Corporate Social Responsiblity. Investor Relations. Review a Brill Book. What is the origin of evil? An answer to this perennial question is offered by an Islamic myth, which has existed in the collective memory of Muslim Mediterranean society for over a thousand years. As this myth has been re-told over the years, its emphases varied according to the contexts in which it is being narrated.
These contexts extend from at least the 4th a. Munabbih d. Adam came, and burnt him in fire, and spread his ashes in the sea. This text can be interpreted on a number of levels. Each of these three different levels of interpretation reveals other aspects of the story and of its multiple meanings. Of a special interest is the way in which the analysis of the text as a folk tale contributes to the understanding of this narrative as a religious story, both in its specific context in Islam and in relation to other religious traditions.
Other matters that will be discussed below have to do with 1 the functions of the text in each of the contexts in which it exists; 2 its origin; and 3 the differences between religious and folk literature, with regard to the circulation of this story. In terms of circulation, this report is unusually rare. Then the two versions are identical.
This question will be discussed below. Whereas two of these anthologies contain popular Palestinian stories, 7 the third one contains Jewish-Yemenite folk tales. All the versions of the folk tales have been collected in an Arabic-speaking environment, which might indicate that the origin of the story is Arab or Muslim, although this is difficult to assert on the basis of the existing information.
Also supporting this view, however, is the fact that the story is hardly known in Jewish and Christian religious sources. Although this story connotes with the view of some early commentators of the Bible that Cain was the son of Eve and Satan, 9 the Cain story is quite different from the story discussed here. Only the name of the first transmitter is given: Wahb b. His reputation could also have led to the lack of popularity of the report in scholarly literature.
However, it might also be that an unreliable transmitter was attached to the report as a reflection or even a reinforcement of its unpopularity. However, as I have mentioned above, such a parallel has not been located yet. Indeed, the folk tale versions of the story omit these elements. As will be shown below, 19 while the last sentence of the Jewish-Yemenite version, after the Devil expresses his satisfaction at his son being eaten by Adam and Eve, speaks of the little devil who constantly occupies humans with thoughts, the last sentence in the Palestinian version does not refer to any seductive whisperings or human breasts.
Here one notes an opposite situation. As well as evoking theological and philosophical questions, this story also serves other goals and purposes in the different contexts in which it has been related. This is why humans, too, have a double nature. According to C. However, this tie must be loosened in puberty. The child has thus to be detached from his origins—thus the ordeals suffered by child gods and young heroes. In all child myths he is on the one hand delivered helpless into the hands of terrible enemies and in danger of extinction, on the other has powers exceeding those of ordinary humans.
This represents the urge of all beings to realise themselves. He is literally cut from his substitute mother Eve , but despite his helplessness this child has a supernatural ability to resurrect himself each time anew. Within the human breast, he constitutes the seeds potential of evil and inflated ego. His presence and seductive whisperings in human breasts are the result of an incident involving his father and the father of humanity.
For his purposes, the text speaks for itself. One of them is that the Devil dwells within human beings. Another Islamic concept is that anger should be avoided, for it is of the Devil. The idea of anger as a thing of the Devil is repeated in a number of traditions. If any of you is angry he should undergo ablution. That is, even though the Devil is within the human heart, the choice of right and wrong is still maintained.
Finally, this report supports the preservation of the existing social order, as it condemns violations of traditional conventions regarding the normative social roles of women. In the context of folk literature, this story serves as an aetiological myth, which explains the origin of evil. This function of the text will be further discussed below. A possible explanation for its rejection from the scholarly literature emerges from the discussion below.
This law is an essential element in folk narratives; but it is exactly this contrast which is missing in the story. However, this contrast is not reflected in the story itself, in which God is not mentioned. It should be noted that, the previous laws, to which the story corresponds, have to do mainly with its structural characteristics, whereas the latter one deals also with the characters.
Thus, a characters analysis might, therefore, give different results. For that purpose, the story should be read independently, regardless of its religious context. He gives them his son to look after, and they kill him, time after time, out of revenge. For this behaviour they receive eternal punishment. Although Adam is the initiator of this, Eve is guilty of betraying her responsibility to look after the child.
The question of contrast remains, therefore, undecided. The folk tale versions of this story try to avoid this lack of clarity, and follow the Law of Contrast. As a folk narrative, the text was told during the twentieth century in two contexts: one is Jewish-Yemenite and the other is Palestinian. It is told that our father Adam was busy that day taking care of the woods, while our mother Eve was doing her chores in the cave where she lived.
Suddenly, she heard a voice crying and rushed out of the cave towards it, and to her great surprise she saw a pretty, naked baby crying. Eve carried it as she felt sorry for it, and pampered it until it became quiet. When Adam came home from his journey, he saw the baby in her hands, took it away from her angrily, and went to the river bank, then threw it into the water and watched it sink, then he left it and returned to the cave and warned Eve about it.
At the end of the day Adam saw him there, and noticed that he was a beautiful creature, however he was not deceived by that, but carried him and threw him in the fire until he was turned into ashes. Indeed, they executed this way [of action] and ate all of it. And since that incident, all human souls have come to contain an amount of good and an amount of evil or devilry.
For the author, the derived fear is not really linked to a real and imminent danger, that is to say, people affected by it cannot understand it or connect it to any of the three kinds described above Bauman, For Gross, it is necessary to establish an enemy in contemporary societies where fear is applied as an instrument of control.
However, this enemy is not always identifiable, in fact, it is very often unknown as a suspect should be. An identified enemy would probably come from a foreign country and would be a cold and calculating deceiver of others, instead of the suspect, who would not be noted, and would act unpredictably. The suspect could even be a neighbor. Gross affirms that we live in a time of distrust, where anybody or anything can suddenly turn into an enemy Gross, Bauman says that at a time people have lost their faith in institutions and great ideals, the fear of a probable enemy becomes ubiquitous and justifies the existence of a State that can supposedly protect them and ensure conditions in which people can take care of their lives.
It is worth noting that the feeling of safety cannot be long-lasting in a neoliberal society, because fear must help drive consumption. Thus, in neoliberal societies, people always have to fear something, such as a terrorist, a hurricane, or a severe type of flu, so that the consumption of medicine and security systems is increased and they are able to generate profit.
For the author, in these societies, trust and attachment to others are dissolved, giving place to suspicion and fear Bauman, In other words, fear is what makes the market system thrive.
The UCKG takes hold of a fearful image of the Devil in order to exercise its pastoral power and guarantee for itself the fame of an institution able to protect and save.
At the UCKG stages, the Devil is pictured as a recognizable foe, the incarnation of evil, whose actions can come from a variety of sources, such as music, TV programs, people or even animals. It means that the ideas of distrust and uncertainty centered around the suspect are rescued for this Devil, assumedly able to assault anybody at anytime or anywhere. At the UCKG or at other Pentecostal Churches, the Devil is understood to be responsible for illness, unemployment, misery and addiction.
Astonishingly, the Devil is believed to lurk on the path of the ones who already joined the Church. So, this fear of the Devil can be seen as a derived fear, because it makes the believer feel continuously anxious and unsafe, even though it is not an actual menace.
Consequently, this fear of the Devil persuades the believer to trust the Church and consider it as the source of solutions to his problems and as his great protector, as long as he keeps participating in the cults. During the cults, which is what meetings at the UCKG are called, or even during their TV programs, bishops and pastors advise their followers not to forget about going to those meetings. Then, the image of the Devil is an agent of fear at the UCKG because the belief in its existence must keep the follower scared and always alert not to be controlled by it.
Then, apart from tithing, the believer must behave according to the role model valued at the UCKG that is not to use drugs, not to cheat on their spouse, not to be weak or to give in.
He must do so in order to avoid being controlled by the Devil, the alleged cause of every evil done, within the UCKG ideology. This is the implied narrative that guides the use of the image of the Devil at the UCKG, and makes this representation of evil an instrument of the pastoral power at that church. Picture 1. Picture shows part of a YouTube post. Note the follower who presents himself as if he had been possessed by the Devil gets on his knees, allegedly subdued by the words of the bishop.
The whole scene was recorded by the TV apparatus and spread in the media. As one of the ways to assure its pastoral power, the UCKG uses the image of the Devil to persuade its followers to be present at the meetings and to tithe. During the scenes of exorcism in which the Devil appears, the main idea is that the possessed follower loses his image of a loser and becomes a free Christian winner, able to seek wealth and prosperity.
Thus, Birman continues, the UCKG Devil with features of Afro-Brazilian divinities, which are linked to a rural and traditional part of Brazilian culture is associated with poverty and all kinds of negativity, and that explains why the UCKG reproaches Afro-Brazilian religions and their sacred images.
As soon as the follower is freed from the alleged Devil, he gains the status of a winner who is finally ready to search for success and wealth. The construction of this new image of the believer, projects him into a spectacular and globalized world that the UCKG has built for itself, by being visible and influential in the media and politics.
Birman says that the UCKG untied the image of poor people in Brazil from stereotypes of victims and gave them a chance to see themselves as possible winners within the neoliberal system Birman, Instead of praising poverty and tradition, the UCKG preaches wealth and blessings for everybody in this world. In the model of society propagated by the UCKG, says Birman, Christian endeavors are rewarded by financial prosperity, because the ones who start following the Church abandon the image of losers, subdued by social exclusion, and start to identify themselves as potential winners and entrepreneurs, adapted to a world that was once denied to them.
For Birman, the believer idealized by the UCKG is someone who leaves a stigmatized perspective of poverty, attached to those who live in slums and suburban areas to achieve the possibility to be in a place of political, social and mediatic visibility, which is the Church. So, the UCKG follower can be seduced by a religious practice that separates him from an imaginary of tradition and rural culture to instead invite him into a Christian world, characterized by the neoliberal standards of success Birman, However, the UCKG follower must be fearful of the Devil and afraid of the possibility of returning to poverty and illness.
This fear has to keep him motivated to continue following the Church. Once in contact with the Church, a follower will regularly be encouraged to tithe and to give other contributions. As Huang says, the monsters incarnate the negativity and the threats that are originated in neoliberal social organizations, and are able to disguise the economic and historical circumstances that have caused poverty and illness to a part of the population. Some art historians, like Alastair Sooke of the BBC , claim that this is where the devil and his minions got their horns.
Related: No sympathy for the devil: Why people fear Satanism. Other experts disagree. Others say it might derive from the pagan god Pan, while British historian Ronald Hutton thinks it has more to do with neo-pagan revival of modern — not Medieval — times. In his book, " The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity " Cornell University Press, , Jeffrey Burton Russell claims the link between Satan and the goat derives from the devil's association with underworld fertility deities, who Christians rejected as demons.
Along with other pagan gods, these horned idols were particularly feared "because of their association with the wilderness and with sexual frenzy. Many modern audiences are used to seeing Satan as a chiseled, handsome man, such as in the Netflix series "Lucifer". This incarnation of the devil first appeared in the 17th century. In , John Milton published his epic poem "Paradise Lost," which tells the story of Satan's expulsion from heaven and his temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
In the 18th and early 19th century, there was a revival of interest in "Paradise Lost. During the 19th and early 20th century the image of the devil was used in advertisements and satirical cartoons. In one cartoon, he is being chased away by a women's suffrage campaigner. Along with his horns, he is also entirely red, with a pointed beard, and carrying a pitchfork.
Related: 20 of the most bizarre stories from the bible. The devil's red tights actually originate in theatre productions.
In , composer Charles Gounod adopted the folktale "Faust," which had also inspired Marlowe's earlier play, "Dr. Q: What does the devil look like? What do you think? Instead, Satan is a powerful spiritual force that pervades the whole creation, far greater than any person or beast or other creature.
He is not as powerful as God, nor is he eternal like God, and someday his power will come to an end.
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