The Evil Book—Chris Keith

As my wonderful colleague Steve Walton notes on Acts and More, the "evil book" is now available online from Mohr Siebeck.  This is the published proceedings from our 2014 Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity conference in the Centre for the Social-Scientific Study of the Bible at St Mary's University.  I have edited the book with Loren T. Stuckenbruck, who was the keynote speaker at that conference, and this is the first official publication from CSSSB.  I placed the contents below.

This was a wonderful conference and I'm grateful to all who attended and presented.  We look forward to getting together again under the auspices of CSSSB on June 10 and 11 for the "Memory and the Reception of Jesus in Early Christianity" Conference.  You can register here.  Registration begins at noon on June 10 and the conference will begin formally at 1:30pm.

Contents of Evil in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity:


Christopher A. Rollston: An Ur-History of the New Testament Devil: The Celestial שׂטן (śāṭān) in Zechariah and Jo

Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer: Evil at Qumra

Benjamin Wold: Demonizing Sin? The Evil Inclination in 4QInstructio

Louise J. Lawrence: Evil and the Body of Antiochus IV Epiphanes: Disability, Disgust and Tropes of Monstrosity in 2 Maccabees 9:1–12 

Tommy Wasserman: Variants of Evil: The Disassociation of Jesus from Evil in the Text of the New Testament 

James G. Crossley: Jesus, Healings and Mark 2:1–12: Forgiveness, a Release, or Bound Again to the Great Satan? 

Christopher W. Skinner: Overcoming Satan, Overcoming the World: Exploring the Cosmologies of Mark and John 

Jonathan A. Draper: Darkness as Non-Being and the Origin of Evil in John's Gospel 

Loren T. Stuckenbruck: How Much Evil Does the Christ Event Solve? Jesus and Paul in Relation to Jewish “Apocalyptic” Thought 

James P. Davies: Evil's Aetiology and False Dichotomies in Jewish Apocalyptic and Paul 

Chris Tilling: Paul, Evil, and Justification Debates 

Steve Walton: Evil in Ephesus: Acts 19:8–40 

Lloyd K. Pietersen: Artemis, Demons, Mammon and Satan: The Construal of Evil in First Timothy 

Susanne Luther: The Evil of the Tongue: Evil and the Ethics of Speech in the Letter of James 

Nicholas J. Ellis: A Theology of Evil in the Epistle of James: Cosmic Trials and the Dramatis Personae of Evil 

Robbie Griggs: Apocalyptic Experience in the Theodicy of 4 Ezra 

Jonathan Knight: The Portrayal of Evil in the Ascension of Isaiah 

Chris Keith: “The Scriptures are Divine Charms”: Evil, Books, and Textuality in Early Christianity

Dieter T. Roth: Evil in Marcion's Conception of the Old Testament God 

Paul Middleton: Overcoming the Devil in the Acts of the Martyrs