Conflict Between Good and Evil - Jewish and Christian Literature

Jewish and Christian Literature

Writers from the earliest times have thematized the conflict between good and evil, understood, of course, in religious terms. In the Old Testament, Yahweh asks the prophet Jeremiah: "The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9, NRSV). Compare also the Book of Job.

In addition to explicating classical myth and stories to reveal a hidden conflict between good and evil in them, they wrote into their own texts different versions of the conflict. The basic forms may be described as the apocalyptic, in which the writer describes real, social events (whether historical or imagined) as manifestations of the eternal conflict between God and Satan, good and evil — a struggle that, if controlled in the end by God's omnipotence, was nevertheless of deep importance for humans. In a different way, Christian writers could focus on the internal struggle to find or maintain belief. This literature is exemplified by the Psychomachia of Prudentius, whose title continues to signify great psychological turmoil, and supremely by Augustine of Hippo's Confessions, the model for countless later psychological biographies. Special mention might also be made of the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius, a work that combines Platonic, Christian, and Stoic thought on the nature of suffering.