Free The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels

26:6-10). Nevertheless,
    God ensures that everything turns out well for the Israelites and
    badly for their enemies.
    The second great foundation story is that of Moses and the
    Exodus, which also confronts “us” (that is, “Israel”) with “them”
    (that is, “the nations”) as Moses urges Pharaoh to let the
    Hebrews leave Egypt. Yet the narrator insists that it was God
    himself who increasingly hardened Pharaoh’s heart, lest he
    relent and relieve the suffering of Moses and his own people—
    and why? God, speaking through Moses, threatens Pharaoh with
    devastat-
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    ing slaughter and concludes by declaring, “but against any of the
    Israelites, not a dog shall growl— so that you may know that the
    Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel ”
    (Exod. 11:7; my emphasis).
    Many anthropologists have pointed out that the worldview of
    most peoples consists essentially of two pairs of binary
    oppositions: human/not human and we/they.3 Apart from
    anthropology, we know from experience how people
    dehumanize enemies, especially in wartime.
    That Israel’s traditions deprecate the nations, then, is no
    surprise. What is surprising is that there are exceptions. Hebrew
    tradition sometimes reveals a sense of universalism where one
    might least expect it. Even God’s election of Abraham and his
    progeny includes the promise of a blessing to extend through
    them to all people, for that famous passage concludes with the
    words, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”
    (Gen. 12:3). Furthermore, when a stranger appears alone, the
    Israelites typically accord him protection, precisely because they
    identify with the solitary and defenseless stranger. Biblical law
    identifies with the solitary alien: “You shall not wrong or
    oppress a stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt”
    (Exod. 22:21). One of the earliest creeds of Israel recalls that
    Abraham himself, obeying God’s command, became a solitary
    alien: “A wandering Aramean was my father . . .” (Deut. 26:5).
    Moses, too, was the quintessential alien, having been adopted as
    an infant by Pharaoh’s daughter. Although a Hebrew, he was
    raised as an Egyptian; the family of his future in-laws, in fact,
    mistook him for an Egyptian when they first met him. He even
    named his first son Gershom (“a wanderer there”), saying, “I
    have been a wanderer in a foreign land” (Exod. 2:16-22).
    Nevertheless, the Israelites are often aggressively hostile to
    the nations. The prophet Isaiah, writing in wartime, predicts that
    the Lord will drive the nations out “like locusts” before the
    Israelite armies (Isa. 40:22). This hostility to the alien enemy
    seems to have prevailed relatively unchallenged as long as Israel’s
    empire was expanding and the Israelites were winning their wars
    against the nations. Psalms 18 and 41, attributed to King David,
    builder
    38 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

    of Israel's greatest empire, declare, “God gave me vengeance and
    subdued the nations under me” (Ps. 18:47), and “By this I know-
    that God is pleased with me—in that my enemy has not
    triumphed over me” (Ps. 41:11).
    Yet at certain points in Israel’s history, especially in times of
    crisis, war, and danger, a vociferous minority spoke out, not
    against the alien tribes and foreign armies ranged against Israel,
    but to blame Israel’s misfortunes upon members of its own
    people. Such critics, sometimes accusing Israel as a whole, and
    sometimes accusing certain rulers, claimed that Israel’s
    disobedience to God had brought down divine punishment.
    The party that called for Israel's allegiance to “the Lord alone,”
    including such prophets as Amos (c. 750 B.C.E.), Isaiah (c. 730
    B.C.E.), and Jeremiah (c. 600 B.C.E.), indicted especially those
    Israelites who adopted foreign ways, particularly the worship of
    foreign gods.4 Such prophets, along with their supporters,
    thought of Israel as a