Recontextualizing the Yetzer: Rabbinical Struggles and Evagrian Demons

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2024-08-28

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en

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In his monography about the yetzer hara, Ishay Rosen-Zvi argues that the yetzer should be recontextualized in the context of early monastic demonology and particularly relates it to the writings of Evagrius Ponticus. He makes an interesting argument, but uses only a few comparisons to the writings of Evagrius, which is insufficient to make such strong conclusions. My thesis aims to evaluate the argument of Rosen-Zvi by comparing the way in which the fight with both the yetzer in the rabbinical literature of late antiquity and the demons in the writings of Evagrius are described, both in the way the yetzer and the demons are described as attacking the human being as well as the way they are battled with.

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Faculteit der Filosofie, Theologie en Religiewetenschappen