Explaining the presence of evil in the world is a goal as old as humanity itself : illnesses, personal misfortunes, natural catastrophes … they have always been caused by spirits that we could classify as cruel and evil, but none have been elevated to the category of incarnation of pure evil: the Greek and Roman religions did not know the Devil, among the 400 Celtic gods there was no room for the Evil One, the same as in the African religions not influenced by the missionaries, in the Indians of North America, nor even in Shintoism, Buddhism, Taoism …
In the Hebrew holy books Satan never appears as the leader of an evil empire that has declared war on God and humanity : this only happens in Christianity.
Who laid the foundations of Christian satanology was the author of the Gospel of John, his letters and the Apocalypse . It is John who names him lord of the world and the cause of all bad actions. But the arrival of the Son of God broke this diabolical domain.
Interestingly, one of the most terrible sentences in his Gospel is the claim that Jews are children of the devil. If they did not have enough to be accused of deicide, that the Jesus of John told them “you come from the devil, who is your father” gave Christians carte blanche to persecute, tithe and humiliate them for centuries. The confrontation between Good and Evil, inherited from the Jewish legends of the 1st century BC. C., has marked Christianity to incredible extremes. Now, where did this dualism come from?
Jewish demonology drank profusely from the Iranian view of the world : demons, angels, and archangels were born in Iran in 500 BC. And if there is a culprit to be pointed out, that is Zarathustra or Zoroaster , a man of whom very little is known but who changed the prevailing polytheism in that region for Ahura Mazda, the only lord: here is the beginning of monotheism. In order not to eliminate the old gods, he turns them into emanations of Ahura Mazda, the angels.
Among them, the two most powerful: the good Spenta Manyu and the bad Angra Manyu . At first, they were both heads and tails of the coin, but in the end Angra ended up becoming an anti-god, the declared enemy of Ahura Mazda . It can be said louder but not clearer: Satan was born in Iran in the 6th century BC. C.
