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Chapter 8 - Demons of the New Polytheism

from Part II - Film

By
George Aichele
Edited by
Christopher Partridge  and
Eric Christianson
Christopher Partridge
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Eric Christianson
Affiliation:
University of Chester
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Summary

[I]t is a peculiarity of demons to operate in the intervals between the gods' fields of action, as it is to leap over the barriers or the enclosures, thereby confounding the boundaries between properties

(Deleuze, 1994: 37).

In an age of unbelief… just why monotheism should be an advance on polytheism is not immediately apparent

(Miles, 1996: 110).

Gods of the Bible

Near the end of his book, God: A Biography, Jack Miles offers a polytheistic reading of the Jewish scriptures. Throughout his book, Miles argues that if the Tanakh is read as a biography of God, then it presents the one, lonely God as a being who suffers from a severe psychological disorder, a self in which several distinguishable personalities struggle for dominance, without lasting success. Miles concludes:

The extent to which the Tanakh is a character-dominated classic may appear to better advantage if we imagine how its action might unfold if the several personalities fused in the character of the Lord God were broken loose as separate characters. When the Lord God's character is parcelled out in this way, what results is a story that immediately begins to assume the familiar contours of a more “ordinary” myth (1996: 398).

What results in Miles' account is a story in which six different finite gods or daimones, both male and female, play greater or lesser roles (1996: 398–401). Miles does not suggest that anyone has ever actually read the Bible in this way, or that anyone should.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Lure of the Dark Side
Satan and Western Demonology in Popular Culture
 , pp. 135 - 151
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2009

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