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KIRSTEN NIELSEN, Satan-the Prodigal Son? A Family Problem in the Bible (Biblical Seminar 50; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998). Pp. 198. Paper f 13.95, $23.75.
Nielsen offers a creative literary, psychological, and symbolic interpretation of the biblical texts which speak of Satan. Her suggestive and provocative thesis is that Satan is symbolically portrayed as a son of God and as the elder brother of those personages with whom he is adversary: Job, David, Joshua the high priest, or Jesus.
Initially, N. reflects upon contemporary literary theory, intertextual interpretation, and the metaphorical nature of theological statements. This enables her to construe the meaning of these biblical passages with radical new meanings while still engaging in theological discourse acceptable to her own Lutheran tradition. She believes that we Christians have so thoroughly turned Satan into a metaphor that we have created a simple dualism between God and Satan, but she also believes that a return to the biblical text might reveal an ambiguous relationship in which both good and evil proceed from God in monistic fashion. To this end she puts forward the root metaphor of the father-son...