devil
personnified force of evil found in the Persian Zoroastrian background to the Jewish tradition as it developed between the Old and New Testaments. Several images become conflated in the tradition: the figure of the tempting serpent from Genesis, Lucifer a fallen angel in Isaiah, the tester of faith in Job, and in the gospels, the tempter of Jesus and destructive presence in the lives of individuals so that they lose their humanity. Demonic imagery is developed further in popular imagination over the centuries. At very least it points to the seriousness with which Christians take the reality of evil and the power which it can have in people’s lives. At worst, in its ‘Manichaean’ form, the Devil is granted equal but opposing reality to that of God, with the consequence that responsibility for evil doing is displaced away from individuals. The perennial battle against evil is the subject matter of literature from Dante to Bunyan, and C S Lewis to J K Rowling.
See also:
evil