Greasemonkey Griffin

[Cartoonist]

Not much of a story, so I'm only posting the splash page. Note the two characters portraying his conscience. A devil and an angel.

How far back does this cliche go? What was it's origin? I'm thinking it's a story device that goes back to the earliest days of story telling. Of course they used different characters, but did they always have religious connotations?

[rampartc]

1. it started long ago in the garden of eden ......

when the serpent whispered in eve's ear. that probably pushes the original story back to sumeria.

[Cartoonist]

2. Who was the serpent's counterpart?

Gotta be yin & yang

[edhopper]

3. It seems to come from the earliest days of Christianity

Wikipedia:

The non-canonical early Christian book, The Shepherd of Hermas, of around A.D. 140–150,[1] has a reference to the idea of two angels: "There are two angels with a man—one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity".[2] These angels in turn descend into a person's heart, and attempt to guide a person's emotions. Hermas is told to understand both angels, but to only trust the Angel of Righteousness. The concept is similar to ideas of personal tutelary spirits that are very common in many ancient and traditional cultures.

In some Christian folklore, each person has a dedicated guardian angel whose task is to follow the person and try to prevent them from coming to harm, both physical and moral. At the same time each person is assailed by devils, not usually considered as single and dedicated to a single person in the same way as the guardian angel, who try to tempt the person into sin. Both angels and devils are often regarded as having the ability to access the person's thoughts, and introduce ideas.

Though I would not be surprised if something similar was found in Greek mythology.

[Cartoonist]

4. I would agree that angels are a Christian invention

But the concept of two warring imps in the id must go back further. Further back than the Greeks? Does China have something similar?

[edhopper]

5. Maybe

good and bad dragons?

[Bretton Garcia]

6. Or good vs. bad anything at all.

Probably that, binary thinking, goes all the way back to the origins of life. Any protoplasmic blob could extend a pseudopod toward an object it thought was good, food. Only to find out it was a dangerous object. Reasonably advanced organisms could store, remember, that information. Remembering a "good" impulse. vs. a bad one.

Higher-order thinking though, knew that things aren't always quite so black and white. Maybe that terrible broccoli is good for us. And all that sugar, that tasted so good, turns out to not be as good as we thought as kids.

[guillaumeb]

8. Terrible broccoli? eom

[Bretton Garcia]

9. & stop buying so much religious sugar

/treacle/whitewash

[guillaumeb]

7. The concept of demons, or devils is present in Zoroastrianism.

600BCE Babylon

In my view, the devil is evil in living form.