[Clip from Rosemary's Baby] Rosemary: What have you done to him, you maniacs! Mr Castevet: Satan is his father, not Guy. He came up from hell and begat a son of mortal woman. MAN 2: Hail, Satan! WOMAN 2: Hail, Satan! Mr Castevet: Satan is his father. And his name is Adrian. He shall overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples. He shall redeem the despised and wreak vengeance in the name of the burned and the tortured. Hail, Adrian. CROWD: Hail, Adrian. Mr Castevet: Hail, Satan! Hail, Satan! CROWD: Hail, Satan [THEME MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta, and this is Lost in the Stacks. I don't what is happening. Fred has taken over. ALEX MCGEE: Mm. FRED RASCOE: Just a little film clip. CHARLIE BENNETT: It's just a film clip, just a film clip. This is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock-and-roll radio show. I am Charlie Bennett in the studio with Fred Rascoe, Alex McGee, Marlee Givens, Cody Turner, and a guest to be named later. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you tune in for, we hope you dig it. FRED RASCOE: And our show today is called Number of the Beast, Setting the Record Straight-- to Hell. CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred. [LAUGHTER] MARLEE GIVENS: Well, as you might have guessed, this is Lost in the Stacks episode 666. ALEX MCGEE: And for those not familiar, the number 666 is closely associated with the devil in some iterations of Christian culture. CHARLIE BENNETT: So today we're having a little fun, I guess we'll call it, with this being our 666th episode. Our guest today is both a member of the clergy and a professor of religious studies. And we're going to talk to them to clear up some popular misconceptions about Satan. And it turns out there's a lot of them. FRED RASCOE: Oh, yes. And our songs today are about the number of the beast, the influence of the devil, and our conceptions of Satan, be they right or wrong. CHARLIE BENNETT: Stop enjoying this so much, Fred. FRED RASCOE: Will we regret having a whole episode on this subject? Judgment awaits. For now, let's start with a song about invoking the Dark Prince and the inevitable regret that follows such a thing. This is "Satanispiritus" by Astaroth right here on Lost in the Stacks. [ASTAROTH, "SATANISPIRITUS"] FRED RASCOE: "Satanispiritus" by Astaroth. This is Lost in the Stacks. Our show today is called Number of the Beast, Setting the Record Straight-- to Hell. It's show number 666. And this being a research library rock-and-roll radio show, and rock and roll being the devil's music after all, we're leaning into the whole satanic theme. CHARLIE BENNETT: I cannot overstate how happy I am to see this side of Fred. FRED RASCOE: Well, our guest is Dr. Gabrielle Thomas, Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican Studies at Emory University, and author of the forthcoming books, The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought and I Renounce Satan and All His Works. Dr. Thomas, thank you for coming on the show. GABRIELLE THOMAS: Thank you for having me. FRED RASCOE: So we want to talk to you about misconceptions of the devil. Everybody has conceptions of what the devil is, what Satan is. It is very common in our culture. But you, as an ordained clergy member and as a religious scholar, you are in a unique position to defuse or to guide us away from those misconceptions. CHARLIE BENNETT: Disabuse us of those-- FRED RASCOE: "Disabuse," yeah, that's the word. Yeah. You knew what I was trying to say. So how did you come to choose the devil, Satan, as a study for your scholarship? GABRIELLE THOMAS: That's a really good question. I didn't actually start out in the beginning to look at Satan at all. When I was first starting out as a researcher and a PhD student many, many, many years ago now, I was interested in how early Christians were interpreting the verse in Genesis where it says that God made human beings according to God's image. And so I was innocently diving into the fourth century, which is an area that I find really interesting. And I was reading what some of the early church fathers were saying about that verse and what it meant to be human according to the image of God. And what I found with one of them-- his name is Gregory of Nazianzus-- is that a lot of the time, when he started talking about being made according to God's image, he also had something that he was saying about the devil at the same time. And so my initial research project-- and this was a few books ago now-- started out looking at what it means to be human. And I was going to look at all the beautiful things about humanity. And then what I discovered is that there was this early Christian who was writing some quite gritty things about human experience. And the way that he was interpreting those was by continually referring to this character, the devil. And that made me think, I don't enough about what he's doing there, what he thinks the devil is, what's going on here. And so once that first project was finished, I thought, I need to pick this up now because it's just fascinating to me, because it isn't wholly clear what's going on. So that was how I got started. FRED RASCOE: So Gregory of-- GABRIELLE THOMAS: Nazianzus. FRED RASCOE: --Nazianzus, sorry. OK, Gregory of Nazianzus-- what was his conception of the devil? Did he hear that verse, that God created a human in God's own form, did he ascribe that, also to a personage of the devil? GABRIELLE THOMAS: Definitely not. No. [LAUGHTER] So where he brings the devil into all of his thinking and writing is, the devil is the enemy, the antagonist, the liar, the thief. So he will go through all of the different scriptural verses that might allude to Satan. And he'll pick out different names. So between him and his friends, they have over 50 different ways of naming the devil. And that's their way of trying to describe who he is because they're not wholly sure. The big question is, how did he fall? They thought he was a fallen angel. But whether he fell before human beings fell or whether he fell around the beginning of time is all really mysterious to them. And so they're continually trying to work out what was going on. Why did he fall? Did he fall through pride? Did he fall through envy? What's at stake here? We don't really understand. A lot of the theological work they do is in conversation with a verse in Luke's gospel where Jesus says, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." And so that's why they think, through a tradition that they've received from other early Christian writers, like Origen of Alexandria and others like that, they think to themselves, OK, so we think he's a fallen angel. But they don't necessarily agree on how he fell, why he fell, and then also, what's going to happen to him at the end of time. And so why I find it really interesting is there isn't just one account. So this idea that we've got of the devil as this red figure with horns that we go around with at Halloween and we see that kind of thing, they didn't describe him as red. They didn't describe him in any visual way at all because as far as they were concerned, he was a fallen angel. So he had some kind of embodiment, but he could appear in any form that he wanted to. So in the way that Gabriel appears to Mary in the Christmas story that we all know so well at this time of year, and says, hey, you're going to have this son, this child, Satan could appear in many forms, too, because he was an angel. But how many of his angelic qualities he could still continue with is always something that's really perplexing to them, is how much of what it meant to be an angel did he lose? Is he completely, now depraved? Or is there some sense to which he could still come back to God, turn around, repent, et cetera? And I just found that the fact that it was just, once you start looking at all the different accounts and interpretations, it's a real mess. And so you don't end up with this very clear vision of, this is Satan. There are multiple Satans, which makes sense when you think about how he's meant to operate, this masked character. Yeah, I think it's fascinating. CHARLIE BENNETT: So you said, between the scholar and his friends, they had about 50 names. Are you talking about other scholars at the time? GABRIELLE THOMAS: Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: So this was an academic community? GABRIELLE THOMAS: It was a community of bishops, yeah. And the reason we know what they thought is as they left a lot of homilies, so sermons that these days, if we sat in church and listened to them, we would say were way too long. Certainly, in my tradition-- I'm an Episcopalian-- very few of us would sit and listen to the kind of sermons they were preaching because they could have lasted for 45 minutes. But in those homilies, they were interpreting scripture. And so if they were looking at one set of scriptures, they would be bringing in other scriptures to make sense of that. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you feel any kinship to them in terms of being a professor of religion now? GABRIELLE THOMAS: Oh, for sure. CHARLIE BENNETT: Are you both doing the same thing in very different environments? GABRIELLE THOMAS: I think to a certain extent, yes. And I think that's because I'm ordained as well. So when I was in seminary, I was exploring these particular groups of bishops, both in terms of academic research-- so sitting there, trailing through the various Greek manuscripts and that kind of thing-- but also looking at how they did faith in their world as well. So for me, it was definitely a "both and" that attracted me to them. And it's "both and" that keeps me here 15 years later. ALEX MCGEE: This is Lost in the Stacks and we'll be back with more about the devil after a music set. MARLEE GIVENS: File this set under BT981.S26. [ORGAN MUSIC] MAN (ON TAPE): Preacher, tell them that Satan is real, too. You can hear him in songs that give praise to idols and sinful things of this world. [THE ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST OF "HAIR," "GOING DOWN] (SINGING) You're going down, down Going down, down, down Going down. ALEX MCGEE: "Going Down" by the original Broadway cast of Hair. Before that we heard "Satan's Song" by The Reptilians. And we started the set with "Your Unconventional Devil," by My Teenage Stride, songs about popular or unpopular conceptions of Satan. [THEME MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called The Number of the Beast, Setting the Record Straight to Hell. We're being a little silly because this happens to be our 666th episode. MARLEE GIVENS: Our guest is Dr. Gabrielle Thomas, a professor in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. She has kindly decided to tolerate our silliness by discussing her serious research into common misconceptions about Satan. And so I want to talk about the research. As an archivist, I'm picturing you going to a library or an archive and doing research. But I also know there's stuff online. So what are the sources and libraries you went to, to do your research? GABRIELLE THOMAS: This is a really good question. So there's a resource that I couldn't live without, and it's called Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. It's an online resource that you access through your library. And you can search every single Greek word that exists in all of the classical traditions, so Plato, classical philosophers like that, right through to the early church fathers that I work on. And so it's been a bit of a tricky way to work out how to research it, because one of the names is Envy for the devil. But if you research the word "envy," then you're not necessarily going to only come up with the name of the devil. You're going to come up with every example where they're envious. So those kinds of selections you have to make pretty carefully. But generally, words like "Satan" and "devil," they tend to mean what they mean on the whole. And you can usually go back to the text and then work out what it's actually doing. So that's one resource that I use. And then there's a series of books that have been critically edited, but they're in French. And so it's a series called Source Chrétiennes. And we don't really have tons of English translations of these kinds of works. And so when I'm working in Greek, which is what I'm doing most of the time, I'm then, also looking at Italian, German, and French translations, and then having to translate it myself, which is slow work, which is why 15 years later, I'm still writing the second and third books on this particular subject. And those kinds of resources tend to be in very specialist libraries. So when I was working back in England, because I'm originally from the UK, I was continually having to go to my librarian and get an inter-library loan because our library didn't have that kind of work because it's so specialized. So the inter-library loans people are my favorite people are my very best friends. [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: It sounds to me almost like your research is like building a puzzle out of the words that people used. Are you uncovering something? Or are you trying to understand something for yourself? Or are you trying to decode? What do you think of your research? GABRIELLE THOMAS: It's a really good question. So for the book that I've just finished now, which will go off to Cambridge University Press, I'm uncovering something. But because I'm also a Christian and also ordained, I'm continually doing that dialogue within, I guess, an internal dialogue, between the texts and also faith life today. So in the way that people could with scripture, these are writing what? Four centuries after the life of Jesus. But most of all, when I'm doing this kind of work, I'm uncovering something. So for example, when they're talking about how Satan is defeated, they use some really interesting language around how he's hooked in like a fish. And this has caused so many problems in Christian theology because the idea is, well, surely that means that Christ is deceptive if he was hooking the devil in like a fish. We don't want a deceptive version of Christ. That's not OK. And so they'll use all these images. And I spent weeks and weeks and weeks reading around Oppian, who was a second-century poet. It's like a fishing manual that he writes. And it's a fascinating five-book manual on how to catch a fish, what fish do, why fish are wily and strange and how you need to beat them. And it was all about, at the time, raising up the Roman emperor at the time and basically saying, look, isn't this guy, Marcus Aurelius, fantastic? But you can see where, in the fourth century, a few centuries later, these are educated bishops. And so they've worked in Athens. They've done all their studying. And so they're going back and saying, OK, so we think there's something similar about locating how Christ is now, and comparing him to the new emperor. But for Christ, it's the age of peace. It's not the Pax Romana anymore. We're now in the permanent new era of Christian peace. And that's something different. So in the way that you've got the Roman emperor cast as collecting all these fish and he's this brilliant fisherman, you've got now, Christ as the expert fisherman, going around, and he's catching the devil as a way of speaking about what happens on the cross and the defeat of Satan. And that kind of thing, that's uncovering. And it just means going into, oh, my goodness, so many classical resources that A, I didn't even about beforehand, some of the time, and then going off doing the translation work, doing the research. It's really fun. CHARLIE BENNETT: And so are you finding misconceptions that you're aware of as a person, just in the world, and then saying, oh, here's where they went wrong? Are you trying to debunk things on purpose? How do we set the record straight? GABRIELLE THOMAS: That's a really good question. I'm definitely not trying to debunk things on purpose because some of the time as a researcher, I'm going to the texts with my own preconceptions, and I don't that my preconceptions are wrong. So when I first started out, there's a common assumption in modern philosophy that early Christians invented the devil in order to be able to explain how evil happened in the world. And so they were like, we don't know why there is evil. Where did evil come from? Oh, we'll invent the devil. And he can be used to explain famines, illness, and every single thing that goes wrong in the world today. And I actually came in, assuming that that's what was the case because that's how he's described in modern contexts. And what was fascinating for me, when I was reading through all of that-- because I read absolutely every single word that three particular men, who were in Cappadocia, wrote-- what I found was when they were writing sermons on things like famines-- there was a very bad famine around 367 in Cappadocia. When they were theologizing on that, they didn't actually mention Satan once in those sermons. So they were talking about how it might have happened, how we might interpret it theologically and that kind of thing. But they didn't use the devil to do it. So I was like, oh, so if the devil isn't solving this problem of the famine, if it's nothing to do with Satan, they obviously don't think that actually, Satan causes this stuff. This stuff happens through other means, and actually, therefore, Satan isn't the explanation to problems of evil and suffering. That, I find fascinating. But for me, it was also a learning because I was coming in with the same assumption as everyone else. FRED RASCOE: I think John Milton's Paradise Lost would have been pretty different if he had been interested in fourth-century Cappadocian scholarship. GABRIELLE THOMAS: Very different, and also Dante. When you look at what's going on in Dante's version of hell, it's a lot more vivid and a lot more exciting than the kinds of texts that I'm working on. They're a lot more interested in what Satan is doing on Earth, how he tempts people, how he deceives people, in particular, the church. A lot of the main antagonism is around the devil and the church. They actually write very little in comparison about his eternal destination, and also everyone else's. CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we'll hear more about the misconceptions, our misconceptions of the devil on this, our 666th show, on the left side of the hour. [THEME MUSIC] [ROCK MUSIC] GEOFF HETHERINGTON: Hi, I am local archivist extraordinaire Geoff Hetherington and you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. Good thinking. FRED RASCOE: Today's Lost in the Stacks is called The Number of the Beast, Setting the Record Straight to Hell. If I could just sidebar for a little bit, y'all, if that's all right, one of-- CHARLIE BENNETT: That's always all right, Fred. FRED RASCOE: Thanks. One of the more-- I'm going to call it "zany"-- aspects of Satan in popular culture in years past was back masking. So for those of you who missed the Satanic Panic in the 1970s and '80s, back masking was how rock bands allegedly slipped satanic messages into their music. You play a record backwards, and instead of hearing, hey, let's rock and roll all night and party every day or whatever, you hear a coded, distorted message to bow down to Satan, allegedly. So I thought, well, is Lost in the Stacks inadvertently putting dark messages into our radio broadcast? Now seems like a perfect time to find out. CHARLIE BENNETT: Where are you going with this, Fred? FRED RASCOE: So here's a typical introduction to the show. [THEME MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT (ON TAPE): You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock-and-roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the studio with everybody. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. FRED RASCOE: OK, so yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: OK, hold on just a second. FRED RASCOE: Sure. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: I do want to point out that when Judas Priest was brought to court about all this thing, they were like, hey, Rob, what's with all the breathing? And I huff into the microphone. I know what's about to happen. FRED RASCOE: No judgment. CHARLIE BENNETT: There were also some clicks in the background. What are you doing to me, man? FRED RASCOE: So that's how the show went last week, how it was introduced, the first 20 seconds. So now I'm just going to play that backwards. Let's hear it. Leave the mics up, Cody. CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, no. [TAPE PLAYING BACKWARDS] FRED RASCOE: Evil radio. [TAPE PLAYING BACKWARDS] FRED RASCOE: Azrael. [TAPE PLAYING BACKWARDS] FRED RASCOE: I definitely heard Azrael. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, Fred. I heard that. [TAPE PLAYING BACKWARDS] CHARLIE BENNETT: What are you thinking? FRED RASCOE: Halls of sin. That was definitely "halls of sin." [TAPE PLAYING BACKWARDS] OK, so I voted on this. Yeah, I don't know what you're maybe trying to say there, Charlie, but this may just need-- ALEX MCGEE: Halls of sin. OK. CHARLIE BENNETT: Halls of sin. FRED RASCOE: Welcome to Lost in the Stacks, the halls of sin. CHARLIE BENNETT: While I set some stuff straight, why don't you all file this set under ML3534.P46? I'm going to Judas Priest. [ROCK MUSIC PLAYING BACKWARD] [UNINTELLIGIBLE SINGING] Satan [UNINTELLIGIBLE SINGING] Satan? [UNINTELLIGIBLE SINGING] [CAKE, "SATAN IS MY MOTOR"] I've got wheels of polished steel I've got tires that grab the road [THE FANTASTIC MISSISSIPPI NIGHTINGALES, "DON'T LET THE DEVIL RIDE"] Did you wanna die? Don't let him ride ALEX MCGEE: That was "Don't Let the Devil Ride" by the fantastic Mississippi Nightingales, and before that, "Satan is my Motor" by Cake, songs about pernicious, persistent, and pervasive influence of the devil. [THEME MUSIC] MARLEE GIVENS: --is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called The Number of the Beast, Setting the Record Straight-- to Hell. Our guest is Dr. Gabrielle Thomas, Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican Studies at the Emory University, and author of the forthcoming books, The Problem of the Devil in Cappadocian Thought and I Renounce Satan and All His Works. FRED RASCOE: So Dr. Thomas, one of the misconceptions about Satan that you touched on briefly, but I want to dive into a little more, is there's a misconception that exists today and I think is a longstanding misconception, as you characterize it, is that Satan is permanently damned, unredeemed, is in the domain of hell for all time. But that's not necessarily so, according to your research. GABRIELLE THOMAS: Indeed. So I've been looking at three men and what they've been writing. One of them was called Basil, and two of them are both called Gregory. One of the Gregorys-- FRED RASCOE: They sound like insurance salesman. GABRIELLE THOMAS: One of the Gregorys happens to be also Basil's brother. And the three of them are friends. So we call them, collectively, the Cappadocians because they came from a region called Cappadocia, which is modern-day Turkey. CHARLIE BENNETT: Are we sure they're not just frat brothers who made something-- GABRIELLE THOMAS: They absolutely could be. FRED RASCOE: It does sound like the setup for a sitcom, doesn't it? GABRIELLE THOMAS: And whilst we don't see them necessarily arguing with one another, we know what they thought because they wrote letters to one another. But they also wrote homilies. They wrote quite scholarly treatises about the Christian life. And what we can see is three different visions of Satan's eternal, I guess, end in those different texts, which suggests, at the time, there isn't one decisive vision of what Satan's going to do at the end. So we think about the end times. We use words like "the apocalypse," that kind of thing. And at that point in time-- so imagine an end of the world scenario-- Basil tends to talk about Satan being in hell forever. He's there. He's already there. He's staying there. And that's his bitter ordeal as punishment for all the things that he's done wrong. Gregory of Nazianzus, who is Basil's friend, he comes in and says, we're not really sure. We don't really know, actually. So he tends to be my favorite because he'll sit on the fence on everything. And he'll give you all the different possibilities. But he doesn't actually land on one because he's pretty realistic about the fact they're talking about a fallen angel. So really, it's very difficult to give a decisive answer. The other theologian, he's called Gregory of Nyssa, and he's Basil's brother, he actually gives a strong articulation of Satan being in hell for a season. But at the end of time, every single knee-- and he's taking his thoughts from a verse in Philippians, in the Bible where it talks about everyone will bow down and proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord. And Gregory wants to allow space for that to include the devil, so for there to be a moment where the devil actually comes to the realization of actually, this wasn't such a good move to disobey God and to decide that I'm more powerful and all of that kind of thing, and repent. And so if that's then happening, the devil won't be in hell, but he'll be back in the new heavens and the new Earth with everybody else. CHARLIE BENNETT: Is that where the phrase "a season in hell" comes from, that was then the Rimbaud poetry? GABRIELLE THOMAS: I am very sad to say, I do not know. CHARLIE BENNETT: OK. Well, I heard "for a season." And then I wonder if "a season in hell," if that was a single use of the phrase or if that was coming from elsewhere. This is why I was talking about, are you decoding stuff? It feels like a great big board of red thread from various phrases and words and images, dragged all over the place in a huge conspiracy theory of Satan. GABRIELLE THOMAS: It does. And as a historian, I have to be very careful about that sort of thing because it's very easy to see one word in one century and assume that it means the same as the word in, say, the fourth century and how it's being used there. And it actually might not. So I have to continually avoid being anachronistic and that kind of thing because I'm coming, obviously, from the 21st century with all of this in my toolkit, so to speak. And so when I'm sitting there with the fourth century, I'm continually having to go back and see, what are they reading and writing at the time? What's the zeitgeist of their age that they're working with? And often that can be quite different from mine. So I have to be really careful with that, especially if I'm doing a piece of rigorous historical work. Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you have a Basil and a Gregory that you're writing to, contemporarily? Do you have someone that you're having these conversations with? GABRIELLE THOMAS: I actually do. I have a friend called Sophie, who is a professor in Cambridge in the UK, and she is also working on Satan. And I'm sure there are lots of other people in the world doing this kind of work, too. But we happen to be long-time friends. And we have been reading each other's work, critiquing each other's work, going backwards and forwards, sharing texts, sharing ideas for a very long time. I think we are less passive aggressive in the way that we challenge each other sometimes because there are some examples in their letters where they're really being very nasty to one another. And you can tell, oh, he really didn't mean that polite thing that he was saying there. So I think our friendship is probably slightly more genuine. And so when we're challenging each other, we're a lot more straightforward about it, I think. FRED RASCOE: There definitely needs to be a plan to donate that correspondence to an archives so that somebody can look at the Satan letters of Dr. Gabrielle Thomas. CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah, when they're saying "an old 20th century scholar." FRED RASCOE: Yeah, 21st Century. CHARLIE BENNETT: So we're running to the end of the show, Fred. This has been your baby. FRED RASCOE: Yeah. CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you have a question that you want to know? FRED RASCOE: Well, Dr. Thomas, you were just talking about the zeitgeist of the fourth-century contemporaries, like, what was the zeitgeist then? But the zeitgeist now, technology. AI is, of course, very prominent. And you've actually done some thinking about AI and chat bots and the relationship to the devil there. We've got a couple of minutes left. Can you talk about the devil now and how you see that in AI? GABRIELLE THOMAS: Sure. So I probably should qualify straight away that I don't think AI itself is the devil. [LAUGHTER] CHARLIE BENNETT: I'll think that for you. [LAUGHTER] GABRIELLE THOMAS: So I wrote a piece that was on the blog, Seen and Unseen. And I wrote about the idea of AI creating illusions. And it came out of some of the reading that I was doing around researching how AI is used and how it's affecting fakes and certainly, what seems to be a growing trend around suicide and murder in terms of what's going out of the chat bots and what people are being prompted to think as a result of their conversations. And I was like, wow, that's a lot more than just getting a piece of information wrong. And so I wrote a piece comparing that, now with the way that, in the fourth century, they talked about demons as creating illusions. And so the demonic realm is that which deceives us, fundamentally. And it seemed to me that when I was reading about the way that AI was being used sometimes in psychotherapy and that kind of thing, as a counselor and as a comforting conversation partner, but leading people to really very tragic ends, there was something similar in the end result of what was going on. And so that was what made me think, mm, I think there's a conversation here to be had around, also then, how the early Christians were dealing with that illusion and how they began to discern what's true, what's real, what's good, as opposed to what isn't going to be good for me, what isn't going to serve the common good properly. CHARLIE BENNETT: This is Lost in the Stacks. And today our guest was Dr. Gabrielle Thomas, Professor of Early Christianity and Anglican studies at Emory University, speaking to us about Satan scholarship. Or "scholarship of Satan" might be the better way to say it. Gabby, thank you for joining us. GABRIELLE THOMAS: Absolutely, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. ALEX MCGEE: File this set under BS2825.52.094 [LAUGHTER] THE CHURCH LADY: Today on Church Chat, we're going to be discussing Satan. You remember him, don't you? The Prince of Darkness, the Antichrist, the Beastmaster? Probably rings a little bell on your head now, doesn't it? [LAUGHTER] Well, isn't that special? [BUNNYGRUNT, "665 AND 1/2 WON'T DUE"] (SINGING) 665 and 1/2 won't due FRED RASCOE: "665 and 1/2 Won't Due" by Bunnygrunt, and before that, "666" by Sugar Candy Mountain. Those are songs about the magic number of the day. [THEME MUSIC] CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's episode is called The Number of the Beast, Setting the Record Straight to Hell. We've talked about some misconceptions of the devil, and we've played a few clips from various TV shows and movies that play into those misconceptions. As we close out our show, I want to ask everybody, what's your favorite depiction of the devil or a devil or a demon in popular media? Mine is Daryl Van Horne from The Witches of Eastwick, played by Jack Nicholson right at the beginning of his decline, his glorious decline. This is one time that I'll say ignore the book. Watch the movie. How about you, Alex? ALEX MCGEE: So I'm going to go with Elizabeth Hurley as the devil in the 2000 film Bedazzled opposite Brendan Fraser, a real moment in time. But the whole concept is a man is in love with a woman who doesn't see him. And he meets the devil, and she offers to give three opportunities to get the life he wants and win the girl. And obviously, he makes all these wishes to be powerful, rich, super athletic, and good looking. And every instance of this, there's a twist to it to where it's not exactly what he hoped it would be. CHARLIE BENNETT: He forgets to read the terms of service. ALEX MCGEE: Yes. CHARLIE BENNETT: How about you, Fred? FRED RASCOE: Actually, I'm going to follow very closely with Alex's here, because I'm going to reference Peter Cook in the 1960s version of Bedazzled, particularly the scene where he's the pop star, and he sings a song that says, "you bore me. I am entirely self-contained. You fill me with inertia." That really spoke to me when I first saw it in my 20s. [LAUGHTER] So I'm going to go with that one. Cody? CODY TURNER: I'm going to say the iteration of the devil in "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, my gosh. CODY TURNER: I love that he has a hobby and that he is reasonable enough to when he was beat. What about you, Marlee? MARLEE GIVENS: Oh, my favorite is Jon Lovitz playing the devil on Saturday Night Live when he's taken to The People's Court. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. How about you, Gabby? GABRIELLE THOMAS: I love Al Pacino in The Devil's Advocate. I think he plays it so, so well and just captures all the wonderful ideas around deception just perfectly. CHARLIE BENNETT: Very nice. So we all got our reading list now, or viewing list. Cody, we're going to need some horns of rock credits here. So roll the credits. [ROCK MUSIC] Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Alex McGee, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. ALEX MCGEE: Cody Turner is our divine engineer. I didn't write that, but OK. FRED RASCOE: It's true. MARLEE GIVENS: Legal counsel and a turntable that rotates in both directions were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. Special thanks to Gabby for being on the show, to everyone who is a force for good and not evil, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. Our web page is library.tech@edu/lostinthestacks, where you'll find our most recent episode, a link to our podcast feed, and a web form if you want to get in touch with us. CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week we take the wild swing from Satan to Santa. It's Litsmas. [LAUGHTER] FRED RASCOE: It's very similar names. Time for our last song today. We've had a good time with the theme and talking about Satan, 666. But it's time to wrap that up. There's enough real evil in the world. So let's close with a song about rejecting evil. This is "Devil With the Devil" by The Red Stick Ramblers right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend, everybody. [ROCK MUSIC] [SOFT DRAMATIC MUSIC] Kaiser Soze [Clip from "The Usual Suspects"]: The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, he's gone. [THE RED STICK RAMBLERS, "THE DEVIL WITH THE DEVIL"] (SINGING) Here comes the devil Here comes the devil Here comes the devil The devil with the devil says.