The Possessed The Devils Illustrated

Demons: The Possessed, The Devils Paperback - August 18, 2017. Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land.

The Possessed (The Devils) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal The Russian Messenger in 1871-2. The Possessed (The Devils) is a social and political satire, a psychological drama, and large scale tragedy. Joyce Carol Oates has described it as "Dostoevsky's most confused and violent novel, and his most satisfactorily 'tragic' work." According to Ronald Hingley, it is Dostoevsky's "greatest onslaught on Nihilism", and "one of humanity's most impressive achievements--perhaps even its supreme achievement--in the art of prose fiction."

This tale is founded chiefly on facts furnished by the Postmaster-General's Annual Reports, and gathered, during personal intercourse and investigation, at the General Post-Office of London and its Branches. It is intended to illustrate-not by any means to exhaust-the subject of postal work, communication, and incident throughout the Kingdom. I have to render my grateful acknowledgments to Sir Arthur Blackwood; his private secretary, Charles Eden, Esquire; and those other officers of the various Departments who have most kindly afforded me every facility for investigation, and assisted me to much of the information used in the construction of the tale.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

A number of cases of serious child abuse have resulted from beliefs that children may be possessed by evil spirits and may then be given the power to bewitch others. Misfortune, failure, illness and even death may be blamed on them. The 'cure', nowadays called deliverance rather than exorcism, is to expel the spirits, sometimes by violent means. This book draws together contributions on aspects of possession and witchcraft from leading academics and expert practitioners in the field. It has been put together following conferences held by Inform, a charity that provides accurate information on new religions as a public service. There is no comparable information publicly available; this book is the first of its kind. Eileen Barker, founder of Inform, introduces the subject and Inform's Deputy Director goes on to detail the requests the charity has answered in recent years on the subject of children, possession and witchcraft. This book offers an invaluable resource for readers, whether academic or practitioner - particularly those in the fields of the safeguarding of children, and their education, health and general welfare.

What place do the four Gospels give Satan, demons, and Jesus’ human opponents (including Jewish leaders but also Jesus’ disciples) in their accounts of Jesus’ life? This study takes a literary-historical approach to the Gospels, examining them as narratives. It shows how the authors were in the process of developing the devil as a character and determining which roles he filled. New interpretations of individual passages in the Gospels are given as well as new understandings of the theological emphases of each author. This study is also a contribution to redaction criticism and the relative chronology of the Gospels. It employs the theory of Matthean posteriority which revolutionizes our understanding of the literary relations between the Gospels and allows for a new understanding of theological development in early Christianity.