Well, almost every culture and gathering of people from the days of Mesopotamian cities, of the love story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, has had a concept of evil. I want to focus for now on the Judeo-Christian concept (or notion)...To use Darryl's witticism, the Birth of a Notion can be used to describe what I'm after.
Jesus suffering
When god created the world and got around to creating man, in a lovely garden of flowers and animals we all assume were male and female, he forgot that poor Adam would suffer loneliness. Could that be the first instance of neglect? Any way, he took one of Adam's ribs and made Eve. So humans became like all the other animals except for one rule. See yonder fig tree (apple tree?). Do not eat from that tree.
Me? I think evil was created then and there by god himself. Why? because in a life of immortality and no other rules, who could resist the temptation to eat what had to be something miraculously delicious? Besides, there in Eden, Satan dwelled in the form of a snake. Why was that? Why did god put Satan in Eden in the first place (wasn't that also evil?)?
Do you wonder what the world would have looked like had there been no tempting snake, no woman seduced by Satan, a strong Adam refusing to eat that apple (or fig)? Take a look at the amazing Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, painted in 1500.
But they did, so no immortality, disease, and death to everything in Eden. Worse, sin meant biting insects, disease, famine, war, sufferings...
Not until the birth of Jesus did anything change. (Well god did wipe out all of humanity except the family of Noah at some point). There are varying details, but in most versions, the story goes like this: god gave his only begotten son through virgin birth to the world. The son grew up, gave sermons in such places as mountains; he healed the sick and fed the poor and hungry, and was taken after the complaints of Jews, and the indifference of a Roman official, by Roman soldiers to be tortured and nailed to a cross until he died a slow, painful death in front of his mother and friends.
Giotto:
Judas Kiss
I was brought up in the Episcopal Church and I heard the story from numerous sources. I read the 4 gospels written around a hundred years after his torture and death. Never in any version I heard could I make sense of why this horrible, cruel death of betrayal and rejection relieved mankind of its sin. How does his torture and brutal death redeem anything? Doesn't the cruel death simply show that people are still evil, that kind, loving, socialistic sermons are still being rewarded with money loving, selfishness and hatred? Why does this cruelty make Eve's falling for Satan's temptation and Adam falling for Eve's OK? And if it does, where is Eden, immortality, and pleasure such as existed in the Garden?
It is all nonsense. Today, millions of people dress up, drive their showy cars down to the church to ask for forgiveness, and to chat with their friends. It is as if evil doesn't exist. For wealthy, white, nationalistic people this is the best of all possible worlds. The suffering of the rest of humankind is of little or no consequence.
Amen
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