Wrestling with Religion

  Told by Wesley Wright, 1914 (2 Samuel 13: 1-39) Back in Indian days, when it was open season on land-stealing, my granddaddy claimed Wright’s Hill and the creek bottoms under it. He cleared the woods and built two log houses, one of them for his brother Lot. With slaves from Georgia, the brothers set out to fulfill the first commandment: be fruitful and multiply. One slave—name of Amos—jumped the gun with a Indian woman who gave him a free daughter, but the white boys had to a slow start. Lot died without issue, so David’s people were the only white family.            In 1870, where I’ll pick up, my granddaddy David had two legitimate sons, O. C. and Lester. Lester claimed Lot's old house in the bottoms while O. C. stayed on the hill with David and the only mama he knew, Cleo, which was the half-Indian daughter of the slave Amos. Cleo cooked for David and gave him a son even before grandmama died giving birth to O. C. David loved and educated all h...

The Gospel of John agrees with the other gospels that the world is occupied by demonic forces able to thwart the will of God. Christ has come to free the world from this Satanic (and Roman) domination, and his miracles are signs of this mission--victories for good in a war against evil.          John differs from the synoptic gospels in containing much less storytelling. What there is, before the crucifixion narrative, inserts seven "signs" between blocks of preaching in Jesus' voice. Only three times is Satan mentioned by name. There are exactly three references to demon possession, and in all three Jesus denies that he himself is possessed. This is in sharp contrast to Mark, Luke, and Matthew, where Jesus repeatedly casts out other people's demons. As noted earlier, the Greek gospels distinguish between the Devil ( Diabolos, ' Accuser ,' a literal translation of Hebrew Satan ) and demons ( daimonia , Greek for lower gods or spirits). Satan goes by other...

SCENE ONE. The cabin of an ancient barge. Sound of rain and animals. A 600-year-old man in a robe sits by an oil lamp. More rain. He yawns and begins to look at his watch but realizes they haven't been invented yet. A knocking from a gopherwood cabinet across the cabin. Muffled cries. NOAH opens the cabinet to discover DAVE in modern clothes with a time machine strapped to his chest, a box with knobs and blinking lights. DAVE crawls out and frowns. DAVE. Does it always smell like this? NOAH. Well, they still do it two-by-two, and not in the woods. Who are you? DAVE. Call me Dave. By training a Hebraist, by trade a production assistant. Oh, and don't worry, sir. I'm, like, upright in my generation. Well, maybe not so much since I took the TV gig. So you're Noah, right? NOAH. Have we met? DAVE. My apologies for barging in on your family trip--or shouldn't I say arking in? Ark! Barge! It's a joke, sir. Sorry for barging in on you and your beautiful family. Ju...

  The words translated devil and demon in English have two distinct origins.             Devil derives from Greek diabolos , which means 'accuser' and translates the Hebrew satan (also meaning 'accuser') in the Greek version of the Old Testament used by New Testament writers. The Devil literally is the Satan , and a devil (until its meaning blurred with use) is a satan , a figurative comparison to the Prince of Evil. Devil is one of his names. In The Book of Job, the diabolos ( ha-satan 'the accuser') gathers with the "sons of God." If not literally a son, he's part of God's retinue. If he's a fallen, it's not evident in Job . The Devil is an individual, evil perhaps, but with angelic dignity. Demon , an unrelated word, derives from ancient Greek daimon , a generic term for god in the time of Homer, later narrowed to minor deities--animistic spirits of persons or things. In Plato's Apology , Socrates calls the inner voi...