devil
Sign in to savethumb|upright|Statue of the devil in "the Žmuidzinavičius Museum|Devil Museum" in [[Kaunas, Lithuania|alt=A winged male humanoid devil holds a naked woman as she touches her breast. ]]A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of the devil can be summed up as 1) a principle of evil independent from God, 2) an aspect of God, 3) a created being turning evil (a fallen angel) or 4) a symbol of human
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A devil is a mythical figure that represents evil as understood across different cultures and religions, embodying a hostile and destructive force. The concept of the devil varies significantly across traditions—sometimes depicted as an independent evil principle, an aspect of God itself, a created being that turned evil, or a symbol of human failings.
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Article
34 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Definitions
- History
- Pre-Historic period to Archaic period
- Platonism and early Christianity in Antiquity
- Spread through Europe in late Antiquity and early Medieval Age
- Revival of Dualism in the Medieval Age
- Buddhism
- Christianity
- Christian Bible
- Old Testament
- New Testament
- Theology
- Gnostic religions
- Islam
- Sunni theology
- In Sufism and mysticism
- Islamist movements
- Judaism
- Mandaeism
- Manichaeism
- Yazidism
- Zoroastrianism
- Sociologal and anthropological perspective
- Devil in moral philosophy
- Spinoza
- Kant
- Names, titles, and epithets
- Contemporary belief
- Notes
- References
- Sources
- External links
- Notes
thumb|upright|Statue of the devil in "the Žmuidzinavičius Museum|Devil Museum" in [[Kaunas, Lithuania|alt=A winged male humanoid devil holds a naked woman as she touches her breast. ]]A devil is the mythical personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of the devil can be summed up as 1) a principle of evil independent from God, 2) an aspect of God, 3) a created being turning evil (a fallen angel) or 4) a symbol of human evil.
Each tradition, culture, and religion with a devil in its mythos offers a different lens on manifestations of evil. The history of these perspectives intertwines with theology, mythology, psychiatry, art, and literature, developing independently within each of the traditions. It occurs historically in many contexts and cultures, and is given many different names—Satan (Judaism), Lucifer (Christianity), Beelzebub (Judeo-Christian), Mephistopheles (German), Iblis or Azazil (Islam)—and attributes: it is portrayed as blue, black, or red; it is portrayed as having horns on its head, and without horns, and so on.