts, perhaps one for each chapter/book that makes up the epic, discussing the scenes and including a few choice quotes.

But I can't do it. I just fanboy over it too much. I want to quote the whole thing. Here's Satan rising out of a lake of fire in the early pages:

'Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature; on each hand the flames
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and rolled
In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale.'

And then there's the speeches. And the fight scenes. And the sex scene. And the montages (yes, montages: it's a cinematic poem). It's just so good.

ZOMFG I cant tel u how awsum it is.

A Gnostic Creation Myth

Warning: Convoluted

Before time and space and matter, the True God existed in the realm called Pleroma. From the True God came emanations which produced Aeons, divine beings. Each successive emanation produced weaker beings, and so Sophia, the youngest Aeon, was also the weakest and furthest from the True God. Sophia wanted to know the True God, the Source of All Things, and from this desire came an emanation that produced Chaos. Terrified by the Chaos, Sophia created a being to rule over and monitor it: Ialdabaoth, the Demiurge, the First Archon.

Ialdabaoth is an inferior being created by the least of the Aeons, and so is unable comprehend that he is not the greatest thing in existence, despite Sophia's myriad attempts to explain this. The Demiurge assembled the Chaos into Matter, creating more Archons, the Seven Heavens, and the Earth. Archons argue a lot, and fight over petty things; one such disagreement led to a Heavenly Civil War. After defeating the rebels, Ialdabaoth declared "There is no God but me!"

"You are mistaken!" said Sophia.

"If there is a higher power, it should make itself known to me!"

On cue, light descended from the higher realms, and in the light a human form could be discerned.

Not one to be outdone, Ialdabaoth set about creating his own human, Adam, with the help of his Archons, each Archon being assigned a specific job (Raphao designed his head, Miamai designed his toenails, etc). But the Archons could not breath life into Adam, try as they might. At length, Ialdabaoth stole some of his mother's power and used it to bring Adam to life. But his mother's power was stronger than his, and so the Archons became jealous of Adam, recognizing in him a superior intelligence to their own. They dumped Adam in the shittest material realm they had created - Earth - and made him a partner, Eve, hoping that the humans would be content there, kept out of mischief, not interfering with the Archons' delusions of grandeur.

But Sophia had lost some of herself, and wished to regain it, for without it she could never resume her journey to the True God. Her servant, the Serpent, the wisest of all creatures, convinced Eve to disobey the Archon's orders, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, and so her eyes were opened. And she convinced Adam to do the same. The Chief Archon responded by cursing humanity, casting the couple out of Eden, and desperately trying to assert his dominance over their descendants, sending plagues, floods, rulebooks, etc, to convince them that he is the One True God.

Meanwhile, two Aeons - Christ and Holy Spirit - descended to the material world to help rescue the trapped fragments of Sophia, to awaken the dormant divinity within humanity, to make Sophia whole again.

'To Reign In Hell' by Steven Brust

After enjoying The Revolt of the Angels (1914) by Anatole France, I thought I would read some more books that play around with myth of the War in Heaven from Paradise Lost (1667) and Judeo-Christian mythology. The Internet recommended To Reign In Hell (1984) by Steven Brust.

Brust's book is a fantasy novel set in Heaven, before the creation of Earth. Brust's Yaweh is not omniscient or omnipotent; he is the first of the Firstborn Angels, not a god. Heaven is a fragile island in a sea of chaos; Heaven's inhabitants are constantly worried about the chaos beyond the walls, which threatens to destroy them all. Yaweh comes up with a plan - the creation of Earth - to save the angels from chaos, but it transpires that many angels will have to die to carry out the plan. Doubts spread. 

The ideas in the novel have a lot of promise, but the execution is so irritating and disappointing. It feels like an early draft, an unripe fruit, a story born too premature from Brust's mind-womb.

TRIH is a fantasy novel with a map

The plot is carried along by Big Misunderstandings and Communication Failures. The war could have been avoided if the important characters actually spoke to each other a little bit more. Without speaking to Satan, Yaweh decides that his best friend is definitely out to get him. Without speaking to Yaweh, Lucifer & Co decide that their good friend is definitely out to get them (Lucifer and Satan are separate characters). As the misunderstandings build up, the plot becomes irritatingly farcical.

The characters are not developed. This review compares TRIH to a high school drama:

'Yaweh, Satan, Lucifer and Lilith are the cool student council kids of the book. The archangel Michael is the big, dumb jock who just does what the cool kids tell him to. Raphael is the nice, pretty chick who goes along with Yaweh because she doesn't know what else to do. Mephistopheles is that creepy, nerdy kid who listens in on everyone's conversations and knows way too much. And so on...

Yaweh declares himself student council president ("Lord of Lords"), which ticks off the other cool kids. Raphael and Michael go along with it, even though Michael really wants to punch Yaweh in the face. And Lucifer, Lilith and Satan decide Yaweh is a big jerk and they're going to fight him.'

Add to this underdevelopment the fact that some of the characters have irritating gimmicks. Beelzebub is a golden retriever who speaks in Elizabethan English for no reason ("Methinks all is not well, milord."). Ariel is an owl who speaks in rhymes ("O mighty one of the salty sea, word has come you've need of me."). Harut speaks like an American waitress ("Sure, honey."). It often feels like Brust is trying very hard to be hilarious.

The dialogue is irritating: it is too simple and casual for the subject matter and setting. Like the poor character development and plot progression, it makes the story feel like a high school drama:

"What kind of get-together, Harut?"

"Dunno. But everybody is supposed to show up."

"Hmmmm. What about you?"

"I'll be with Leviathan."

"I see."

"Afternoon, Mephistopheles."

"So long, Harut."

The scenes are irritatingly short. When reading, our mind converts the words we read into a movie in our heads, sort of. TRIH switches between POV characters too frequently. For sake of argument, assume that a page of the book would be 1 minute of screen time in an adaptation. Chapter 12 of TRIH is 12.5 pages long. Imagine how irritating all these transitions would be; imagine if Game of Thrones switched between characters this frequently:

Scene 1: Lucifer, Lilith, Asmodia, Michael & Harut; 3 pages, 3 minutes

Scene 2: Beelzebub & Mephistopheles chat; 1 page, 1 minute.

Scene 3: Abdiel & Gabriel; ⅓ page, 20 seconds

Scene 4: Gabriel & Mephistopheles; 1 page, 1 minute

Scene 4: Beelzebub, Satan, Lucifer, Lilith, Asmodai & Michael; 3⅓ pages, 3 minutes 20 seconds

Scene 5: Kyriel & Sith; 1⅓ pages, 1 minute 20 seconds

Scene 6: Yaweh; 1/2 page, 30 seconds

Scene 7: Satan & Beelzebub; ½ page, 30 seconds

Scene 8: Abdiel & Gabriel; 1½ pages, 1 minute 30 seconds

Eight scene transitions in 12 minutes 30 seconds. This novel is so irritating.

Despite all this, I did manage to finish the novel. All the way to the end, I was tempted to give up. But I was curious where Brust would go with it; there are moments in the novel which suggest that if it had been redrafted a few more times, been left to ripen, been kept in Brust's mind-womb for a bit longer, it could have been spectacular. I would love a novel which retells the War in Heaven myth as the story of Heaven's transition from a quasi-egalitarian society to a military dictatorship, but where both sides are treated sympathetically: Yaweh the well-meaning tyrant, and Satan/Lucifer the well-meaning rebel.

"We are tyrants. That was what was so hard to come to terms with. We don't wish to be, but to do what we have to do, we must tell, not ask. And to tell the angels to do something, we must be ready to back up our words with force... I had to either abandon the Plan or become a tyrant." - Yaweh, page 203

"What I mean is this: I have decided to oppose Yaweh's plan. I think he's wrong, and dangerous, and the events of today have proven it. I mean to oppose him. I wish to see him cast down from his Palace, and I wish to see him no longer able to force his will on me, or the hosts of angels who are now under his dominion." - Lucifer, page 186

TRIH could have been great, but there is too much wrong with it. At best, it is worth reading as an interesting failure. For enjoyment, Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels is more successful and enjoyable, and Milton's Paradise Lost is one of the best things ever written.

'The Revolt of the Angels' by Anatole France

In 1921, Anatole France was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1922, the Roman Catholic Church added all of his books to its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Prohibited Books Index), which was only abolished in 1966. Nowadays, Anatole France is quite unknown in the English-speaking world: of his many books, only two are in print in English: The Gods Will Have Blood (1912), published by Penguin Classics, and The Revolt of the Angels (1914), published by Dover Thrift in 2015. Reading the latter, it becomes obvious why the church banned France's work.

"I am about to reveal to you a secret on which hangs the fate of the Universe. In rebellion against him who you hold to be creator of all things visible and invisible, I am preparing the Revolt of the Angels."

TROTA has a slow opening: we are given the history of a French family and their library, and a mystery of missing books. It is not until chapter 10, page 36 of 165, that the story actually gets going. Maurice d'Esparvieu's guardian angel has been stealing books and educating himself. The angel has studied the Bible and the Talmud, and the scholarship surrounding them; has "devoured the works of theologians, philosophers, physicists, geologists, and naturalists"; has read and re-read Lucretius; and has concluded that God is a lying tyrant. Reaching this conclusion, and grasping the scale of the deception, turns Arcade into a revolutionist.

"I believe in the God of the Jews and the Christians. But I deny that he created the world; at the most he organised but an inferior part of it, and all that he touched bears the mark of his rough and unforeseeing touch. I do not think he is either eternal or infinite, for it is absurd to conceive of a being who is not bounded by space or time. I believe him limited, even very limited. I no longer believe him to be the only God. For a long time he did not believe it himself; in the beginning he was a polytheist; later, his pride and the flattery of his worshipers made him a monotheist. His ideas have little connection; He is less powerful than he is thought to be. And, to speak candidly, he is not so much a God as a vain and ignorant demiurge. Those who, like myself, know his true nature, call him Ialdabaoth."

The angel abandons his post as Maurice's guardian to begin his new life as a rebel. He meets other fallen angels to organize a second revolt against God. They plan to smuggle propaganda into Heaven, to spread knowledge of evolution and cosmology among the loyal angels ("It is certainly no light task, because the Kingdom of Heaven is a military autocracy and there is no public opinion in it."). They purchase weapons, make bombs, and ready themselves for all-out war with Heaven ("we shall carry war into the heavens, where we shall establish a peaceful democracy"). Four middle chapters tell the history of Heaven and Earth from a fallen angel perspective, with the rise of Christianity being a very negative event ("The Christians burnt books, overthrew temples, set fire to the towns, and carried out their ravages as far as the deserts.").

One can see why the Catholic Church banned France's work.

I enjoyed this book a lot, but then I can sympathize with Arcade. Reading the Bible made me respect it as literature - at its best, very beautiful literature - but the gaping plot chasms and inconsistencies were too infuriating to take it seriously as history or cosmology. I have also read and re-read Lucretius. I have read and written a bit about the polytheistic origins of the Bible. It probably also helps that I am quite a fan of Milton's Paradise Lost, which is a big influence on TROTA, and of Christopher Hitchens, who compared monotheistic beliefs to totalitarianism.

Studying the Bible also drew me towards Gnosticism, although I have not read as much about it as I would like. In the early centuries of the Common Era, Christianity spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, mainly amongst illiterate non-Jews who had little to no knowledge of the Jewish scriptures that their new faith was supposed to be concluding. When more Christians got access to these scriptures, they were a tad surprised at they found. Why was the loving God of love, as represented by Jesus, being such a prick? Why was he advocating and committing genocide? Why had he not fixed the world, if he was supposedly all-powerful? Why was there so much evil in the world?

Gnosticism resolved these plot holes. The Jewish God was insane, had limited power over the material world, and wrongly believed himself to be the One True God (and was rather insecure about this). The true God, represented by Jesus, was immaterial and had no power over the material world, ruled by the Jewish God and his angels. The Gnostics gave the insane god the name Ialdabaoth. It's a fun mythology; I should read its scriptures sometime. Orthodox Christians persecuted the shit out of the Gnostics after the Council of Nicaea; in 1208, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade against a surviving group of Gnostic Christians - the Cathars - found living in France, who were then annihilated.

Gnostic digression over: back to TROTA. Overall, the novel is very good. There is a sometimes bleak, sometimes cheeky humor throughout. After the slow beginning, the story advances at a decent pace. I thought the final chapter was superb. My only gripe is that the stories of the human characters (Maurice's family and associates) are not as interesting as the growing angel rebellion: I found myself wanting to skip the human sections, even though these provided most of the cheeky humor. I recommend this novel, and would read more of Anatole France's work.

Holy Trilogy: Conclusion

I have finished reading the Holy Trilogy (Hebrew Bible; New Testament; Qur'an). Achievement Unlocked!

It has taken me slightly less than a year, and during that time I have been figuring out where I stand on religious matters. This seems a good time to stop binge-reading books about religion and summarise the current state of my opinions.

I am, in a sense, deeply religious. I am addicted to the mystical experience, the feeling of being one with the universe in all its complexity and majesty, of 'lying on the bosom of the infinite world'*, and seeing everything aflame with radiance and significance. Throughout human history, this experience has variously been interpreted as a connection to the gods, God, Nirvana, Dao, etc. In the ancient world, I might have been a priest, a prophet, or a monk. Alas, modernity has saved me from that fate.

Having come from a science (and science fiction) background, traditional religious imagery is extremely unsatisfying. The 'miracles' are often underwhelming; the cosmologies are crass and tacky. While reading the Holy Trilogy, I was constantly reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's The City and the Stars:

'Throughout the earlier part of its history, the human race had brought forth an endless succession of prophets, seers, messiahs, and evangelists who convinced themselves and their followers that to them alone were the secrets of the universe revealed. Some of them succeeded in establishing religions which survived for many generations and influenced billions of men; others were forgotten even before their deaths.

The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken.'

I have grown quite fond of some branches of theology, but their 'God' is so different to the usual view that, to avoid confusion, I would prefer not to use the word 'God'. Most people have never heard of Paul Tillich, let alone Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Sometimes I think of myself as an 'independent mystic'.

'God' is usually imagined as a divine tyrant, 'Heaven's awful monarch'**, who watches everything, wiretaps your thoughts, rewards those who think how he wants and do what he wants, punishes those who do not, and occasionally interferes with human history by helping out his homies or giving messages to arbitrarily chosen prophets who pass the message to the masses. The tyrant's earthly servants/slaves/sheep/flock do his bidding (whether good or evil), censor criticism, vilify doubters, and punish apostates with social exclusion or death.

This is a nightmarish idea. How would one choose any particular religion when they all claim divine inspiration, and their adherents all claim to Just Know? Am I to pick the religion as I was nominally raised in, and hope that since I was born into a first world country, I was also born into the One True Faith? What if I haven't passed the tyrant's test? What if I haven't been nice enough? What if the tyrant actually meant for his followers to obey all the awful stuff in the sacred text? What if I have been too nice?

It feels cheap to ridicule this idea, because it is so ridiculous.

I am happy to call myself a humanist. I believe that humans have the capacity to instil their lives with meaning and choose good over evil. I do not believe in an afterlife. I find writings about accepting death and the finitude of our existence more consoling and inspiring than any afterlife wankery. If there is an afterlife, it will be a pleasant surprise (unless the Wahhabi Muslims were right all along!), but I'm not getting my hopes up. Let's make the most of the one life we know we have.

Too much religion is characterised by dishonesty, dogmatism, and doublethink. There is so much awful stuff in the sacred texts. I have become, in a sense, deeply anti-religious. Perhaps we need a new synthesis, combining humanist values and reasoned enquiry with the best aspects of the traditional religions, to produce something which can, without hypocrisy, move with the times, doing away with the barbaric, the bigoted, and the bonkers.

*Friedrich Schleiermacher, 'On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers'
**Angel Gabriel, 'Paradise Lost', Book IV

Hebrew Bible: Conclusion

I have finished reading the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). Achievement Unlocked!

I am very fond of the Hebrew Bible. It certainly puts the Qur'an to shame (admittedly, that is not difficult). I would read a lot of it again. Maybe in a decade or so I will splash out on a different translation. I am a fan of the Hebrew Bible.

I enjoyed it on two levels:

Firstly, I enjoyed it as a grimdark fantasy saga about a bumbling deity who loses control of his creation and desperately tries to make his favourite people worship him. For sheer brutality and variety, the Hebrew Bible puts our modern epics to shame. The stories feature battles, assassinations, talking animals, gang rape, political subterfuge, ghosts, infanticide, an army of the undead, human sacrifice, genocide, cannibalism, giant monsters, slavery, fiery serpents, torture, wizards, house parties, and much more.

However, the stories are not set in a very consistent universe. Even the first two chapters contradict each other; they were written in different centuries. There is a lot of repetition (God gets angry a lot), and a lot of filler (lists of names, rules, measurements, etc), which detracts from the enjoyment and can make the reading experience quite tiresome.

Secondly, I enjoyed it as an anthology of ancient books trying to make sense of the world. It gives a monotheist twist to the popular illogic 'We don't know X, therefore magic.' Other mythologies attribute life's vicissitudes to the conflicting interests of rival gods; the biblical authors had no such luxury. Everything was attributed to the mood swings of Israel's one god; they made him responsible for famine, disease, fertility, drought, bountiful harvests, military victory and defeat, chronic diarrhoea, wild animals going on killing sprees, etc. The Hebrew God is responsible for both good and evil; the Hebrew Satan is one of God's servants.

The books of the Hebrew Bible express a wide range of emotions - sorrow and fear and rage and love and grief and hate and joy and lust and hope (so much hope) - each commingled with the awe and reverence felt when contemplating the mere fact of our existence in a universe whose complexity and majesty exceeds our possible comprehension. The Hebrew Bible is sometimes appallingly barbaric, and sometimes shockingly beautiful.

It is perhaps premature to reach this conclusion (I have not yet finished the New Testament), but I'm going to say that the Hebrew Bible is the least moral but most inspiring of the 'Holy Trilogy' (Hebrew Bible; New Testament; Qur'an). The Hebrew Bible has had a massive influence on our culture; I would recommend reading it. If you can't be bothered with the full thing (which is very understandable), two of the books are literary masterpieces which you should read for their own sake: 'The Book of Job' and 'Ecclesiastes'. At least read one of these!

('Ecclesiastes' is the shorter of the two.)

Hebrew Bible: Zephaniah

Zephaniah is another biblical prophet that you've probably never heard of. His book is the inspiration for the hymm 'Dies Irae' ('Day of Wrath') and is about what happens when God gets angry. You do not want to make God angry. You would not like God when he is angry:

'“I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord. “I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, and the rubble with the wicked. I will cut off mankind from the face of the earth,” declares the Lord.'

"At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the men who are complacent, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do ill.’ Their goods shall be plundered, and their houses laid waste."

"I will bring distress on mankind, so that they shall walk like the blind, because they have sinned against the Lord; their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them on the day of the wrath of the Lord. In the fire of his jealousy, all the earth shall be consumed; for a full and sudden end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth."

“Therefore wait for me,” declares the Lord, “for the day when I rise up to seize the prey. For my decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my indignation, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my jealousy all the earth shall be consumed."

After he's finished trashing the earth in a tantrum, the survivors will all worship him:

“For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord."

'"I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. But I will leave in your midst a people humble and lowly. They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord, those who are left in Israel... At that time I will bring you in, at the time when I gather you together; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,” says the Lord.'

Hebrew Bible: Esther

'The Book of Esther' begins with King Ahaseurus of Persia having an epic house party. Ahaseurus was a good host; he provided lots of booze and had a very important rule about alcohol consumption:
'Drinks were served in golden vessels, vessels of different kinds, and the royal wine was lavished according to the bounty of the king. And drinking was according to this edict: “There is no compulsion.”'

By the party's seventh day (this was an epic house party), Ahaseurus and friends were very, very drunk. The king decided he wanted to show off his sexy wife, Queen Vashti, but she wasn't up for it.

This made Ahaseurus very angry; he consulted his drunken friends about what to do. They decided that it would be dangerous to keep Vashti as the queen after that disobedience; what if women all across the kingdom started disobeying their husbands?! He sent letters to every province saying that all women must honour their husbands, that every man be master in his own household. He also signed a royal order saying that Vashti was no longer queen, would never be queen again, and that this royal order couldn't be repealed.

After he'd calmed down and sobered up, Ahaseurus realised he needed a new queen. He sent officers across the kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins so he could pick his favourite.
Esther became queen and foiled an attempted genocide. Go Esther!