SOURCE: "Bedeviling Satan," in The Nation, Vol. 260, No. 25, June 26, 1995, pp. 931-33.

In the review below, Gordon concludes that The Origin of Satan is informative but fails to address some of the questions it raises.

Satan may not exist, but there are excellent reasons to invent him. He is called onstage whenever behavior pases our understanding of the limits of the human. To say that something is diabolical means it is inexplicable in ordinary terms. It ruptures the line of measurable cause and effect, or its sheer scope and efficiency seem untraceable. This kind of attribution can be seen as a failure of imagination or a type of species compassion. When we invoke Satan, we are saying that humans can't be that bad; they wouldn't do something like that on their own.

Recently, the temptation to demonize seems stronger than it has for a long time, a fallout, perhaps...