How Did Christianity Adopt Pagan Beliefs?
Pagels and other writers tackle the obvious question: Where, then, did the present idea of a literal evil being called satan come from, seeing it’s not in the Bible? They trace the idea back to pagan sources that entered Judaism before the time of Christ- and then worked their way into Christian thought in the early centuries after Christ, as mainstream Christianity moved away from purely Biblical beliefs(6). But pushing the question back a stage further, why and how did Judaism and later Christianity pick up pagan myths about a personal devil and sinful Angels and mix them in with their belief system? Pagels quotes sources such as the Jewish Book of the Watchers to show how there was a clear belief that each person has a ‘guardian Angel’, and when conflicts arose, people judged as ‘wicked’ or ‘evil’ came to be charged with therefore having a ‘wicked’ or ‘evil’ Angel controlling them. And it was an easy step to assume that these ‘wicked Angels’ were all under the control of a personal,
