Seven Heads, Ten Horns: The History of the Devil

Latest Episodes:

Season 2, Epi 10: Tool Time with Athanasius of Alexandria Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

Lightning strikes twice in one week. It's a short solo episode from Klaus about Athanasius of Alexandria, how the devil might live in the air, and how Christian theology conceptualizes both the human body of Jesus and the airy bodies of demons as instruments of the Lord.

Sources:

Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word

Athanasius, Life of Antony

Gay Byron, Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature

Giorgio Agamben, Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty

Season 2, Epi 9: A Hook Sticking Through the Devil's Cheek Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

The episode that celebrates one year of 7H10H! Then we discusses how the Trinity happened, some influential theologians from Cappadocia, the devil as heretic, the devil as a man-eating Leviathan, Jesus as a fishhook, and God as the devil's therapist.

Sources:

Gregory of Nyssa’s Great Catechism: chapters XX-XXVI

Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection

Nicholas P. Costas “The Last Temptation of Satan: Divine Deception in Greek Patristic Interpretations of the Passion Narrative”

Jeffrey Fischer & Kyle Kirchhoff, “‘Even the Enemy himself would not dispute that the action was just’: Disguise and Self-Deception in Gregory of Nyssa”

Adam Kotsko, The Prince of this World, Ch. 3

Morenna Ludlow, “Demons, Evil, and Liminality in Cappadocian Theology”

Season 2, Epi 8: The Devil & The Desert Daddies Aug 22, 2021

Show notes

"We are their bodies," one monk admitted.

This week Klaus and Travis examine the practical knowledge the first generations of Christian monks developed for identifying and combatting their demons and the devil himself.

Sources:

Life of Ant(h)ony by Athanasius

David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk : Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (Also check ProQuest.)

John Cassian, Institutes, Book X

Andrew Crisplin, “The Sin of Sloth or the Illness of the Demons? The Demon of Acedia in Early Christian Monasticism”

Excerpts of Evagrius’ Praktikos

Shenoute the Great, “Because of You too, O Prince of Evil”

Season 2, Epi 7: Leviathan’s Thighbone: Race and the Devil in Early Christianity Aug 05, 2021

Show notes

Klaus and Travis think through the ways ancient understandings of race and ethnicity mattered for group formation in early Christianity. They also see how anti-Blackness and anti-Judaism bring this all back to the Devil.

Special thanks to Michael Motia for his input on this episode! Check out his new book on Gregory of Nyssa, Imitations of Infinity.

Follow us @7heads10hornspod on Insta, @heads_ten on Twitter, Email us at 7h10hpod@gmail.com and thanks for all the likes, reviews, subscriptions, recommendations, and ritual sacrifices.

Sources:

Athanasius, Life of Antony

Todd Berzon, “Ethnicity and Early Christianity: New Approaches Religious Kinship and Community”

David Brakke, “Ethiopian Demons: Male Sexuality, the Black-Skinned Other, and the Monastic Self”

David Brakke, The Gnostics

Denise Kimber Buell’s Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity.

Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism

Aaron P. Johnson, “The Blackness of Ethiopians: Classical Ethnography and Eusebius's Commentary on the Psalms”

Philip Mayerson, “Anti-Black sentiment in the Vitae Patrum”

Teresa Morgan, “Society, Identity, Ethnicity” in Ethnicity, Race, Religion, ed. Hockey & Horrell

Origen “On Prayer”

Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Season 2, Episode 6: Origen (sic) of Diabology Jul 10, 2021

Show notes

Epi 6 focuses on one of the most brilliant, misunderstood, and maligned theologians of Church history, Origen of Alexandria, and his provocative ideas about the origin (so many bad puns coming) of the devil and the possibility that everyone, including said devil, will be saved at the end of time.

Email: 7h10hpod@gmail.com

Sources for this week;

Origen online: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/

John Behr, “Introduction,” On First Principles: A Reader’s Edition.

Mark J. Edwards, “The Fate of the Devil in Origen”

Mark J. Edwards, “Origen,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy

Lisa R. Holliday “Will Satan Be Saved? Reconsidering Origen's Theory of Volition in "Peri Archon"”(pp. 1-23)

Jeffery Burton Russel, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition, Ch. 5

Charles M. Stang, “The Flesh and the Fire” Reincarnation and Universal Salvation in the Early Church

Season 2 Bonus: Catherine Keller's Facing Apocalypse Jun 25, 2021

Show notes

This episode Travis and Klaus discuss the new book by Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse, and talk through the way this contemporary theologian interprets the book of Revelation in the midst of Covid 19, climate change, capitalism, and other catastrophes, while resisting the kind of interpretation ("Y2K was foreseen in the Bible!") that conservatives keep using Revelation for. Keller argues that Revelation does not mean The End but instead points to different possible endings of human exploitation of the earth that in turn may give rise to more humane and holier modes of dwelling.

Catherine Keller, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances

Book of Revelation (NRSV)

Season 2 Bonus: The Devil's Trill with Stefano Jun 03, 2021

Show notes

This episode represents our first guest contribution to the pod. Stefano walks us through the use of the devil's interval in Baroque classical music and from there ventures into diabolic form and content in blues, jazz, Satanist-adjacent classic rock, not to mention Snoop Dogg.

Connect with Stefano on Instagram @stefrozental10 and the pod itself @heads_ten on Twitter. Email us at 7h10hpod@gmail.com and thanks for all the likes, reviews, subscriptions, recommendations, and ritual sacrifices.

Season 2, Epi 5: Tertotally! May 24, 2021

Show notes

This week K&T discuss that 2nd-3rd-century church father who never made it as a saint, Tertullian, and his extremely paranoid diabology.

**Warning,** extreme Northeastern USA / SE. Pennsylvanian pronunciation of the word “water” (=wodr) when Klaus starts talking about baptism. Sensitive listeners should be advised.

Write us: 7h10hpod@gmail.com

Sources for this week:

Tertullian’s works

Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire (Selections from the Fathers of the Church, Volume 2) Book Editor(s): Robert D. Sider

Christine Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority,, and the New Prophecy: https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/religion/church-history/montanism-gender-authority-and-new-prophecy?format=PB&isbn=9780521528702

“The Montanists” https://www.tertullian.org/montanism.htm

Dale Tuggy, “History of Trinitarian Doctrines” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/trinity-history.html#Tertul

Daniel H. Weiss “Christians as Levites: Rethinking Early Christian Attitudes toward War and Bloodshed via Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine”

Peter Harrison, “I Believe Because it is Absurd”: The Enlightenment Invention of Tertullian's Credo

Sophie Rabau,” Cecco interpolator ? ou du Diable au Démiurge. Autorité et réécriture chez Marcel Schwob”

Duncan Heaster, “Satan In The Thought Of Irenaeus And Tertullian”

Jeffrey Burton Russel, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition

Season 2, Episode 4: Perpetua & Felicity vs. The Devil Apr 27, 2021

Show notes

Klaus and Travis discuss the role of the devil in the early 3rd-century martyrdom/passion narrative of Perpetua and Felicity.

Sources:

The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, trans/ed. Thomas J. Heffernan, Oxford University Press

Online version: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/perpetua.asp

L. Stephanie Cobb, "Suicide by Gladiator? The Acts of Perpetua and Felicitas in its North African Context" Church History' 88:3 (September 2019), 597-628.

Katherine E. Milco,“Mulieres viriliter vincentes: Masculine and Feminine Imagery in Augustine’s Sermons on Sts. Perpetua and Felicity ,” VIGILIAE CHRISTIANAE 69 (2015) 276-295

DAVID E. WILHITE “Perpetua of History in Recent Questions” Journal of Early Christian Studies 25:2, 307–319

Season 2 Bonus: Lil Nas X, Satan Shoes, and Montero Apr 02, 2021

Show notes

"I saw Lil Nas X's Air Max 97s dropping like lightning."

Clearly we had no choice on this Devil podcast but to put out our thoughts and feelings about the recent Lil Nas X scandal/marketing extravaganza/moral panic.

Sources:

Lil Nas X, "Montero" video

Heather White, "Lil Nas X's 'Satan Shoes' trolled some Christians. But 'Montero' is about more than that."

Andrew R. Chow, "Historians Decode the Religious Symbolism and Queer Iconography of Lil Nas X's 'Montero' Video"

Bryan Pietsch, "These Shoes Contain a Drop of Human Blood. Nike Does Not Approve."