How did the concept of evil come about? Especially during the 17th
century?  What did those thinkers come up with?  What books, scholarly
journals, and websites can I find to do this research.

Hello,

  I am following up on your question. Here are some resources

  "The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil from Earliest Times
to the Present Day" by Paul Carus (1900)
(Complete book online, worldwide scope)
http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/hod/  
 Read description and reviews at Amazon.com: 
 http://tinyurl.com/68mf3
Contents
 List of Illustrations
 Good and Evil as Religious Ideas
 Devil Worship
 Ancient Egypt
 Accad and the Early Semites
 Persian Dualism
 Israel
 Brahmanism and Hinduism
 Buddhism
 The Dawn of a New Era
 Early Christianity
 The Idea of Salvation in Greece and Italy
 The Demonology of Northern Europe
 The Devil's Prime
 The Inquisition
 The Age of the Reformation
 The Abolition of Witch-Prosecution
 In Verse and Fable
 The Philosophical Problem of Good and Evil

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Leibniz on the Problem of Evil (17th c)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/

The Problem of Evil 
Summary History Theodicy Questions 
  Introduction 
  The Irenaean Theodicy 
  The Augustinian Theodicy 
  The Process Theodicy 
http://www.philosophyonline.co.uk/pages/evil.htm

Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Problem of Evil
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv2-19

The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition By Joseph F. Kelly, Book Review 
"...the existence of evil has engendered perennial questioning among
philosophers and theologians, though the problem of evil as we have
come to know it did not emerge until the 17th century, in the English
natural theology tradition and in a German tradition culminating in
Leibniz?s Theodicy."
http://tinyurl.com/43vjt
(see site for full review article)

I hope these are useful. Please let me know if I can be of further
assistance. jdb-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by jdb-ga on 25 Nov 2004 03:31 PST

P.S.  Here are some additional resources for scholarly materials,
incuding publically available web resources as well as ways to find
books and articles through your local public or college libraries,
which will be your best sources for scholarly materials. There are
some electronic texts archives online that you can search for your
topic, and Google Scholar is a new feature of Google that searches for
scholarly materials on the web, many available full-text.

Googe > Directory > Arts > Literature > Electronic Text Archives 
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Electronic_Text_Archives
(These are online full-text archives that you can search for Evil,
Evil philosophy history, etc.)

Google Scholar
http://scholar.google.com/
"Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly
literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints,
abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use
Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic
publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and
universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."
(You can search for terms in Google Scholar such as: evil philosophy
history, evil philosophy 17th century, and variations of these terms)

As I am a university Humanities & Social Sciences librarian, if you
give me the names of your public and/or college libraries, I can show
you useful resources there, in the catalog and online article
databases for Philosophy and Religion.

Useful library catalog and online article database Subject Headings
are below. You can also use Keyword searches in the cataog and
databases for: evil philosophy history, and variations of these terms.

Good and evil History
Good and evil History 17th century 
Good and evil History of doctrines
Good and evil (Name of Religion)
Good and evil Psychological aspects

jdb-ga

In addition to the answer by jdb-ga I would like to recommend the book
"Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy" by
Susan Neiman:

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7350.html

Table of Contents:
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/TOCs/c7350.html

Selected Reviews:
http://www.susan-neiman.de/docs/book.html

"Look inside":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0691117926/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-1005247-6027131