Böcker av Philip C. Almond

It is often said that the devil has all the best tunes. He also has as many names as he has guises. Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub (in Christian thought), Ha-Satan or the Adversary (in Jewish scripture) and Iblis or Shaitan (in Islamic tradition) has throughout the ages and across civilizations been a compelling and charismatic presence. For two thousand years the supposed reign of God has been challenged by the fiery malice of his opponent, as contending forces of good and evil have between them weighed human souls in the balance. In this rich and multi-textured biography, Philip C Almond explores the figure of the devil from the first centuries of the Christian era through the rise of classical demonology and witchcraft persecutions to the modern post-Enlightenment 'decline' of Hell. The author shows that the Prince of Darkness, in all his incarnations, remains an irresistible subject in history, religion, art, literature and culture.

Almond places Otto's theory of religion within the context of his life (1869-1937), looking closely at the significant influences on Otto's thought, among them thinkers as different as Kant and the German Pietists. Elements of Otto's theories are shown to be closely related to the social and intellectual milieu of Germany both before and after World War I.

This book examines life after death and changing concepts of heaven and hell in English thought from 1650 to 1750. It explores seventeenth- and eighteenth-century images of the journey of body and soul. It discloses a society in which frail and fleeting human life was lived out in the expectation of salvation or damnation.

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

The story of God is the story of a paradox. It is the drama of a transcendent, timeless being who, throughout history, has supposedly engaged with immanent and mortal creatures on a fallen and broken world of his own making.

There is no more dramatic story in the annals of English witchcraft than that of the witches of Warboys. This book shows how, at one level, the story of Warboys features a conflict about honour and truth between two families in a close-knit Elizabethan village. At another level, the tale concerns a wider struggle between local gentry and yeomanry.