Imagining Evil: Representations of the Devil and Demons in Late Antiquity

关于魔鬼的历史学家一再表示，在早期的基督教艺术中没有魔鬼。这本书将首先证明，做出这一陈述的前提是有缺陷的，涉及到对中世纪拟人化恶魔形象的不合时宜的寻找，以及未能找到中世纪晚期的恶魔形象。其次，它将探索基督徒如何用自己的语言想象魔鬼，将艺术和文学放在一起，作为复杂而微妙的早期基督教恶魔想象力的证据。它将研究恶魔的存在如何隐含和要求，如果没有描绘和体现在圣经驱魔和诱惑的场景中，以及如何在描述特定的动物和野兽时从类型学上暗示它，这些动物和野兽要么明确地与旧约中的魔鬼联系在一起，要么通过早期基督教注释与魔鬼联系在一起。它将包含关于以下主题的章节：早期基督教关于恶魔和恶魔存在的原因和外观的神学和哲学介绍；早期基督教关于魔鬼、恶魔和异教神、戴蒙斯和偶像之间关系的观点；基督徒想象魔鬼以兽类(动物)和怪物(非自然的，混合的)形式出现的方式；魔鬼在描述地狱的悲惨遭遇中的出现；以及早期基督教对经文和当代驱魔的文学和视觉重述。

Historians of the Devil have repeatedly stated that there is no Devil in early Christian art. This book will demonstrate firstly that the premises on which this statement has been made are flawed, involving the anachronistic search for, and failure to find medieval anthropomorphic diabolical images in late antiquity. Secondly, it will explore how Christians imagined the Devil in their own terms, considering art and literature alongside each other as evidence for a complex and subtle early Christian diabolical imagination. It will examine how diabolical presence is implied and required, if not depicted and embodied, in scriptural scenes of exorcism and temptation, and how it is typologically suggested in depictions of particular animals and beasts which were either explicitly linked to the Devil in the Old Testament, or had been linked to the Devil by early Christian exegesis. It will contain chapters on the following themes: early Christian theological and philosophical presentations of the reason for the existence of and appearances of diabolical and demonic beings; early Christian views on the relationship between the Devil, demons and the pagan gods, daimones and idols; the ways in which Christians imagined the Devil in bestial (animal) and monstrous (unnatural, hybrid) forms; the appearance of the Devil in accounts of the harrowing of hell; and early Christian literary and visual re-tellings of scriptural and contemporary exorcisms.