Religion And Its Monsters

Religions great and powerful mystery fascinates us but it also terrifies. Sotoo the monsters that haunt the stories of Jewish and Christian scriptures andearlie... » 

Religions great and powerful mystery fascinates us but it also terrifies. Sotoo the monsters that haunt the stories of Jewish and Christian scriptures andearlier traditions Leviathan Behemoth dragons and other beasts. In thisunusual and provocative book Timothy K. Beal writes about the monsters thatlurk in our religious texts and reveals how monsters and religion areirrevocably entwined.Most of us do not go to monster movies or read Gothic tales in search ofreligion at least not consciously. Nor do we go to religious services insearch of monsters. Yet horror and faith it seems are inextricable.According to Beal we can learn something about religion by getting to know itsmonsters and we can learn something about monsters by investigating theirreligious roots.As Timothy Beal follows monsters throughout religious texts and traditions healso discovers religion lurking in the modern horror genre from classics likeFrankenstein and Dracula to the contemporary spookiness of H.P. Lovecraftsshort stories and the Hellraiser films. Drawing upon a broad range of ancienttexts and popular culture from rabbinic lore to Goth counterculture heexplores the fascinating and often disturbing ways in which monsters hauntreligion and religion haunts the monstrous.Learned and witty Religion and Its Monsters is a captivating look at how weimagine good and eviland what lies beyond. «