PART I

CHAPTER I

JESUS THE EXORCIST

Jesus inaugurates his mission as God’s suffering servant1 through his baptism
in the Jordan River. He allows himself to be numbered among sinners. Immediately
after his baptism, God empowers him through the Holy Spirit to begin waging a
cosmic war with Satan. Here just before his public ministry Jesus goes into the
wilderness in order to confront the devil, «the tempter», who has claimed authority
over «all the kingdoms of the world» (Mt 4:3; 4:8).
In the Beelzebul controversy Jesus implies that by performing exorcisms he is
waging a war against Satan’s «house», thus rupturing the authority of «the prince of
demons» on earth, and shattering «his kingdom» of spiritual evil (Mk 3:22-30; Mt
9:34; 12:24-30; Lk 11:15-23). Jesus’ ministry then plays out as an ongoing battle with
Satan, his minions, demons, and unclean spirits − a battle which does not reach its
climax until the Romans nail Jesus on the cross. From that cross Christ announces his
triumph over Satan’s empire, when he says, «It is finished» (Jn 19:30). Christian
scripture attests to the belief that although victory has been declared, the battle
against the «spiritual forces of evil» continues in the lives of Jesus’ followers (Eph
6:10-18; Rv 12:17). Only at his final coming, the parousia, when God makes a final

1
In Acts of the Apostles Jesus is called παῖς, «servant» four times by the early Christians, making
reference to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30; cf. esp. 8:32-33; παῖς, suffering
«servant» of see Isaiah 52:13 LXX). Scripture had foretold that God would redeem Israel and bring
salvation to the nations (Is 49:6) through this mysterious servant who the Jews before Jesus’ time
had already identified as representative of Israel, and even the Messiah (cf. Targum of Isaiah 52:10-
53:12). But why must he suffer? Through the mystery of redemptive suffering the power of God to
destroy evil is released (1 Pt 2:24; 4:1), not only is sin washed away – but new life is born. Jesus
manifests this connection between suffering and divine power in Mark and all the New Testament.
For example, Jesus «gives eternal life» in John precisely by offering himself in sacrifice as «the
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world» (Jn 10:28; 1:29).
15
apocalyptic judgment, will Jesus’ original work of destroying the authority of evil be
complete, and the promised kingdom of God will be fully revealed. For this reason,
Jesus’ exorcisms have cosmic, apocalyptic, and anti-imperial implications2.

1. JESUS, THE EXORCIST?

1.1 Jesus, as healer.

The demonical tradition pertaining to Jesus Christ, that is, his having authority
over demons and the power to heal demoniacs is nothing new. James Dunn proposes
emphatically that since Christianity’s inception there has been a demonical tradition
which was faithfully preserved and transmitted in the early «Jesus community» 3 .
Dunn’s unique approach asks the question of how Jesus had impact on his followers
and how his followers remembered him. Jesus’ ability to heal and exorcize would
have been an unforgettable facet of his ministry, one that touched his contemporaries
enormously and not only during the ministry prior to the crucifixion, but for
subsequent generations. While virtually all those engaged in research into the
historical Jesus presuppose that Jesus was a teacher and that all his actions were part
of a teaching ministry – the «fame» of Jesus was as a healer and exorcist, not a
teacher (cf. Mt 4:24; Acts 10:37-38)4.
Even the greatest anti-Christian apologists in the early centuries, such as
Celsus, who tried to fight by every means the validity of the Christian message did
not question the miracles of Jesus of healing and exorcism – so indisputable they
were in the popular memory. Instead the only rational way Celsus could undermine
Jesus’ miracles was to claim they flowed from a power that was not of God but was

2
See S.T. ROCHESTER, Good news at Gerasa; E. SORENSEN, in his book Possession and Exorcism,
132-133, explains that the Greek term ἐξορκίζω only occurs once in the New Testament, and it
occurs as the noun «exorcist» ἐξορκιστής in Acts 19:13. However through history it came to have a
technical meaning for the ritual. This ritual refers to all the incidents in the synoptic gospels and
Acts in which an exorcist (usually Jesus or the disciples) would cast out from a person a demon or
spirit. In fact, there are many different verbs used in reference to this. According to Sorensen: «By
far the most common terms are ἐξέρχομαι ‘come/go out’ and ἐκβάλλω ‘cast out’ but six other words
occur once each in contexts of exorcism».
3
J. DUNN, Jesus Remembered. Christianity in the Making; Dunn’s approach is distinctive and
significant as he inquires as to how Jesus had impact on his followers and how his followers
remembered him. See also ID., A New perspective on Jesus.
4
S. DAVIES in his book Jesus the Healer, 18-91, develops his own thesis as to why Jesus was able
to heal and exorcize. Davies liberally applies insights from cultural anthropology to make Jesus a
typical shaman or holy man. Jesus was one who was «possessed» by the Spirit of God, and that in
him there were two distinct personages: Jesus of Nazareth and the Spirit/Son of God, the latter of
which took «over» when it was time to say something divine. This new approach to research is one
way to overcome the stumbling block of Jesus’ miracles for modern scholarship.
16
magical, proposing that Jesus had learned from magicians while he was in Egypt5.
For Jesus in the synoptic Gospels, healing and exorcism were both signs and
demonstrations of the reality of the reign of God, a reality that lay at the very heart of
his proclamation (cf. Mk 1:14-15; Lk 11:20)6. For the disciples of Jesus, healing and
exorcism continued to demonstrate a fundamental reality of the faith: if Christ is alive
and enthroned in heaven as the King of the universe as promised in Scripture (cf. Ps
110:1; Dn 7:13-14), then he has endowed believers with royal power (cf. Dn 7:27),
particularly the apostles 7 , who exercised authority to perform miracles, «Heal the
sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying;
give without pay» (Mt 10:8). Along with the command to baptize and teach (Mt
28:19) – the faith is to be spread and its truth confirmed by power encounters, that is,
exorcism and healing in the name of Jesus (cf. Acts 5:12; 19:11-17). These miracles
confirm the divine authority of Jesus himself, and without them many would not
believe that Jesus is who he claims to be (Jn 4:48) 8 . The Gospels tell us that
«whenever» the people with unclean spirits saw Jesus, they fell down before him and
cried out, «You are the Son of God» (Mk 3:11). This indicates that the demons and
demoniacs know who Jesus is because in the realm of the spirit, the power and
reputation of Jesus are undeniable.
In the synoptic Gospels, demonic possession is different from sickness or
illness, just as exorcism is distinct from healing. A demoniac is someone under the
control of a hostile non-human force, thus exorcism would entail a full deliverance
and restoration of the victim to family, to community and to God’s created order.
Jesus commissioned the Twelve to be with him, to learn from him, and to proclaim
the kingdom of God by participating with him in healing and exorcism – through the
centuries Jesus’ message has endured by those who seek to embrace and teach it.
It seems natural for a modern reader to include the phenomenon of possession
in the category of disease, and to regard the exorcism narratives of the New

5
C.P. THIEDE, Jezus, Waar of Niet?, 75: «Of the greatest critics was Celsus, a man who tried to
fight by every means the validity of the Christian message, but in no way did he question the
historicity of the miracles of Jesus. Rather he proposed that while Jesus was in Egypt as a young
man he learned healing techniques from the Egyptian magicians».
6
C. EVANS, «Defeating Satan and Liberating Israel»; ID., «Inaugurating the Kingdom of God and
Defeating the Kingdom of Satan», 75. On Mark 1:14-15 as a summary of the proclamation of Jesus
see J. DUNN, Jesus Remembered, 407-409, 437-439, 498.
7
As Jesus confers royal authority to the apostles at the Last Supper, Lk 22:29-30: «I assign
[διατίθεμαι – lit. ‘covenant’] to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and
drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel». This could
be seen as a fulfilment of Daniel 7:13 ff., where the kingdom of God is given to «the Son of Man»
(7:14) who in turn assigns it to the saints: «And the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of
the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High»
(Dn 7:26a). This transfer of power would not diminish the supreme authority of Jesus as the king of
kings if his followers are members of Christ’s body, as in the Pauline understanding: «Christ is the
head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior… we are members of his body» (Eph 5:23,
30; cf. Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 6:15; 12:12-27).
8
On this point, see C. EVANS, Paul the Exorcist and Healer, 363-379.
17
Testament as «special case» narratives of healing of disease 9 . Since the New
Testament does not seem to tell us about the healing of mental diseases, it seems
natural to regard the exorcism narratives as exactly that: people suffering from mental
disorders who were healed 10 . However the authors of the Gospels inhabited a
symbolic universe quite different from that of many modern readers 11. Thus, without
surrendering their own scientifically-based models of sickness and health, modern
cultural analogies can be instructive with respect to shaping the Gospel accounts. In
them, a crucial theological affirmation is awaiting discovery: the forces that oppose
health also oppose the will of God, that is to say, God’s final purpose, as Jesus
discloses it, is not sickness but health, not death but life. Both spiritual illness and
physical illness are interrelated, and God is not indifferent to either. Thus, by
whatever model we explain the phenomena of sickness and healing, this affirmation
of God’s desire for human wholeness must stand at the centre of a theology of healing
9
David Instone Brewer, whose approach to these matters is formed both by an understanding of
modern psychiatric thinking and person experience of exorcism, argues that while a psychiatrist
might suggest reinterpreting Biblical accounts of exorcism in terms of various psychiatric disorders,
such an approach has «only limited value as explanations of what is described in the Gospels». D.
INSTONE BREWER, Jesus and the Psychiatrists, 133-148. Keith Warrington also suggests that the
demons attempted to complicate life for Jesus by proclaiming his status at an inopportune time, but
that Jesus refused to allow any slowing down of his ministry and saw through the unsubtle (at least
to him) strategy of the demons. He states that psychiatry cannot explain the insight than many of the
demonised have into Jesus’ identity: The man in the synagogue shouted out that Jesus was the Holy
One of God (Mk 1:24; Lk 4:34). The mad man of Gadera called him Son of the Most High God
(Mk 5:7; Mt 8:29; Lk 8:28). Many other demonised people are also recorded as shouting that he
was the Son of God, and having to be silenced (Mk 1:34; 3:11; Lk 4:41). This insight into Jesus’
character cannot be explained in psychiatric terms. One explanation for the demon's actions is that
they are disturbed by the mere presence of Jesus and vocalize their discomfort, a pattern
recognizable from contemporary accounts of possession. See K. WARRINGTON, Jesus the Healer,45.
10
G.T. Twelftree examined the world of thought contemporary to Jesus’ exorcisms. His conclusion
was that: «[People] were not uncritical in their acceptance of a report of a miracle...Not everyone
believed in demons and exorcism. People in the New Testament world [were able] to discriminate
between those sicknesses which were and those which were not thought to be caused by demons».
G.T. TWELFTREE, Christ Triumphant, 169. It is interesting to note that all three synoptic Gospels
record that, during the evening of the day on which Peter’s mother-in-law was healed, many who
were sick and demonised were brought to Jesus for ministry, each category of affliction kept
separate in the accounts. Again, compare the cures of deaf, dumb and blind persons in Mark 7 and 8,
where there is no exorcism (despite Mark’s interest in such events), with the similar cases in
Matthew 9 and 12, where mute and blind people are exorcised: There must have been some
diagnosis or discernment by Jesus at the time, whereby he was able to tell which cases required the
casting-out of evil spirits and which did not. See M. PERRY, Deliverance, 146; K. WARRINGTON,
Jesus the Healer, 45.
11
Respect for ancient ways of understanding what we call «illness» will help us also to hear and
appreciate the theological affirmation the text is delivering to modern readers as well. «On the other
hand, a cavalier disregard of the ancient mythological model of illness is inappropriate and makes it
difficult for us to understand the context of the topic in question». See J.T. CARROLL, «Sickness and
Healing in the New Testament Gospels», 139, 142.

18
informed by the Gospels. The fact that so many of Jesus’ acts of healing (at least in
the synoptic Gospels) are exorcisms indicates that such maladies reflect, not sins for
which the sufferer should repent, but oppression from which liberation is necessary.
The goal is that the victim may be restored in body and also liberated from oppressive
thought patters that vex the heart and mind – which, in the language of the Gospels,
are caused by oppressive spirits. Jesus is not a dualist; he does not separate body and
soul, but treats the whole person, and in his exorcisms both the mind and body
undergo spiritual and physical restoration. Undoubtedly this language of demonic
possession and exorcism poses a challenge for the interpreter today. As with the
miracles generally, many modern readers of the Bible reject (or simply ignore)
exorcisms, regarding them as the expression of an outmoded worldview.
Exploring the exorcism narratives as special cases of disease narratives may
explain the causes of disease as the work of evil spirits or demons. In antiquity,
possession and exorcism were not a phenomenon of disease but had a different and
more comprehensive hermeneutic framework.
To identify and examine the beliefs of Jesus and the early Christians regarding
exorcism, one may use the lens of modern notions regarding exorcism. But in
contrast to Western Christian ideas of magic and the activities of Jewish exorcists of
the first century, Jesus and the early Christians after him did not follow the magical
practices of the contemporary pagan world12. The unique features in the exorcisms
performed by Jesus and his disciples will be brought to light in the present study.

1.2 Exorcisms of Jesus and the early Christians.

In two of the six exorcism stories of the Gospels, namely, Mt 9:32-34 and Mt
12:22f (par. Lk 11:14), there is nothing said about the technique used by Jesus. In
three exorcism stories Jesus expels demons with short, succinct commands such as,
«Be silent and come out of him!» (Mk 1:25; Lk 4:35); «Come out of the man, you
unclean spirit!» (Mk 5:8; Lk 8:29)13. The brevity and authority of such commands
and the absence of the invocation of divine or angelic names are aspects which
contrast sharply from the lengthy adjurations and invocations that characterize
12
G.T. Twelftree notes several marks of authenticity in Jesus’ exorcisms, unusual facts about his
mode of operation that cannot have been borrowed from the common practice of the day and
thereby pass the criterion of dissimilarity: Jesus used no material devices (in contrast to other
ancient cases), neither did he require departing demons to give proof of their exit, nor did he use
common formulas such as «I bind you». Jesus did not pray to remove the evil spirits or invoke any
authority beyond his own: As a result of our examination of the Jesus tradition we are able to
conclude, at least, that Jesus was an exorcist, at one with his time, that the synoptic Tradition is
correct to give considerable emphasis to this aspect of Jesus' ministry, and that Jesus was the first to
associate exorcism and eschatology. «Be quiet!» said Jesus sternly. «Come out of him!» The evil
spirit shook the man and came out of him with a shriek. The people were all so amazed, they asked
each other, «What is this? A new teaching - and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits
and they obey him» (Mk 1:25-27, cf. Lk 4:31-37). G.T. TWELFTREE, Christ Triumphant, 169.
13
And again: «He rebuked the unclean spirit and said to it, ‘I command you, come out of him and
never enter him again!» (Mk 9:25;Mt 17:18;Lk 9:42).
19
formulas seen in the papyri indicative of magic and sorcery in early times. That Jesus
could confidently command demons and expect instant obedience indicates that he
regarded himself as someone in full possession of the supernatural power necessary
for the performance of such acts. Unlike other Jewish exorcists, Jesus never uses
secondary means in his exorcisms, such as fumigations, rings, roots or herbs. Nor
does Jesus use incantations, liturgical prayers or specially-composed psalms of praise
as part of his exorcist practice. When the disciples were unable to drive out a demon,
Jesus explains that there are different types of demons, and some of these can only
come out by prayer (Mk 9:14-29; Mt 17:14-21; Lk 9:37-43a). However there is no
indication that Jesus himself used prayer as a means of exorcism. Rather, Jesus drives
out demons simply by directly commanding the demon(s) to come out of a person 14.
When exorcizing the boy with the demon that caused him to be deaf and dumb, for
example, Jesus says, «You deaf and mute spirit…I command you, come out of him
and never enter him again» (Mk 9:25). Moreover, unlike other Jewish exorcists, Jesus
does not appeal to any authority for these exorcisms other than himself, not even to
YHWH15. This is different from the exorcist whom the disciples discover casting out
demons but who was not one of their group (the so-called «strange exorcist» Mk
9:38-41). This unidentified exorcist did indeed cast out evil spirits but did so only on
the basis of Jesus’ authority. Likewise, the disciples themselves practiced exorcism,
but they also did so by Jesus’ authority (Mk 3:15; 6:7). When they returned from
being sent out to announce the kingdom of God, they marvelled: «Lord, even the
demons submit to us in your name» (Lk 10:17).
Clearly Jesus was also unique among exorcists because evil spirits submitted to
him without opposition or struggle. Sometimes the demons engaged Jesus in dialogue
and in one instance they appealed to him for leniency. The «Legion» in the Gadarene
demoniac for example sought to have Jesus promise that he would not torment
them16. But there is never a sense of a real power struggle between Jesus and the evil
spirits that he removed from people, unlike with other exorcists (e.g. Acts 19:13-16).
The fact that Jesus exorcized without opposition probably explains why witnesses of
his exorcisms were astonished at what they experienced (Mk 1:27; Lk 4:36; Mt 9:33).
Jesus’ complete «authority and power» (Lk 4:36) over evil spirits also explains the
alarm and terror that the spirits exhibit when they encounter him; they fear for their
continued well-being because they believe that Jesus has the power to torment them
and to send them to the Abyss (Mk 5:10; Lk 8:31). In fact, the demons recognize
Jesus as the kingly Davidic Messiah who has been given authority over the spiritual
world. Just as David had received exorcistic power after his anointing (cf. 1 Sa 16:13,
23) so Jesus displays this royal, messianic power in performing exorcisms. Thus the
demons fall down before Jesus, addressing him with the appropriate messianic titles:
14
Keith Warrington writes that «the amazement of the people may have been due to the fact that
Jesus dealt with the demon by a word, without resorting to magic». See K.W ARRINGTON, Jesus The
Healer, 45.
15
G.T. TWELFREE, Jesus, the Exorcist, 163.
16
Mk 5:8; see also Lk 8:31: «And they begged him repeatedly not to order them to go into the
Abyss, or Pit».
20
«O son of God» (Mt 8:28; cf. 2 Sa 7:14; Ps 2:7; 89:26), «the holy one of God» (Mk
1:24; Lk 4:34; cf. Ps 16:10), «You are the son of God» (Mk 3:11; Lk 4:42), and
«Jesus, son of the most High God» (Mk 5:7; Lk 8:28). Mental illness and psychosis
cannot explain this characteristic insight that many of the demoniacs have into Jesus’
messianic identity, especially since most «normal» Jews lack this insight.
Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew, and the writers of the New Testament
documents were Christians of the first, or perhaps, 2nd century writing for Christians
of their own time. For Jews of this historical period, in addition to God and his
material creation, there existed a world of spiritual beings, some good and some evil,
both of which can interact with human beings. The evil spiritual beings would seek to
do harm to humans and God permitted these spirits to lead people into disobedience
to God’s law. There are three principle sources of the formulation of this belief.
Firstly, in Genesis 6:1-4, there is the story of the «sons of God» or Watchers
who were angelic beings of the antediluvian period that «took brides for themselves»
from the daughters of men, thus corrupting themselves and the human beings over
whom they were perhaps responsible to keep watch 17 . From this the tradition
developed that the angels and humans had spiritual offspring who continued the
corrupting influence on the human race begun by their fathers. This topic we will
discuss in greater detail below (cf. 3.4).
Secondly, after king Saul has been rejected by God because of disobedience,
God sends an evil spirit to afflict Saul (1 Sa 16:14-16; 18:10; 19:9-10). This happens
immediately after David received the Spirit of the Lord at his anointing, because he
will eventually replace Saul as king (1 Sa 16:13). Interestingly David, as newly
anointed messiah, is given a divine power of exorcism, so that when he is invited to
play the harp in Saul’s court every day, the evil spirit departs from Saul (1 Sa 16:23;
18:10). This «royal gift» seems to have passed to David’s son Solomon who gains the
reputation as one of the great exorcists of antiquity18, even in non-Jewish circles.
Thus exorcism comes to be associated with God’s anointed (i.e. messiah) – a detail
which, as we have seen, the writers of the Gospels were well aware.
Thirdly, many texts speak of the existence of evil spirits in the post-diluvium
period who are subordinate to a ruling evil spirit, variously named Belial (or Beliar),
Satan, Mastema, angel of darkness, spirit of deceit, Melchirešha, and the devil
17
In Second Temple Judaism angels were commonly called «Watchers». Already in late Hellenistic
Judaism, these spirits were thought to have brought magic to their human brides, according to the
Book of Watchers in the Apocalypse of 1 Enoch. For a general account of the tradition, see J.C.
VANDERKAM, «Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition», 124-126. In the Christian
monotheist tradition there was the assumption that sorcerers make use of negative superhuman
beings which coexist with God in the spirit realm, those pagan gods who now have been unveiled as
evil demons and who either are or are not identical with the fallen angels of Jewish tradition.
18
According to Josephus, Ant. 8.45, Solomon «composed incantations with which illnesses depart,
and left behind forms of exorcisms with which those possessed by demons drive them out, never to
return» (ἐπῳδάς τε συνταξάμενος αἷς παρηγορεῖται τὰ νοσήματα καὶ τρόπους ἐξορκώσεων
κατέλιπεν, οἷς οἱ ἐνδούμενοι τὰ δαιμόνια ὡς μη κέτ’ ἐπανελθεῖν ἐκδιώκουσι); text and translation
by H.S.J. THACKERAY – R. MARCUS, Josephus V. Jewish Antiquities, 594-595.

21
(διάβολος), but without any reference to the story of the Watchers19.
To understand and highlight beliefs, held either against or in common with
their contemporaries, it is perhaps helpful to ask an a priori question: What did the
people of the New Testament world and its cultural context think about such things as
spirits, demons, possession, magic, healing, healers, exorcism and exorcists? Jesus’
ministry traversed the area of Palestine. Most of the Gospel material came to its
present form as the faith expanded into the wider Greco-Roman world. To clarify
what Jesus and his audience thought about exorcism, one must examine the
background material concerning the social and religious life in first century Palestine.
On the other hand, it is not accurate to think of two separate, clearly defined
«worlds» between Jewish and Gentile beliefs, separated by a cultural and intellectual
barrier, implying that Christianity passed from an exclusively Jewish to an
exclusively Hellenistic milieu. The New Testament writers themselves, who were
both Jews and non-Jews, have a largely shared worldview; the ancients, both pagans
and Jews alike, conceived of the world as ordered by divine forces for the purpose of
worship20. Even before the «conquest» of Canaan by the bulk of the Hebrew tribes,
what was to become the homeland of the Jews had been a cultural, political, and
economic crossroads of the ancient world. For this reason, and because of its small
size, this homeland was never able to remain a closed society. Indicative of this is the
great number of Jews from different parts of the ancient world who came annually to
celebrate Passover in Jerusalem bringing with them new customs, including the
language of their new homes (cf. Acts 2:5-12). The wider Greco-Roman world was
not one homogeneous «Hellenistic» culture but included a vast number of Jews
whose position in society, in Hellenistic Egypt for example, was not marginal.

1.3 Hebrew personification of evil, the Jewish Tradition.

Despite the view that, «God was responsible for everything, good or evil»,
ancient Israel maintained a belief in the existence of evil spirits that Jewish scripture
related to idolatry and the pagan gods21. The importance and significance of this view

19
W. WINK, Naming the Powers, 23-26. See also W. BOUSSET – H. GRESSMAN, Die Religion Des
des Judentums in Späthellenistischen Zeitalter, 321-342.
20
Consider, for example, the way that the author of Acts depicts Paul, a monotheist, addressing his
pagan audience at the Areopagus: «Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very
religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with
this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to
you» Acts 17:22b-23. Despite their differing beliefs Paul begins by affirming their culture and
common religious sentiment. He then goes on to affirm their common relation to a supreme
Divinity by quoting Greek poetry: «[God] is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we
live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed
his offspring’» 17:27b-28. Clever rhetoric aside, ancient Jews and pagans had much in common.
21
R. DUNSTON, «Demon in the Old Testament», 208-209. The Old Testament testifies to the
existence of a demonic being in conflict with God and His people. This archenemy of God is found
22
requires investigation into the Old Testament development of ancient demonology.
Robert C. Dunston states:
«Further influences on Israel’s ideas concerning demons came from the
wilderness and from neighboring religions. The wilderness was a sinister,
forbidding place and seemed to be a fitting abode for demons (Is 34:14). In some
cases, phrases may indicate the names of earlier demons…but in other cases,
specific names were used. The demons Resheph, Lilith, and Azazel clearly show
the influence of the desert and other religions on Israel. Resheph was the
Canaanite god of plague and pestilence (Dt 32:24 ‘burning heat’, ‘plague’; Hab
3:5), Lilith was the Mesopotamian storm demon who in the O.T. became a night
demon of the wilderness (Is 34:14 ‘night hag’), and Azazel was the desert demon
to whom the scapegoat was sent on the Day of Atonement (Lv 16:8,10,26).
Demons such as these survived in Israelite thought and practice and eventually
found a place in Israel’s theology»22.
Israelite demonology extended into the realm of angelology. Judaism accepted
and adopted the gods of other nations but neither considered them divine, nor worthy
of worship. Rather they were considered guardian spirits/angels of each nation (cf. Dt
32:8), nations who had become corrupted by worship of these spirits in place of their
Creator, and, therefore, these nations were under God’s judgment 23 . As such, the
children of Abraham were not henotheists. By the time of the New Testament,
however, the influence of Hellenistic culture had undoubtedly exerted itself with
regard to the understanding of supernatural deities. In fact, «Demon is a
transliteration of a Greek term referring originally to either good or bad spirit beings»
– δαιμόνιον24. Perhaps the Israelite conception of demons arose from the fact that
«ancient people feared demons because they inhabited lonely places such as dark,
shadowy, deserted areas, places of waste, or ruins of crumbling buildings»25.
Pre-exilic Hebrew religion held that YHWH made all that was in heaven and
earth, both good and evil. The «devil» as such did not exist, at least, not as Christian
and later Jewish thought conceived of him. However the idea that human good was
disrupted by a created being, an adversary, can be seen for example in the astonishing
«serpent» of Eden who tempts Adam to sin, an act for which God curses the serpent
and makes him and his «offspring» the eternal enemies of the «offspring» of Eve.
throughout Old Testament narratives, hymns, and prophetic speeches. A good place to begin to
understand Jewish demonology is to look at Deuteronomy 32:16-17 for example where we read:
‫י ַקְ נִאֻהּו ְבז ִָרים בְת ֹועֵב ֹת י ַ ְכעִיסֻהּו׃‬16
‫שעָרּום ֲאב ֹתֵ יכֶם׃‬
ְ ‫שים ִמקָר ֹב בָאּו ֹלא‬
ִ ָ‫ יִזְבְחּו ַלשֵדִ ים ֹלא אֱֹל ַה אֱֹלהִים ֹלא י ְדָ עּום חֲד‬17
«16 They made him jealous with strange gods, with abhorrent things they provoked him.17 They
sacrificed to demons, not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived,
whom your ancestors had not feared» (NRSV).
22
R. DUNSTON, «Demon in the Old Testament», 208-209. That Lilith was a storm demon is of
particular importance to understanding Mark 4:35-41 as an exorcism narrative.
23
G. CAIRD, New Testament Theology, 102.
24
B. CROCKETT, Demon in the New Testament, 208, the English word demon comes from .
25
Cf. Lv 16:6-10; Ps 91:5; Is 13:21;34:14; Mt 12:43-45; Lk 4:1-2; the ancients believed that tombs
were dwelling places for demons. See J.Α. BROOKS, Mark, 124.
23
The serpent’s offspring must afflict all humanity in subsequent generations (Gn
3:15)26. Could not the offspring of the serpent be a reference to demonic forces? Such
a theory is not articulated later in the Hebrew Bible27.
An interesting case of a spiritual enemy of human good is from the Book of
Job, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible and a beautiful example of Hebrew poetry;
it sings of Job’s great sufferings coming as a direct result of a kind of wager between
God and a mysterious «Adversary», satan. This Satan is one of the bene-ha-Elohim,
«the sons of God» (Jb 1:6) and so he has a unique relationship with his Creator. In
Job as in Zachariah God permits this Satan to stand before him and speak to him in
the heavenly court (cf. Zec 3:1-3). God boasts to him of the goodness of Job: «And
the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like
him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from
evil?’» (1:8). Satan says Job’s goodness is a result of God’s blessings and protection,
but if God were to remove his protection over Job «he will curse you to your face»
(1:11). So God allows Satan to bring great calamities upon Job, «And the LORD said
to Satan, ‘Behold, all that he has is in your hand’» (Jb 1:8-11; 2:1-7). Despite the loss
of everything including his health and family, Job maintains his integrity; he does not
curse God, but blesses him – he only maintains that it was unfair that he suffer, and so
he complains until the final chapters. Then in an act of total surrender to God’s will,
Job gives all glory and credit to the Creator to do whatever he likes with his creation,
and repents of having accused God of injustice (Jb 42:2-6). God then blesses Job
enormously and makes him an intercessor for humanity, a role for which he became
famous (Jb 42:10; Ez 14:14, 20; Jas 5:11). Therefore by means of Job’s patience and
sincerity, his love of God and total surrender, clearly God has won the «wager» and
Satan has lost.
26
The Old Testament does not feature a systematic demonology, because the monotheistic nature of
the Jewish religion did not allow for the existence of intermediate beings on a more or less divine
level. Yet even in the Pentateuch we find angels, the «sons of God», «the ten thousands of holy
ones», Dt 33:2, and cherubim – elaborated in the Psalms, prophets, etc. YHWH commands Moses
to make two gold cherubim to adorn the arc of the covenant, Ex 25:18. In Ps 8:5 God has made
«man little less than the heavenly beings» or «gods» elohim, who are translated «angels» in the
LXX. So there was the concept of intermediate, ministering spirits that operate between God and
man, Ps 104:4. Isaiah, in his vision of the exalted throne of YHWH, introduces the seraphim, the
«burning ones» who have six wings and praise God constantly before his throne, Is 6:1-7. Ezekiel
also has a famous vision of God’s heavenly throne and the cherubim flying below, Ez 1:25-28. In
the Old Testament we also find traces of demons of Eastern origin, with whom the Jewish world
had once come into contact. They appear in the Jewish text under various names and are
represented in various forms. All worship of these demons and any divining practice were forbidden
explicitly. However, the devil is not associated with these demons in the Old Testament. Only in the
late Judaic period do we find in spurious works the emergence of certain conceptions, under Persian
and Hellenistic influences, that admit both the grouping and the ordering of evil spirits, as well as
their ability to interfere in human life. See J. BURTON RUSSELL, The Devil, 174-221.
27
There is no further mention of the offspring, literally seed, of the serpent. Though there are
several references to «sons of Belial» being very wicked, perverse and godless men (Jg 19:22; 1 Sa
2:12; 1 Kgs 21:10; etc.). «Children of the devil» or «sons of the evil one» is a concept that will be
developed more in the New Testament (1 Jn 3:10; Mt 13:38; cf. Jn 8:44; Acts 13:10).
24
 Despite the crucial role of the serpent in the temptation ordeal of Adam and
Eve in Genesis 3, and «Satan’s» effort to disrupt Job’s relationship with God, an
understanding of the devil as both tempter and accuser, that is, both serpent and
Satan, developed only gradually in Jewish tradition, arising from certain tensions
within the concept of YHWH28. The fact that the spirit of evil, the devil, is not a fully
unified concept in the Old Testament is not grounds for rejecting his existence in later
Jewish or Christian theology. Such rejection would be a case of the genetic fallacy:
the notion that in order to find the truth of a word or concept one must look at it in its
earliest form. Rather, historical truth is a development through time, and theological
understanding likewise can mature as generations reflect upon their experience of
suffering and joy in the light of providence confirmed in the sacred writings of their
faith tradition.
The devil could be considered the personification of evil in any culture. But
several difficulties arise in discussing this concept in Hebrew religion. The word
«devil» derives through Latin from the Greek diabolos, which is a rendition of the
Hebrew satan29. Conceptually, the Hebrew word satan is not par essence identical to
the spirit of evil, but merely descriptive of one of the characteristic roles that he plays.
Satan derives from a Hebrew root meaning «to oppose», «obstruct», «accuse». It was
translated into the Greek as diabolos, «adversary», whence it passed into Latin
diabolus, German Teufel, and English devil. Satan appears as a common noun several
times in the Old Testament in reference to a human opponent, as when David says to
the sons of Zeruiah, «What right have you…to oppose me today»?30 In another early
passage, an angel of the Lord blocks the road on which Balaam seeks to travel riding
an ass. Since the angel obstructs the road, he is referred to as Satan (Num 22:22). The
28
See, A. YOSHIKO REED, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity, 24-160. In the
early history of Jewish–Christian relations, we find a focus on the traditions about the fallen angels.
The Book of the Watchers, (see 3.4 below) is an Enochic apocalypse from the 3rd century B. C.
where the «sons of God» from Gn 6:1-4 are accused of corrupting humankind through their
teachings of metalworking, cosmetology, magic, and divination. By tracing the transformations of
this motif in Second Temple, Rabbinic, and early medieval Judaism and early, late antique, and
Byzantine Christianity, one can better understand the history of interpretation of Genesis, the
changing status of Enochic literature, and the place of intertestamental sources and traditions in the
interchange between Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. In the
process, this book explores issues such as the role of text-selection in the delineation of community
boundaries and the development of early Jewish and Christian ideas about the origins of evil.
29
The name satan, (‫שטָן‬
ָ )- and the feminine form sitnah: (‫ש ְטנָה‬
ִ ) «opposition», literally «accusation»,
(cfr. Ezra 4:6) - come from the verb (‫( )שטן‬satan) meaning to resist or be an adversary and is used
six times in the Bible, for instance in Psalm 38:20, where it reads: «...they resist (‫ )שטן‬me because
good follows me». The noun (‫שטָן‬ ָ ) is used much more frequently, and only a few of these
occurrences denote the big bad guy:1 Kings 11:14, «And YHWH raised up an adversary (‫ )שָ טָן‬to
Solomon; Hadad the Edomite...»1 Kings 11:23, «And Elohim raised up a (‫שטָן‬ ָ ) to him; Rezon son of
Eliadah...» In Numbers we even see this noun ascribed to the Angel of YHWH: Numb 22:22, «..and
the Angel of YHWH set Himself in the road as a (‫שטָן‬ ָ )» ...And verse 32, «I have come as (‫)שָ טָן‬
because your way is contrary to Me».
30
2 Sm 19:22. Other appearances of Satan as a common noun in the Old Testament: 1 Sm 29;24; 1
Kgs 5;4; 11:14-25; Ps 109:6.
25
sense is clearly that of a common noun. The angel is not being called a «Satan», but
in this instance, is merely an obstructer of the road.
In order to posit the «prince of demons» as a possible metaphysical reality, the
origin and existence of demons/evil spirits must to be further clarified. Dunston noted
above that at least several demons came into Hebrew tradition from foreign gods or
from the desert. Indeed humans by nature associate what is unknown with evil,
tending to demonize it. But this is only a first glance at evil, to grasp the more
profound and spiritually rich elements in the Hebrew concepts of demonic power, one
needs to first understand and underscore the tremendous love by which Israel
believed herself to be upheld and sustained through the centuries: God’s covenant
love. Israel’s national identity was partly formed out of the oral tradition of the
patriarchs to whom God had accorded blessings and promises, and this identity would
be further solidified by the covenant through Moses at Sinai. The God of Abraham
liberated Israel from bitter slavery in Egypt because, as God says to Pharaoh, «Israel
is my firstborn son... Let my son go that he may serve me» because the worship of
God is true freedom (Ex 4:22-23; Ps 19:7-10). In the desert God calls Israel to
covenant because he wants them to be exclusively devoted to him so as to fulfil a
special vocation he promised Abraham: to be God’s blessing to «all nations» (Gn
22:18), «a kingdom of priests and a holy nation» that, by keeping the covenant with
God, will invite all the other children of God back to the freedom and joy of
worshiping their true Creator (Ex 19:4-6; Dt 28:10). But this universal vocation is
wounded by Israel’s own unfaithfulness. The apex of all evil for humanity is what
prevents God from blessing the world through Israel’s worship, namely, rupture of
the covenant (Dt 32:16-26; Is 24:5-6). This evil is much greater in God’s eyes, in fact,
than the religious practices of the goyim who are not bound by a covenant with him
(cf. Dt 6:4-15; 29:24-26). Furthermore, it is covenant faithfulness and not cultural
superiority that sets Israel apart as a nation. According to Ezekiel Jews cannot claim
to have a different origin that their goyim enemies; by blood Jews are the same as the
Canaanites, Amorites, and Hittites31. In this context it cannot be stressed enough that
even before Moses the «foreign gods» were never truly foreign to Israel. The people
of Israel were quite familiar with the sexual rituals that pagan worship entailed, just
as Aaron knew precisely how to build a golden calf and invite the people «to play»
around it (Ex 32:1-35; Nm 25:1-9). Although Israel had sworn their fidelity to God in
fear and trembling before stormy mount Sinai (Ex 19:16-19), just forty days later
they broke that covenant without any fear whatsoever, not through ignorance of
foreign gods, but through knowledge of them. So there must be another reason for
why foreign gods became demons besides cultural ignorance and prejudice.
The covenant in Exodus 24 cannot be broken, because its promise is sealed by
31
Cf. Ez 16:3 God chides Jerusalem with the sardonic revelation: «Thus says the Lord GOD to
Jerusalem: Your origin and your birth are of the land of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite
and your mother a Hittite». This would be an offensive prophecy for the «sons of Abraham» who
set themselves apart as superior to the nations, cf. 1 Ch 1:28. Ezekiel’s hyperbole is clear: Israel has
no right to think herself superior to other nations, for Israel would be helpless without God’s saving
her by his life-giving word, Ez 16:6, and greatly blessing her through the covenant,16:8.
26
the word of the Eternal God: «I have loved you with everlasting love... O virgin
Israel!» (Jer 31:3-4). Despite centuries of betrayal, God is still a faithful «husband»
and longs for the time when his people would love him «as a bride» (31:32; 2:2)32.
The nuptial imagery connotes a spiritual truth: the golden calf incident, the orgy of
Baal of Peor, etc. ruptured the covenant marriage with God with such severe
contempt for God’s love that it rendered Israel on par with Sodom and Gomorrah (cf.
Is 1:10-11). Reflection upon the contrast between Israel’s infidelity to the covenant
through Baal worship vis-à-vis the pristine fidelity of monotheism practiced by
Abraham and the «fathers» of oral tradition may have influenced the very roots of the
Hebrew language 33 . It is no coincidence that Israel’s idolatry involved cult
prostitution and promiscuity with «foreign women» in worship of the erotic (Ex 32:6,
25; Nm 25:1-3). «How sick is your heart, declares the Lord GOD, because you did all
these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute» (Ez 16:30). The scriptural witness is
unanimous: idolatry is spiritual adultery. Both male and female cult prostitution,
through which Israel spiritually fornicated with foreign gods in contempt for her
husband, became the quintessential evil urge34. Now we can see why the Hebrew
word for foreign gods was not principally something abstract like evil spirits or
shadim, «demons», but baalim, ‫« בעלים‬husbands», «masters» 35 . God ordered the
prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, so he would become a living sign to the people
of God’s frustration with Israel (Hos 1:2). But God promises to cast aside Israel’s
lovers: «I will remove the names of the Baals [baalim] from your lips... And I will
betroth you to me forever» in a new «covenant» (Hos 2:17, 19). At this stage in
Jewish history the word baalim would be more filthy and suggestive to Jews, and
hence more evil than any unseen spirit could be. In the Torah the worship of these
foreign «husbands» brought death to any Israelite who merely suggested it, even if
that person were a family member (Dt 13:6-10). The lesson here is very concrete:
foreign nations may follow their own gods to their own loss, but Israel is to abide by
her promise to worship YHWH alone. Only when one understands in Jewish eyes the
unconditional love of God for his special people could we understand how anything
32
God’s covenant with Israel is like a marriage covenant it that it is an exclusive promise that forms
a bond of kinship symbolized by blood, Ex 24:7-8.
33
Cf. Dt 32:17. The word Baal originally could have referred to the national God of Israel in an
innocent way, as evidenced by Jonathan’s and David’s own children whose names have Baal in
them, Merib-baal 1 Ch 8:31; 1 Ch 9:40 and Beeliada 1 Ch 14:7. But after Jezebel brought to
Samaria the worship of the Phoenician deity by the name of Baal, it may have took on a negative
connotation – and the prophet Hosea thus announces that God no longer wanted to be called by the
name my baal but by the name my ish, my man, a more intimate term for husband, Hos 2:16.
34
Cf. Ex 34:14-16; Dt 23:17; Nm 25:1-2; 1 Kgs 14:23-24; 2 Kgs 17:9-10; Is 57:7-8; Jer 3:9; Ez
16:17; 20:28; 23:17; Hos 1:2; 4:11-13.
35
Demon, shed, is only found only two times in reference to foreign gods, Dt 32:17 and Ps 106:37,
both in the context of sacrifice. Baal/baalim is found 81 times in the same context. Thus all the
gods can collectively be grouped as baalim, Jgs 10:6 «The people of Israel again did what was evil
in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of
Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they
forsook the LORD and did not serve him».
27
that sought to break that love was seen as hideous – even if, at this stage, evil was not
conceived of as a concrete entity, we can already see the trajectory of where evil must
finally take shape: as enemy of the God of the covenant, not through Jewish
ignorance of evil but through intimacy with it. Therefore it is essential to see that
the Hebrew Bible, especially the prophets, did not permit Israel simply to project evil
onto foreign cultures and their gods, the experience of evil required of Israel, a very
personal, if harrowing, look in the mirror.
How did worship of the baalim pass from being innocent games with stone,
wood, and stars to something understood to be concretely evil? How did occult
practices lead to the opening of a metaphysical world in Jewish consciousness where
spiritual evil is not just a perpetual, natural urge to sin (or fornicate), but something
manifest in the actions of demons afflicting human beings?
One can see how the Greek Septuagint, composed in the 2nd – 3rd centuries B.
C., was indicative of this process of the demonization for both disease and foreign
gods in Jewish post-exilic theology – a process that has influenced the modern
concept of daemon as a malefic spirit. A prime example is Ps 91:6, where God
promises to protect his faithful from mysterious plagues such as «the pestilence that
stalks in darkness… the destruction that wastes at noonday». But the LXX translates
pestilence (‫ )ּדבר‬as πράγματος «thing» (π. διαπορευομένου ἐν σκότει «thing walking
in darkness»), and destruction (‫ )קטב‬as δαιμονίου μεσημβρινοῦ «the daemon of
noonday». What were Hebraic metaphors for the invisible action of disease became
in Greek spiritual entities «walking in darkness». This is one example of a process:
demons that cause disease had begun to take shape in the Jewish mind; but why?
Here one could demonstrate the influence of Egyptian or Babylonian mysticism, or
Hellenistic influences from Greek philosophy, the Platonic forms or the daimonia of
Greek religion. But we can also see this as a deepening of spiritual elements already
present in Hebrew tradition, a tradition which was never separated from its diverse
Near Eastern socio-cultural milieu. Psalm 91 is about spiritual combat, God sends his
angels to protect humans from invisible evil vv. 11-12. So even without the insertion
of free-floating demons this passage already posits the existence of guardian angels,
unseen spirits who inhabit a metaphysical realm of good and evil that is invisible but
real. Into this world these disease-causing spirits bring death, which is not a new idea
in Hebraic thought. That angelic spirits brought death is confirmed in the Pentateuch,
most memorably the angels who destroy Sodom (Gn 19:13), the angel of death of
Exodus (personified by YHWH himself), the plagues against Egypt, and plagues that
killed tens of thousands of Israelites because of Baal worship and disobedience to
Moses (Ex 12:29; Nm 15:9; 16:49). Later during the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem in
701 B.C. in a single night «the angel of the LORD went out and struck down a
hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians» (Is 37:36; 2 Kgs
19:35)36. God’s angels also conducted Israel out of Egypt and lead them into battle

36
This famous siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib is recorded the Historical Appendix of Isaiah
(36:1-39:8) and also in 2 Kgs 18-19.
28
against all their enemies (Nm 20:16; Ex 33:2). So the power of unseen spiritual
forces, both good and evil, already exists in the Hebrew scripture and operates in
accordance with God’s blessing or his wrath. Whatever the precise origin of the idea
that disease was caused by δαιμόνια, this idea had already become commonplace in
the Judeo-Hellenistic worldview in which the New Testament was written, and in
which exorcism and healing were related though not identical. However it should be
noted that the process of demonization of evil predates the Septuagint. An «evil
spirit» or «Satan» was sometimes sent by God to seriously afflict people, as in the
case of Job, Abimelech (Jg 9:23), and the unfaithful king Saul (1 Sa 16:14; cf. 18:10;
19:9). Here evil is clearly under God’s direct control, as Satan was in Job, but the
novelty of the LXX of Ps 91 seems to be the concept of spiritual combat between
invisible forces of good and evil, between the ἄγγελοι who protect God’s people and
the δαιμόνια who would seek to harm them in darkness37.
As we have seen not all gods were made demons; δαιμόνιον only occurs eight
times in the Septuagint, whereas Baal occurs eighty-one times. Regardless of the
influence of Hellenic thought, Jews of post-exilic period may have been already
inclined to consider the worship behind the idols as indicative of real spiritual evil,
i.e. non-human entities with intelligence. It is worthwhile to reflect on the context of
Dt 32:17 and Ps 106:36, the only two passages where foreign gods are explicitly
identified with demons, because the context here is sacrificial worship, «they
sacrificed to shedim» (‫« שדים‬demons» NRSV) who are both «not gods» and «new
gods» (Dt 32:17). In these contexts we will see an awareness of something new: the
emergence of religious practices in biblical history that could not be relegated to the
category of spiritual fornication in violation of Israel’s covenant, but they were
objectively evil from any perspective, namely, the sacrifice of one’s own children.
«And you took your sons and your daughters, whom you had borne to me, and these
you sacrificed to them to be devoured. Were your whorings so small a matter that you
slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire to them?» (Ez
16:20-21). To whom are the children being sacrificed? The word akal, «devoured», is
the common word for eating, indicating that some «thing» has eaten these children,
but who? Answering that question would bring Israel to confront an evil force they
likely never wanted to face. The insane, exalted fury by which the kings of Israel and
Judah fed the blood of their children to gods – practices which caused disaster,
confusion, and exile for the whole nation – does not make sense if the idols are
nothing more than «wood and stone» as earlier tradition had maintained38. Unlike cult
prostitution the evil of these acts could have no logical explanation in human nature;

37
For references to combat of angels in the Old Testament, cf. Ex 33:2; Dan 10:21.
38
Pre-exilic prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah adamantly refuse to ascribe to foreign gods any existence
or power, Jer 10:5 «Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they
have to be carried, for they cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is
it in them to do good». Cf. also the prayer of king Hezekiah around 701 B.C., Is 37:18-19 «The
kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations… they have cast their gods into the fire. For they
were no gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed».
29
therefore they must point to the existence of concrete spiritual evil, an unholy yet
intelligent influence, that is, unseen demonic forces. This realization was
compounded by the fact that these senseless acts were not committed by the ignorant
but by the educated elite, such as Manasseh, the son of great King Hezekiah,
descendant of the glorious David. God said King Manasseh’s «abominations» would
cause the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile (2 Kgs 21:11-15), not
only because he defiled God’s temple with idols but because Manasseh «made his son
to pass through the fire, used magic, and used divination, and dealt with mediums and
necromancers… Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled
Jerusalem from one end to another» (2 Kgs 21:6, 16).
How is magic involved? A post-exilic Jewish understanding seemed to develop
that if occult spiritual power was directly invoked somehow demons or evil spirits
could infiltrate the human will. Just as when God sent the «evil spirit» to infiltrate the
mind of king Saul, provoking him to insanity and murder, so also the spiritual forces
behind divination, necromancy, and sorcery were the goal that motivated Judah’s
kings to do intrinsically evil acts such as human sacrifice (2 Kgs 17:17; 21:6; 2 Ch
33:6, Ps 106:36f). The example of King Saul in 1 Samuel is telling. Saul is warned by
Samuel that his disobedience to God was equivalent to «the sin of divination» and
«idolatry» (1 Sa 15:23). In the next chapter we see evidence that spiritual infiltration
by demonic power has occurred: «The Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an
evil spirit from the LORD terrified him» (16:14). This evil spirit continued to afflict
Saul day by day so that he called David to comfort him with music that made the
spirit leave him (16:23). But once again «the evil spirit from God came on Saul» and
it motivated several insane attempts to kill David, «Saul threw the spear, and said, I
will strike David» (18:10-11; cf. 19:9-10). To believing Jews Saul’s malady may have
appeared to be a mixed kind, natural and diabolical. There is too much of apparent
human nature in it to believe it was all spiritual; and there is too much of apparently
supernatural influence, to believe it was all natural. In any case the illness of Saul
becomes paradigmatic of spiritual infiltration – scriptural proof that evil spirits exist
and afflict those who venture outside God’s protection. It is very significant that
Saul’s peccata capitalia was that he sought the counsel of a spiritual medium to
obtain secret knowledge which instead of helping him led to his death (1 Sa 28:7f; 1
Ch 10:13). Saul’s case is a warning to future kings to avoid all contact with spirits
outside the Mosaic norm, but the warning went unheeded. What happened to Saul
would happen to Israel’s and Judah’s kings time and time again, the paradigm is
simple: murder and insanity are provoked by evil spirits, which come as a result of
seeking occult power in defiance of God’s law. Through the sacrifice of children post-
exilic Jews had lost their innocence, so to speak, and had been shocked by evil to the
core. They came to believe that evil spirits exist and operate within pagan rituals, not
as gods but as demons who work towards human misery and insanity. Thus Dt 32:17-
30 and Ps 106:37f are actually songs that lament how the tragic story of demonic
infiltration played out historically: «They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to
the demons» and so God rightly delivered the Judah to foreign captivity and terrible
30
suffering (Ps 106:37, 41). But the Jews in exile cried out to God for mercy, and he
saved them because he «remembered his covenant» of everlasting love, vv. 44-46.
The conclusion that demons exist and seek to undermine God’s covenant bond
with the nation was reinforced by the deep suffering of the people in exile, a direct
result of the actions of kings who exchanged the blood of their children for the secret
knowledge thought to be gained in sorcery (2 Kgs 16:3; 17:17; 21:6). Clearly the
desire for occult power plagued Israel’s and Judah’s kings from Saul onward (1 Sa
15:23; 28:7; 1 Ch 10:13; 1 Kgs 1:2) which climaxed in motivating the most heinous
of all crimes and the total devastation of the nation. Because of these historical
tragedies the secret knowledge in divination, sorcery and magic came to be thought
of as the source and summit of all evil, as the apocalyptic sources such as 1 Enoch
bear witness (1 En 65:6-11). But it is important to see that this richness of
understanding of demonic forces is found not only in the apocalypses of Judaism but
also in the Massoretic text of the Hebrew Bible; where demonic powers are not
marginal but manifest themselves at the climaxes of Israel’s history, namely, at the
beginning of the united kingdom period with Saul and at end of the divided kingdom
period with Manasseh and others. We can see demonic infiltration is not an exception
but a general trend toward which the Davidic dynasty is tending. The raw horror of
demonic evil, a projection of what cannot be explained by nature or illness, is finally
exposed as the unseen forces underlying ritual human sacrifice. Thus even before the
Septuagint was written, systematically insane crimes against humanity and the killing
of innocent family members revealed through Israel’s history the work of demons.
This demonic power is progressively unveiled not as a systematic demonology but
sequentially through Israel’s reflection on its covenant history from Saul onward 39.
The attraction of occult practices was the esoteric knowledge and power offered by
pagan deities as spiritual sources of «light» who reveal beautiful secrets, but, because
their power is secretly set against humanity in that it requires human sacrifice, they
are indicative of a unified power of evil set against the God of the covenant. Scripture
records how the Jewish people, including the royal family, secretly «despised [God’s]
statutes and his covenant… and the warnings he gave them» and objectively acted
against their own best interest when they «burned their sons and their daughters as
offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of
the LORD, provoking him to anger» (2 Kgs 17:15, 17). The term sell is makar, as
when Esau sold his birthright to Jacob (Gn 25:33), so the Jewish people «sold
themselves to do evil», that is they sold their royal dignity as «the sons of the LORD
your God» (Dt 14:1) to become slaves of a non-human, evil intelligence. The Hebrew
Scriptures attest to the belief that these Jews had become slaves of demonic evil long
before they ever were slaves in Babylon. No other logical explanation – neither
insanity nor nature – can suffice to explain why the kings and the people brought
death to their families, addicted as they were to occult practices. Psychosis cannot
explain why evil was so attractive and destructive for generations with a few
39
Although certain elements such as the demonic hierarchy remain nebulous in Hebrew Scripture,
its existence can be inferred as we shall see.
31
exceptions. Thus Israel’s covenant history exposed evil to be much more than sorcery
as a discrete phenomenon, if generations of kings willingly became their own worst
enemies it was because they were truly victims of something greater than themselves.
Greater than the kingdoms of Babylon or Assyria was this subtle but overpowering
demonic influence that, conceived of in its totality through Israel’s history, seemed to
constitute nothing less than an occult empire set against the covenant that held the
kingdom together. If this empire of demons existed it was cunning, baffling, and
powerful, its agents had disguised themselves within occult practices and successfully
deceived generations of Jewish elite. The demons had wisely targeted the royalty, the
very people who would bring curses down upon the whole nation if they fell (2 Kgs
21:11). Thus demonic success depended on unity; all treachery and deception must be
fused and directed toward one sole purpose: to destabilize the covenant that is God’s
protective relationship with his children.
A unity of opposition under one demonic being who opposes Israel’s covenant
with God can be seen clearly in the figure of Satan in the second to last of the
prophets. Zechariah 3 describes one of the most striking developments of the word
Satan in Jewish history. Though shorter in content than Job, the ordeal of Zechariah’s
Satan is theologically richer, because Job was likely written before it became central
to Jewish thought that the cosmic order was held in balance through the high priest.
Zechariah, a priest himself, depicts a spirit named Satan who appears before God and
the angels seeking to accuse the high priest:
«Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD, for he is raised up from his holy dwelling.
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord,
with the Adversary (Satan) standing at his right hand to accuse him. The Lord
said to the Adversary, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen
Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?’ Now Joshua
was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments» (Zec 2:13-3:3).

In Job Satan tested Job’s integrity, but here we have a comprehensive judgment
scene. In order to understand this scene in ancient Jewish eyes we must understand
the uniquely crucial role the high priest played in their culture. He alone could
pronounce the Divine Name; he alone could stand before God to make atonement for
all their sin; he alone could enjoy full communion with YHWH by ascending up into
God’s presence in the Holy of Holies, but all of these things he could do only once a
year on the most solemn feast in the Jewish calendar (Lv 16:29-31)40. Leviticus 16

40
For the high priest’s role as representative of man’s spiritual condition before God, cf. Ex 28:29-
30; 30:10; Lv 16:2-20. On the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year, the
holiest man (high priest) would enter the holiest place in the holiest city on earth, the ‘Holy of
Holies’ of the Jerusalem temple (forbidden to all other intruders), as proscribed in mosaic law,
bringing blood sacrifice to make atonement for himself and the nation. Yom Kippur was the one day
of the Jewish calendar when the Divine Name, YHWH, could be pronounced but only by the high
priest, apparently he could pronounce the Name in blessing of the people who came to bow down in
worship, cf. Sir 50:1, 5-24.
32
explains the ritual of a high priest on that day, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur
(‫)יום ּכפור‬:
«He shall make atonement (‫ )וכפר‬for the Holy Place, because of the uncleanness
of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins... the
priest shall bathe his body in water in a holy place... wearing the holy linen
garments... he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the
assembly... once in the year because of all their sins» (Lv 16:16, 24, 32-34).

Israel celebrated this day when all their sins could be washed away and cosmic
order restored, but only if the high priest was himself pure. If he was unworthy, he
would die (Lv 16:13) – so the solemn nature of the context cannot be overstated. The
great anticipation for Israel on this day was that the high priest would come out from
God’s presence alive, then they would celebrate a tremendous feast. Sirach describes
the splendour of the priest on Yom Kippur being like the sun that lights all creation:
«And as the sun when it shines, so did he shine in the temple of God... when he put
on the robe of glory, and was clothed with the perfection of power» (Sir 50:7, 11).
And it’s not only Israel who wants to be free of death and the destructive power of sin
– the Jews understood that all creation, all mankind is longing to enter back into that
original relationship of shalom with God and nature that Adam enjoyed in Eden. This
return to paradise was symbolized by the Jerusalem temple, not only for Jews but for
the goyim as well, as God says of the nations in Isaiah: «I will bring them to my holy
mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer» so that by worshiping God
an ocean of his blessings could flow to «all peoples» (Is 56:7). But all these blessings
(or curses) to Israel and through them to all the nations, hinged on one event: God’s
judgment of the high priest on the Day of Atonement. Unlike Job, Joshua is a high
priest, so this judgment scene’s significance is deeper than Job’s personal ordeal with
Satan. Joshua’s trial is the trial of all Israel, in a deep Jewish sense, it is the trial of all
humanity and even the cosmos itself, because in Judaism the high priest in his
ministry represents all of these realities. The high priest is a living temple, like the
conductor of a symphony, he manifests the cosmic temple of all creation in its
collective worship of God 41 . But in Zechariah’s day (520 B.C.) the temple was
41
In Judaism the cosmos is a temple ordered to worship, cf. Ps 19:1-6; 68:34-35; Bar 3:24-25. The
high priest in his person was exalted as both a kind of living temple and cosmos: «For in the priestly
robe which he wore, was the whole world (cosmos): and in the four rows of the stones, the glory of
the fathers was graven, and thy majesty was written upon the diadem of his head» Wis 18:24.
Compare the great detail, splendour and purity of high-priestly vestments as described in Ex 39:1-
28 and the temple in 1 Kgs 6-7. The high priestly vestments mimicked the very decorations of the
one temple which itself mimicked the paradise of Eden, the original «sanctuary» of God. There are
many examples of this, cf. Ez 28:13, 18; comp. 1 Kgs 1:45, 6:35 to Gn 2:13; 3:24: the river
«Gihon» and «the cherubim» are found only in the temple and in Eden. The construction of
Solomon’s temple in 1 Kgs 7 is the climax of Hebrew Biblical history; for ancient Jews the Temple
was a microcosm, while the cosmos itself is a macro-temple: «O Israel, how great is the house of
God [i.e. the universe], and how vast is the place of his possession! It is great, and hath no end: it is
high and immense» Bar 3:24-25. It is significant that Jerusalem’s temple and the high priest are
decorated lavishly with exactly the same paradise imagery: precious stones, gold and pomegranates
33
destroyed and priestly sacrifice had been cut off. Zechariah prophesizes that by the
reconstruction of the temple and reestablishment of the high priest all humanity will
come to benefit: «Sing and rejoice... I will dwell in your midst, declares the LORD.
And many nations shall join themselves to the LORD in that day, and shall be my
people» (Zec 2:10-11a). But there is a problem: humanity’s terrible state of injustice
and sin prevents them from entering peacefully into God presence, and therefore
atonement must be made for «all flesh», that, is all mankind (2:13). That all humanity
is implicated in Joshua’s trial is evident from the opening verse of the trial, Zec 2:13
reads: «Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD, for he is raised up from his holy
dwelling» (‫ מעון קדש‬ma’on qadosh, elsewhere in Scripture this term invariably refers
to the dwelling of God in heaven, it is the celestial Holy of Holies)42. The vision of
Joshua is either in the future temple or more likely it is symbolic of the heavenly one.
Indeed, since Joshua stands before angels and Satan and has ascended to God’s «holy
dwelling» as representative of «all flesh», the atonement ceremony at hand is
something much greater than a typical Yom Kippur. As all Jerusalem held its breath
while the high priest made atonement for the sins of the year, here «all flesh» is
holding its breath «silent… before the LORD» (2:13) because as Satan accuses
Joshua it is man’s eternal destiny and the cosmic order that hang in the balance. But
who will make atonement?
In God’s tribunal there is «the angel of the Lord» who plays the role of man’s
advocate (Zec 3:5-6), while this certain Satan plays the role of prosecuting attorney
«standing at his right hand to accuse him»43 v. 1. But v. 2, «the LORD says to Satan,
‘The LORD rebuke you, O Satan... Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?» Fire
indicates divine wrath44; being «plucked from the fire» is being rescued from the just

Ex 28:29, 34; 1 Kgs 6:35; 7:42; cf. Gn 2:8-12. The high priest wore «twelve stones [which] were
engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel» (Ex 39:14), he wore this over his heart,
symbolizing God’s everlasting love for his people. God calls Israel «my firstborn son» and a
«priestly kingdom, and a holy nation» Ex 4:22; 19:6, because through little Israel God will extend
his love to all, and save all the nations, God’s other «children» Hos 1:10. In her priestly role Israel
is to bring all the world to worship the true God (Ps 22:27; 66:4; 86:9; 117:1; Is 2:1-4) and through
the Messiah of Israel whom God establishes as the «a covenant for the people, a light for the
nations» Is 42:6; 49:6, God will reveal his glory and justice to all nations, in bringing them mercy,
peace and salvation..
42
Ma’on qadosh «holy habitation» is used five times in O.T. the first four of these explicitly refer
to God’s dwelling place in heaven not on earth, cf. Dt 26:15; 2 Ch 30:27; Ps 68:4-5; Jer 25:30; Zec
2:13. Ma’on in general can refer also to God’s tabernacle on earth, cf. 2 Ch 36:15; Ps 26:8, the
refuge that men take in God cf. Ps 71:3; 90:1; 91:9, or any dwelling of humans, beasts, or perhaps
even demons, cf. Jer 9:11; 51:37 LXX both translate ‫( מעון תנים‬m. tanniym) as κατοικητήριον
δρακόντων «dwelling of dragons».
43
Cf. Similar motifs given to a kind of prosecuting attorney at Psalm 109:6-7a «Appoint a wicked
man against him; let an accuser (satan) stand at his right hand. When he is tried, let him come forth
guilty». There seems to be a negative connotation latent in the very name satan, perhaps due to the
suffering of Job; accusation and spiritual hypocrisy was condemned, Is 65:5.
44
Cf. e.g. Dt 29:23: «The whole land shall be burned» by God’s wrath if Israel breaks the covenant.
For the fire of God’s justice descending from heaven, cf. Gn 19:24; Nm 10:2; 16:35; 2 Kgs 1:10-12;
Ps 11:6; 106:18; In the N.T. when the Samaritans did not accept the gospel message James and John
34
execution of it. Thus when Lot was saved from God’s justice he was «as a brand
plucked out of the burning» «when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah» (Am 4:11).
This fire of God is sometimes described to be in Satan’s power, as when God
permitted Satan to afflict Job, his servant reports: «The fire of God fell from heaven»
destroying Job’s goods (Jb 1:16). The essential truth here is that YHWH, as supreme
judge and redeemer, will rescue Joshua from the fire of divine justice; and God
himself, and not Joshua, will make atonement for Israel and all human guilt «in this
earth» vv. 4, 9. Therefore it is not only reasonable but crucial to see Zechariah 3 as a
kind of exalted Yom Kippur scene implying a universal redemption, where the
atonement is not described in terms of its external ritual but its spiritual significance.
Why must God make atonement? Because by their own power humans are
incapable of it, «I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake» (Is
43:25). «Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts» (Zec
4:6). In salvation history from the Exodus onward God alone can save, cure spiritual
illness, restore fallen humanity, and re-establish his people who are hopelessly
wounded by sin. The prophets promised that not only will God forgive but, by the
transforming power of God’s Spirit, God’s rebellious people would finally be capable
of obedience, love, and fidelity as true children of the covenant relationship and
thereby become worthy of the promise: all God’s fatherly blessings of joy and peace45.
Man stands condemned because his spiritual condition is atrocious: «Now
Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments» v 3. For Jews,
such dress for a high priest is worse than someone wearing swimming trunks on their
wedding day; it is nothing less than a death sentence (Lv 16:2, 13). The high priest
was held to the highest standard of obedience to ritual purity, above all on Yom
Kippur (Lv 16:4). In shocking defiance of God’s law the high priest Joshua is impure
and thus incapable of making atonement, without divine assistance his doom is
certain, v. 446. Joshua’s uncleanness is symbolic of the whole cosmos being «defiled»
by human injustice and covenant unfaithfulness for which the earth is under a «curse»
of utter destruction of apocalyptic proportions47. Humans are incapable of elevating
themselves to God because from the abyss of their transgressions they cannot simply
wash their hands – a great chastisement of fire, presumably inflicted by Satan, who
showed this power in Job 1:16 and 2:7, is coming on the whole world according to

ask Jesus Lk 9:24: «Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume
them?». But Christ rebukes them. YHWH himself is «a consuming fire» Dt 4:24; Heb 12:29.
45
Cf. Zec 3:10; For the power of God’s Spirit that will transform humanity and the world that turns
from sin: Is 32:15-18; 42:1; 43:25; 44:3-5; 59:20-21; 61:1. For the transforming power of God to
heal, bless, and restore in a new covenant, cf. Jer 31:31f; 32:35-40; by God’s Spirit Ez 36:25-28.
46
Cf. Lv 16:32.
47
Cf. Zec 5:3, 6: «This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole land» [eretz can mean
earth or land] «This is their iniquity in all the land». Cf. Is 24:1, 5-6: « Behold, the LORD will
empty the earth and make it desolate... The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have
transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse
devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt... and few men are left». See Dt 28:15f,
the curses of the covenant will «burn up» and destroy the whole land/earth eretz, Dt 29:23.
35
God’s justice. In Judaism Adam and Eve are responsible as the care-takers of creation,
so violation of God’s law throws the whole universe into chaos. But by the mercy of
God who has freely «chosen Jerusalem» v. 2, the angel of the Lord will miraculously
cleanse Joshua: «Remove the filthy garments from him», the angel says and to Joshua,
«I have taken your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments» v. 4.
The omnipotence of God’s mercy has accomplished what all the sacrifices and rituals
of Yom Kippur were meant to do: to remove the condemnation of death and the curses
of the covenant (Dt 28:15f), and to give God’s people new life. But how will this
come about? «I will bring my servant the Branch48», a Messiah figure, v. 8, and God
promises to «remove all iniquity in this land [earth, eretz] in a single day» v. 9. This
confirms that Joshua’s judgment ordeal is representative of a something on the order
of a rehabilitation of the cosmic order under a restored priesthood and kingdom, vv.
4-5, to which Joshua is an «omen» or sign v. 8. This sign has meaning for the
salvation of all God’s people, not just Israel but «many nations» as well (2:11). God
is effectively promising to strip all human kind from fear of death and judgment «in a
single day» so that they may be joyfully re-clothed in «the garments of salvation» (Is
61:10).
Only by understanding the universal salvific/apocalyptic aspect of Zechariah 2-
3 can we appreciate the role of Satan in this context. As we have seen in the case of
Job, here again YHWH permits Satan the accuser to stand in the heavenly court and
disrupt, if possible, man’s relationship with God. Satan aims to enforce the divine
curses brought down on the earth by human injustice, as he initially made Job suffer
by God’s leave. But here Satan is more than the punisher of one man, as we have seen,
Judaism has exalted the high priest to be a cosmic figure, representing all people in
the fullness of their primordial vocation. God, by restoring Joshua, promises to
restore humanity to Adam’s original vocation as the image and likeness of God.
Adam was called to be king of creation and the priest of Eden which is the primordial
garden sanctuary (Gn 1:27-28)49. But Jewish tradition attests that the spirit of evil was
there in Eden in order to tempt Adam and Eve to oppose God’s plan, and they lost
some of their original dignity when they willingly consented to do evil, bringing the
tyranny of death on their progeny (Gn 3:15-19). The significance of this judgment
scene of the high priest cannot be overstated in the advance it lends to the Hebrew
understanding of the devil, ὁ διάβολος (Zec 3:1 LXX). There is one high priest and
one Satan to accuse him, just as there is one human race and one «Adversary» who
seeks its ruin. Whether it be the serpent of Eden or the Satan in Zechariah, man’s
primordial enemy is always at hand.
Let us take the hypothesis for a moment that the serpent whom God «cursed»
in Genesis 3:14 is the Satan whom God «rebukes» in Zechariah 3:2. Why does this
48
For references to Messiah being the «righteous Branch» who «shall reign as king» see Jer 23:5;
Zec 6:12; Is 11:1; 53:2.
49
Thus God took the original man Adam and placed him «in the garden of Eden to serve and to
guard» which is priestly language; the same verbs (abad and shamar) are used to describe the work
of Aaronic priests in the tabernacle, cf. Nm 3:7-8; 8:26; 18:7. For more imagery describing Eden as
God’s sanctuary cf. Ez 28:12f. For language that Adam is king of creation, cf. Gen 1:26-28.
36
comparison make sense? Just as it was the serpent who first tempted humans to sin
against God, a vocation which God seems to have appointed him forever (3:15), so
then it makes sense that this same spirit «accuses» man of sin. Just as the ancient
serpent sought to lead humanity into death and mistrust of God (Gn 2:17; 3:1-5), so
this Satan aims to see mankind both stripped of his dignity as priest-king of creation,
and punished for his guilt in the court of God’s justice. But when God takes away
man’s guilt, Satan is defeated; the unfathomable divine mercy triumphs over his
justice. God’s mercy rebukes Satan and silences his accusations – in fact Satan does
not say a word in Zechariah 3, furious perhaps that he has failed as Accuser, and that
God will give humans a second chance to find peace and prosperity, v. 10.
Nevertheless Zechariah reveals Satan in his essential role as chief Accuser of God’s
people and humanity in general. Satan’s role of enemy fits with the serpent whom
God established at the beginning of human history as the hidden but ever-present
archenemy (ἐχθρός) of mankind, for in this spirit God has placed eternal «hatred»
(ἔχθρα) toward the sons of Eve (Gn 3:14-15 LXX)50. We have seen that this Satan
fulfils the role God gave the serpent in Genesis 3 to afflict mankind. Therefore
Zechariah’s elegant unification of the concept of Satan as chief Accuser in this
atonement scene makes it reasonable to identify this spirit with the ancient tempter of
Genesis 3, even though such identification is not explicit in the text. The theological
advance of Zechariah’s Satan is that he symbolizes several key roles: the enemy of
Israel’s essential vocation as «a kingdom of priests» (Ex 19:6), the enemy of human
salvation in general which is secured and sanctified by Israel’s priesthood, and the
disrupter of the cosmic order. Again in Jewish eyes to condemn the high priest is to
be the diabolos obstructing God’s blessings from flowing to humanity, nature and the
cosmos.
At certain points the Septuagint gives insight into how Jewish scholars of the
Second Temple period began to conceptualize God’s kingdom vis-à-vis the demons.
In Ps 96:5 for example, «idols» is not translated as the usual εἰδωλον but as δαιμόνια.
The context here is crucial, the Hebrew reads vv. 4-5: «Great is the LORD and
greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. All the gods of the peoples are
worthless idols, but the LORD made the heavens». But the Greek reads: «all the gods
of the nations are demons [δαιμόνια]», v. 5. Why the change? This is one example
that seems to be indicative of a general trend. In the light of post-exilic Jewish
suffering the gods of nations can no longer be considered as totally insignificant, they
do have a certain spiritual power, and that power is seductive but ultimately
destructive. What before was a «non-entity» (eliylim ‫)אלילים‬, is now a metaphysical
reality, a daemon whose existence and character is weighed against that of the Creator
of the heavens, v. 5. The δαιμόνια were once neutral in the Greek culture; now the

50
Cf. Gen 3:14-15: «The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, you are
cursed... I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her
offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’». The fact that God speaks of the
serpent’s offspring, or literally «your seed», is interesting. Who are the spiritual offspring of the
serpent? Can we see here the first traces of demonic hierarchy?
37
word daemon is imbued with an evil connotation, because if the δαιμόνια are gods
who demand blood sacrifice of children (Ps 106:37), they must be forces opposing
the lordship of the true God. The Greek version of Ps 96 states that this psalm was
composed for the «house» of the Lord «after the captivity» (Ps 96:0 LXX). Post-
exilic Judaism had already endured a kind of metaphysical enlightenment due to the
trauma of the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem. As the faith of Jews was tested,
Judaism discovered more deeply that God is truly enthroned in the heavens (cf. Dt
26:15; Ps 2:4; 11:4; 103:19; 123:1), as God says: «Heaven is my throne, and the earth
is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me?» (Is 66:1). And
conceivably if almighty God had an invisible throne and a metaphysical kingdom,
evil could also have both throne and kingdom51. Observe how the Ps 96 LXX, which
has apocalyptic themes of final judgment vv. 10, 13, squares off the majesty of God
against the demonic forces: «Great is the LORD… he is fearful above all the gods.
For all the gods of the nations are demons, but the LORD made the heavens… say
among the nations that the Lord reigns», vv. 4-5, 10. Like the offspring of the ancient
serpent who strike the heel of the sons of Eve (Gn 3:15), metaphysical evil was at
first difficult for Israel to perceive, but now history has revealed it to the Jews to be
something concrete: through captivity caused by the insane actions of Judah’s kings,
the gods are exposed as malignant demons. The idols are no longer mere lifeless non-
entities, beneath them spiritual evil has taken form and substance. Thus the
malevolent actions of demons will be explored, and further exposed and elaborated
upon in the Jewish apocalyptic literature, in which sorcery, magic and idolatry will be
grouped together and emerge as not only the cause of death and destruction (1 En
10:7), but the direct result of demonic teaching, that is, the secrets that are at the root
and apex of all evil will inevitably destroy the world52. The apocalyptic literature
51
For the idea of Satan’s throne, the N.T. bears witness that such a tradition existed; e.g. Jesus
speaks explicitly of it to the «church in Pergamum… I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne
is» Rv 2:12-13; cf. 13:2. Although such a throne is not explicitly defined in the O.T. it is not out of
the question for several reasons: Dt 32:8 shows that God had divided regions of the earth into parts,
setting «the sons of God» to have dominion over them. In Job 1:6 and 2:1 «Satan» is present among
these «sons of God». Also Ezekiel seems to make reference to a tradition of Satan’s throne in
prophecy of the fall of the king of Tyre, Ez 28:2: «Thus says the Lord GOD: Because your heart is
proud, and you have said, ‘I am a God, I sit in the seat of the gods, in the heart of the seas’». This
logically refers to the fallen angel; it cannot exclusively refer to the king of Tyre because in v. 8 the
«heart of the seas» is identified as «the pit», or Sheol, i.e. the land of the dead, where the fallen
angel is originally cast down and will remain, Is 14:15; Ez 28:19. Since by Hebrew tradition the sea
represents «the cords of death» or Sheol, Jon 2:2; Ps 18:4-5; 88:6-7, it is conceivable that Satan’s
throne is in the pit/Sheol/land of death in «heart of the seas», Ez 28:8. This accords well with the
N.T. on several key points: 1) Satan is explicitly is «the one who has the power of death» Heb 2:14;
2) when Satan brings forth the antichrist it looks like «a beast rising out of the sea» Rv 13:1, and to
this beast Satan «gave his power and his throne and great authority» 13:2; and 3) in Rv 21:1 John
sees after final judgment «a new heaven and a new earth» where «the sea was no more», symbolic
that Satan’s authority has ended, and his throne in «heart of the seas» is gone.
52
For the idea in the N.T. that the teaching of demons would bring apocalyptic war, cf. 1 Tm 4:1,
Rv 16:14. Cf. e.g. The Book of the Parables of Enoch when Noah is troubled over a vision of utter
destruction for the world, his grandfather Enoch replies: 1 Enoch 65:6-7: «A command has gone
38
such as 1 Enoch gives evil a solid, metaphysical category, and of course exalts it to
apocalyptic proportions: the secrets of idolatry and specifically sorcery are the cause
of the destruction of the universe, these secrets were revealed to humans by the fallen
angels, for which they will be punished forever53. This Jewish apocalyptic literature is
not so much an exaltation of evil as the elaboration of what the Tanakh implies, and
thus it gives natural expression to Israel’s own self-awareness of her spiritual
triumphs and defeats contemplated by the light of God’s word and her own unique
salvation history.
Traditions and trajectories for the origins of the devil are rooted in scripture,
because the prophets of the Hebrew bible make reference to a tradition that had
already existed by the time the Major Prophets were writing. Thus in Isaiah and
Ezekiel we also have indirect references to the Jewish tradition that a certain
heavenly creature, an angelic being, had tried to make himself God, but he fell into
destruction and was cast down to earth due to the wickedness of his filthy pride.
Isaiah and Ezekiel compare the fall of this heavenly spirit to the fall of the king of
Babylon and Tyre respectively (Is 14:12-15; Ez 28:2, 12-19). The fallen angel theme
is elaborated upon in Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature where the three
concepts of the devil are consolidated and unified: the fallen angel, the tempting
serpent, and Satan the accuser54. Now that we have seen a brief sketch of the concept
of spiritual forces of evil gradually developing in Jewish history, let us turn to the
issue of defining the devil in Hebrew tradition.
In modern times, there are several interpretations of the origins of the Hebrew
devil, that is, how did ancient monotheistic Jews come to conceive of a master spirit
of evil and incorporate him into their tradition:
The first is that Satan is a personification of the evil impulse within man. In
this argument, he is an earlier, parallel, and more personal expression of the Rabbinic
yester ha-ra, «evil inclination». It is a possibility that all cosmic conceptions of good
and evil may ultimately be psychological projections. At least some of the Old
forth from the presence of the Lord concerning those who dwell on the earth that their ruin is
accomplished because they have learnt all the secrets of the angels, and all the violence of the
Satans, and all their powers the most secret one − and all the power of those who practice sorcery,
and the power of witchcraft». Note the evil of the Satans, plural, perhaps an indirect reference to
violence inflicted upon Job, 1:11-12, 16; 2:5-7, and threatened upon Joshua, Zec 3:1-2. «The most
secret power» is mysterious, but it is related to the power of sorcery and witchcraft, and reminiscent
of Jesus’ disapproval of disciples learning «what some call the deep things of Satan» Rv 2:24.
53
Cf. 1 En 65:10-11: «Because of the sorceries which they have searched out and learnt, the earth
and those who dwell upon it shall be destroyed. And these - they have no place of repentance
forever, because they have shown them what was hidden, and they are the damned».
54
An excellent example that unifies the three ideas of the devil alluded to in Hebrew scripture,
fallen angel, serpent and accuser is Rv 12:9-10: «The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient
serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world... the accuser of our
brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God» (emphasis mine).
Such traditions that identify Satan with the fallen angel were consolidated before the New
Testament was written as Jesus identifies Satan with the fallen spirit: «I saw Satan fall like lightning
from heaven» Lk 10:18.
39
Testament authors themselves considered the spirit of evil an objective reality, and so
this argument fails to reflect the tradition in which scriptures were written, and the
tradition by which the Jewish religious identity was consolidated and preserved.
The second is that the personification of evil arose out Israel’s experience with
idolatry, namely, the tendency to project evil onto what is unknown or foreign. By
this hypothesis the gods of Israel’s neighbours and enemies were demonized. As
mentioned above by Dunston, at least two demonic spirits in the Hebrew Scripture
Lilith and Resheph were foreign divinities, so there is some evidence for this theory.
It is a well-known phenomenon in the history of religions that the gods of one nation
become the devils of its rival. When the Aryans divided into Indians and Iranians, for
example, the Devas remained gods for the Indians, but became devils (daevas) for the
Iranians, while the Ahuras remained gods for the Iranians and became devils (asuras)
for the Indians55. Israel disobeyed God and fell into the worship of the Canaanite god
Baal (introduced by Jezebel) and countless other Baals: Baal-peor, Baal-berith, Baal-
tamar, Baal-hamon, Baal-gad or Gad, «luck», the latter is translated as δαιμόνιον (Is
65:11 LXX). The Babylonian deity Fortune has become simply «demon» in the
Septuagint. This kind of demonization is the exception rather than the rule because,
as we have seen, the foreign gods were never foreign to Israel. Why the Septuagint
does not demonize the Hebrew Baal and Baals, but transliterates them as Βααλ and
Βααλιμ, is also the reason why the Hebrew authors did not demonize all the foreign
gods in the first place – it has to do with the covenant with YHWH and the original
Jewish concept of evil. Therefore this anthropological explanation whereby foreign
gods are demonized is not comprehensive enough, and it fails to «go all the way» and
unify all evil spirits under one supreme head, the Satan of the Gospels.
The third interpretation is that the devil arose from a Jewish understanding in
the post-exilic period that sacrifice to gods was sacrifice to demons (cf. Ps 106:37; Dt
32:17). In other words the Hebrew concept of the devil arose very gradually from
consideration of what Israel itself practiced, when it committed idolatry in contempt
of God’s covenant. If violation of the first commandment was the worst possible evil,
what did it lead to? Much of scriptures attest that idolatry was simply the adoration of
wood statues, or stars, which were «nothing» they had no sensory capacity, no deep
spiritual reality behind them, they were blind, and «those who adored them would
become like them» (Ps 96:5; 115:2-8). But after the Babylonian captivity Jewish
prophets and writings attest to the emergence of metaphysical evil, an active force of
blindness, as stated above. Finally Judah had learned its lesson of why the Torah was
so serious about preventing human sacrifice and sorcery (Lv 18:21; Ex 22:18). When
sacrificial practices of Judah’s kings became so hideous that they willingly sacrificed
their own children in occult rituals for which the nation was put in exile (2 Kgs
17:17; 21:11-15), who was the real beneficiary of such acts of raw evil if not the
devil? This evil was ancient: it seduced Eve to rebellion against God. This evil was
intelligent: it operated through history and ensnared many generations, thus it seemed
55
J. ORR, «Definition for ‘Beelzebub’», [on line edition, access: 04.10.2014] http://www.bible-
history.com/isbe/B/BEELZEBUB.
40
to pose itself above time and space. This evil was united and organized: by
prospering from the most unnatural and inconceivable violations of the Torah, this
evil prevented Israel from fulfilling its vocation to be a blessing to all the nations (Gn
22:18), and thus it took dead aim on the God of the covenant.
The fourth, is that Satan was the name of a demon among demons who rose to
the position of their chief. This interpretation seems to fail in the sense that it seems
that there is no evidence of «Satan» having a hierarchical relation to other angelic
beings or demons. But as we have seen «Satan» in the Old Testament is not a name
but a function, namely, an Adversary of man who appears in the court of God like a
prosecuting attorney. The Satan of Job is not explicitly the same Satan in Zec 3:1-3.
Even though there is no specific demonology of the legalistic «Satan», from the
description given in Job and Zechariah one can infer quite a vivid picture of his
activities and his power: this Satan is included among the bene ha-Elohim (Jb 1:6)
thus he has a relation to other celestial beings of the God of heaven. These «sons of
God» were created to sing God’s praises (Jb 38:7; Is 6:2-3), but some of the sons of
God rebelled, such as those who fell into fornication with the daughters of men (Gn
6:2-4). In Job Satan’s character takes shape: he spends his time crossing «to and fro
on the earth» 1:7, and he is eager to augment human suffering by causing disaster,
death, and disease vv. 12-19. Since he does this under God’s permission, it seems to
be Satan’s job to met out God’s punishments and apply his curses, tasks which Satan
seems to enjoy 56 . As if that was not evil enough, Satan says to God that Job’s
goodness is merely based on divine favour, let suffering fall upon Job «and he will
curse you to your face» v. 11. Here the great desire of the Satan is not only causing
suffering but fomenting apostasy and rebellion from God. But as we have seen Job
surrenders and gives glory to God, and God greatly rewards him. Therefore, though
the intention of Satan is wicked, he is useful, under constraint, to God’s plan of
helping man to grow in godly virtue and love. But in the Jewish mind Satan’s
primordial character transcends the context of Job and took shape around a goal: to
bring people, through suffering and despair, toward a position of hatred for God.
The fifth, is that the concept of the devil arose from an awareness of sin, that
is, the failure of the Jewish nation to abide by Mosaic law, this failure was ascribed to
demonic forces, among whom one demon in particular came to be recognized as both
as the origin and destination of evil. There are many manifestations of evil among
Hebrew demons, and no demon, with the exception of Azazel, ever approaches the

56
Thus the destruction Satan caused Job is considered the hand of God, as if Satan were God’s tool
of destruction, Jb 1:11-12, 16; 2:5-7. But unlike Satan, God does not delight in causing suffering,
his final goal is healing and restoration Jb 42:12-17. The lesson of Job is that no one can accuse
God of injustice, not even Job, because God is absolutely sovereign, just and free to do whatever he
deems fit to do with his creation. The Creator’s infinite wisdom and fatherly plan are higher than
man’s comprehension, but in the end his love will conquer, Jb 38:1-41; Is 55:9f. In the end all that
matters is Job’s surrender to God’s will which is always love and mercy itself, even though humans
cannot see it accept with the eyes of faith. This childlike trust is what Hosea encourages as he writes:
«Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down,
and he will bind us up» Hos 6:1.
41
lofty position of apotheosis of evil. Azazel is the mysterious spirit in the desert who
received the scapegoat on Yom Kippur (Lv 16:7-26). Before the goat was lead out to
Azazel to be killed, the high priest would lay his hands on the goat’s head and
«confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel, and all their transgressions, and
all their sins» (Lv 16:21). The scapegoat-as-sin-bearer practice may have reinforced
two ideas latent in Jewish tradition: the punishment for sin is death (Gn 2:17), and the
one who denies this fact and encourages sin is a demonic force, the spirit of evil
himself57. The tradition of a demonic origin of evil was deeply elaborated upon in
later Jewish apocalyptic writing, where an intelligent spirit is once again the principle
source of humanity’s rebellion and misery. In the Book of Watchers (1 Enoch 1-36,
written about 200 - 300 B.C.) the demon Azazel teaches primordial mankind weapon-
making and seduction, educating mankind in «all the works of godlessness and
unrighteousness and sin» (8:1-4; 13:2-3). Although other demons taught sin, the
angels specifically report Azazel’s crimes to God (9:7) and God tells them: «Bind
Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the
desert… and cast him therein… cover his face that he may not see light. And on the
day of the great judgment he shall be cast into the fire» (10:4-7). So we see that of all
the corrupting spirits of 1 Enoch, this spirit in particular seems to be the object of
divine wrath. God says «the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that
were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin» (10:8-9). If for Jews Azazel was the
end point of «all their sins» on Yom Kippur (Lv 16:21) this demon would be revealed
to be the principle source of sin as well. Just as YHWH was the true source and end
of all blessings, one demon above all came to be such for sin.
But does the Jewish apocalyptic tradition propose a demonic hierarchy? In the
Book of Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71) one can see the first inklings of a
demonic hierarchy emerging with Azazel once again taking centre stage, which will
be discussed more below in the section on the New Testament (2.1).
The sixth interpretation, mentioned briefly above, holds that Satan was once
one of God’s most splendid celestial spirits who fell from heaven. Although this
interpretation has the weakness of being somewhat difficult to decipher where
historical information blends into religious tradition, it seems to be the tradition with
the most scriptural attestation. Fairly strong support for the view can be found in the
New Testament, where Jesus identifies Satan with the fallen spirit: «I saw Satan fall
like lightning from heaven» (Lk 10:18; cf. Rv 12:7-9). The Jewish tradition, which

57God had given Adam all the trees to eat from, but warned him not to eat from the tree that brought
death (Gn 2:17). The Jewish tradition for the origin of evil begins with the words of the clever
serpent, the one who first deceived Adam and Eve by claiming that rebellion from God would not
result in death but divine illumination: «You will not surely die! For God knows when you eat of it...
you will be like Gods (Elohim), knowing good and evil» Gn 3:4-5; cf. Ez 18:4. The meaning is
clear: humans are in no position to define for themselves what is good and evil independent of God.
God as the supreme Good has already established in himself what is eternally good, and so in his
creation he has placed a reflection of this goodness in the natural order of things. God separated
light and darkness, according to his will Gn 4:1; this is reflected in the human conscience that must
decide between right and wrong as it is revealed by God not as it is invented by man, Gn 3:10; 4:7.
42
was most likely an oral one long before it was found in Scripture, is reflected in
Ezekiel 28:12-19, Isaiah 14:12-15, and Job 1:6-7, 38:7. The traditions in Ezekiel and
Isaiah are found within laments of pagan kings whose falls are compared to the fall of
a mysterious primordial spirit – so whatever cannot logically be attributed to the
earthly king58, one can safely attribute to the tradition of the fallen angelic being. In
the case of Ezekiel this being is explicitly named a cherub59:
«Thus says the Lord GOD: ‘You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and
perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the paradise of God... You were an anointed
guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God... You were
blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till wickedness was found
in you» (Ez 28:12-15).

The cherubim in Hebrew Scripture are winged, heavenly, intelligent, non-

human spiritual beings who guard Eden (Gn 3:24) and have the privilege of being the
closest creatures to YHWH «who sits enthroned upon the cherubim» (2 Sa 6:2). But
if this ancient cherub spirit was «blameless» and «full of wisdom» how did he
become evil? «Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your
wisdom» (Ez 28:17); mesmerised by his own image he fell into narcissistic self-
adulation, and thus became unworthy to serve in God’s sanctuary. Also he became
violent: «You were filled with violence and you sinned, so I cast you as a profane
thing from the mountain of God... O guardian cherub... I cast you to the ground» vv.
16-17. And once he was cast down to the earth God exposed his wickedness before
all humanity, making him utterly contemptible, vv. 16-19.
Isaiah’s prophecy of the king of Babylon makes reference to a tradition of a
spirit that in the light of Judaic symbolism is strikingly similar to that of Ezekiel:
«How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut
down to the earth, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will
ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit
on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the
58
For example in Ezekiel 28:12f, these elements cannot possibly refer to the king of Tyre: that he
was in the paradise of Eden, that he was a cherub, that he was placed on the mountain of God. Tyre
was not on a mountain but an island city off the Lebanese coast, rich in trade it had built up its walls
and was almost impenetrable to attack, posing a great challenge even to the likes of Alexander the
Great, whose siege and destruction of the city is perhaps predicted in Ezekiel’s prophecy.
59
Cf. Gn 3:24. Cherub, plural cherubim, are a kind of angelic being that symbolize the holy
presence of God in his tabernacle, their wings covered the mercy seat of the arc of the covenant, and
Solomon’s temple on mount Zion, Ex 25:18-22; 37:7-9; 1 Kgs 6:23-35; 8:6-7. Ezekiel’s longer
account here is one of the richest descriptions of the mysterious heavenly cherubim who are
mentioned no less than 70 times in the Old Testament, so they are not marginal to Jewish tradition.
Though not all Jews believed in their existence, the highly influential Pharisees did. The earthly
tabernacles of Israel with golden cherubim were copies of the true sanctuary of God in
heaven/paradise, conceived of as the holy mountain of God, cf. Ex 25:40; Heb 8:5; 12:22. The
cherubim resemble angels because they have wings, Ex 25:20, and a head comparable to a human’s
Ez 10:14; they form the throne of God, 2 Sa 6:2; Is 37:16; Ps 80:1; 99:1; Ez 10:1-20. This
description in Ezekiel cannot refer to an earthly king, nor even to Adam (as the LXX interprets it).
43
 heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are
brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit» (14:12-15).
Here is another mysterious and luminous heavenly being who exalts himself out of
pride in his glory.
Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s primary point is not to teach about the fall of this
angel/cherub from oral tradition, whose story, it is assumed, everyone knows. Their
point is that the kings of Tyre and Babylon, despite all their glory and wisdom, fell
into the same error that the angelic being fell into: they forgot God and worshiped
themselves, abandoning reason for madness, and so like him their end is utter ruin.
What can one reconstruct from the traditions of the fallen spirit that these prophets
draw from? The following is a kind of sketch that seeks to unify these fallen spirits
under one head, based on the traditions in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Job.
In the middle of Isaiah’s taunt of the king of Babylon, he suddenly draws from
a tradition that, like Ezekiel, has elements that cannot possibly describe a human king
(14:12-15). There is no mention here of a cherub, though to any Jewish audience
unmistakable angelic references are made. «Stars of God» v. 13, is a unique
expression found only here, but angelic beings are elsewhere called «stars». This
makes sense for two reasons: the fallen angel is himself called a «morning star, son of
the dawn» so the concept of star is already personified in v. 12, and in Job Satan
appears in the heavenly court among «the sons of God» (1:6), heavenly beings who
are called «morning stars» (Jb 38:7 ‫)כוכבי בקר‬. And yet in Job Satan does not spend
his time in heaven with the other sons of God, but he is always «going to and fro on
the earth, and from walking up and down on it» (2:2). Therefore is reasonable to
assume that the Satan of Job has already fallen to earth, having lost his heavenly
position among the other «sons of God», «the ten thousands of holy ones» who serve
God in the celestial court (Dt 33:2; cf. Ps 89:5-7). The importance of Job is that it
allows us to identify purely from a single source that Satan is one of the primordial
sons of God, but unlike the other sons of God in heaven (38:7), Satan is a spirit who
traverses the earth (1:7; 2:2).
The references to the sons of God in Job 1:6-7, 2:1-2 and 38:7 are essential for
the key background information about the origin of the fallen angel being named
«Satan» and is among the sons of God. This association is fair because the fact that
the «sons of God» were celestial beings that make up God’s court is not peculiar to
Job, but is found in Genesis 6:1-8, Deuteronomy 32:8, and the psalms 29:1, 82:1,6,
89:6; their existence would be common knowledge from the Semitic oral tradition.
The picture is simple: this «Day Star, son of the Dawn» (Is 14:12)60, can be easily
identified as the Satan of Job because he is 1) indeed among the «stars of God» /
«sons of God» who were created at the beginning of time for the glory of God and 2)
he now finds himself confined to the earth (Jb 2:2). As one of the «sons of God» (Jb
1:6; 2:1) Satan has a primordial vocation, even prior to that of accuser, as we learn
60
«Lucifer» as a name for the devil comes from this prophecy of Isaiah, specifically 14:12 KJV
from the Latin Vulgate lucifer, ‘light beaerer’, LXX ἑωσφόρος, ‘dawn bearer’, from the Hebrew ‫הילל‬
heylel ‘morning star’.
44
towards the end of the book of Job. Here God asks if Job were present when God first
designed the universe and created the heavens «When the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?» (Jb 38:7). The «sons of God» are created to
«sing together» with joy before God, a theme taken up in the psalms where the
angelic beings stand (or fly) before God’s throne in the heavenly sanctuary: «Let the
heavens praise your wonders, O LORD, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy
ones» (Ps 89:5; cf. 148:2). Isaiah, in his vision of the exalted throne of YHWH,
introduces the angelic beings called seraphim, the «burning ones» who have six
wings and who worship God constantly, singing «Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of
hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!» (Is 6:2-3). The original vocation of Satan
was to do what all the other sons of God do: participate in the angelic choirs, as God
says «you were an anointed guardian cherub» (Ez 28:14). God created Satan to join
his brothers who «shouted for joy» since time began. «Bless the LORD, O you his
angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word!» (Ps
103:20). But Satan chose neither to bless the Lord nor to obey his word.
Now we can better understand why the celestial spirit of Isaiah 14 fell, he
apparently rejected the original vocation for which God had created him. One of the
«mighty ones» refused to join the other celestial spirits in praise of the Creator; one
of the cherubim defected from his brethren, and instead he thought «I will set my
throne above the stars of God» v. 13, that is to say, «I will become the object of
praise». When the morning star seeks to set his throne above the other stars, a
catastrophe ensues – after all, can there be two Gods in heaven? Can there be two
thrones and two gods who dictate independently of each other? «Throne» is not only
a symbol of authority and judgment but a sign of worship. The tradition of the failed
exaltation of Satan’s throne may have influenced Christian scripture, as John writes in
Revelation that in his fall Satan brought down «a third of the stars of heaven» who
are «his angels», and he «gave his power and his throne» to the beast so that he
might be worshiped as God 61 . Without any New Testament reference this angelic
being was clearly seen in heaven and he was cast down to the pit, and the reason for
his fall is clear, as in Ezekiel 28, it is presumption, excessive self-trust, but more
fundamentally, he denied his own essential nature to sing and worship God. By
refusing to love God the proud angel spoiled his relationship with his Creator and he
disfigured his own nature that was originally so beautiful and pristine, as Ezekiel puts
it so vividly 28:15-19.
What picture can one synthesize from the fallen spirit of Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah
14? We can see here that a powerful and intelligent spirit willfully set himself apart as
evil and stood alone from the beginning of time («Eden», «son of Dawn» connote a
primordial period prior to human history). In this way this spirit defined evil, he gave

61
Cf. Rv 12:4, 7; 13:2-4. Revelation also refers to «stars» as Satan’s angels and demons, Rv 8:11;
9:1; 12:4, whom the dragon has thrown down from heaven to earth with his tail, that is, he has
drawn them away from worship of the true God of heaven and made them serve himself, 12:4,7-9.
The goal of all Satan’s machinations seems to be to force the world to worship him as if he were
divine or semi-divine, 13:4. But only God is worthy of worship (Acts 10:25; 14:14; Rv 19:10; 22:9).
45
it form and substance. Evil had never before existed in the universe because God had
created all things «very good» (Gn 1:31). Evil did not even exist originally in this
spirit himself («you were blameless on the day I created you» Ez 28:15). God is
Goodness itself, it is never God’s will that a free agent choose evil; for example, God
calls Cain to master his sin lest it devour him (Gn 2:17; 4:7; Sir 15:11-12). So how
did this angel rebel? He looked at himself instead of God. Perceiving no limit to his
beauty, he could not contain his ecstasy of adoring himself – to the point that he
developed a secret desire: to be adored as God by others (Ez 28:2; Is 14:13-14). So he
«filled with violence» rebelled against the created order «above the stars of God I
will set my throne» (Ez 28:16; Is 14:13). But in that same moment God stripped him
of his glory and justly cast his presumption down «to the earth» and to death (Ez
28:17), leaving an indelible mark on cosmic history. All evil after him would in some
way be a mere imitation of his primordial act. His overconfidence would be repeated
again and again in Jewish history. Ezekiel 16 reminds Israel that when God made
Israel rich and beautiful «you trusted in your beauty and played the whore» (16:15)
until ruin and exile ravaged the nation because «The Lord resists the proud, but he
gives grace to the humble» (Pv 3:34 LXX). The fallen angel did not find mercy,
because his sin was committed in full knowledge that God was his Maker. He knew
that his revolt was an act of pure contempt and a direct assault on the majesty of God.
Wanting to usurp God’s power, he treated his Creator like a stranger. Perhaps he was
ignorant of God’s true goodness and love, and that the worship of Goodness itself
could guarantee eternal joy. In any case Satan turned away from God at the dawn of
time and killed the love he should have had for his Father. God forlornly allowed this
rebellion, but there is no evidence that he encouraged it. Having lost his first son to
pride, God’s hope in creating Adam from the humble mud was that though humanity,
God could reveal the glory of humility and the beauty of loving service. These are
indeed more godlike attributes than self-obsession and the thirst for power.
Job 1:6-19, 2:1-2, 38:7 are crucial pieces of tradition because they identify
Satan as an angelic being who roves the earth and inflicts curses, instead of singing
God’s praise in heaven with the other sons of God. But why would the fallen angel
want to play the role of Satan the Accuser, as seen in Zechariah and Job; he is the
adversary of human good? Perhaps by the fact that misery loves company; the fallen
angel is hopeless of ever finding a place in heaven again (Is 14:15; Ez 28:16), but he
wants to see humanity puff itself up in pride and fall like he did – just for the sake of
schadenfreude, the joy of seeing others suffer. This insane fury of destroying humans
through temptation, addiction, and accusation, would be one of the few ways he can
get back at God. He knows that God loves humanity, evident in the great care by
which God endowed man with intelligence and sovereignty over creation (Gn 1:28).
Man was created in God’s image, so the tempters delight is in seeing that image of
God plunged into the filth of injustice, rapine, and murder – all what offends God,
things that the devil delights in (Gn 4:7; 6:5-6). This is so that he can then accuse
God’s creatures of the injustice he provoked, claim humanity for himself, and keep
them forever imprisoned in «shame and everlasting contempt» at the resurrection (Dn

46
12:2). Not because he loves man, but when man suffers God «is grieved to his heart»
(Gn 6:6). So God’s mercy triumphs over retribution, as we see in Zechariah 3 by the
redemption, the Messiah that God promises, vv. 8-10. For his own sake God will take
away man’s sin in a single day, so that over mankind Satan will have no claim.
From these books of the Old Testament Satan emerges here as the ἀρχηγός of
evil, he is the pioneer, monarch, and author of it, as the first to experience death and
the one who will later use death and suffering to enslave humanity in fear and
illness62. Here in Job, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 Satan is already the quintessential
rebel among the bene ha-Elohim laying foundation of what will become «his
kingdom» of evil that opposes God and is attributed to Satan by Jesus in the New
Testament (cf. Mt 12:26). By exalting his «throne above the stars of God» (Is 14:13)
Satan sought to establish a rebel kingdom with himself as king, and though he is cast
down into death God conceivably allowed his first son to maintain a certain sphere of
authority; he would have dominion over death and evil, dealing out God’s wrath as he
does in Job and, arguably, in Genesis 3:15. «His kingdom» will not be in heaven but
on earth (Mt 12:26), not a kingdom of light but one of darkness, not working in the
open but in the human heart and conscience. If he may be associated with the «evil
spirit» that afflicted Saul and inspired Israel’s kings who «sacrificed their sons and
their daughters to the demons» (1 Sa 16:14; Ps 106:37), this spirit’s activity is to
recapitulate in mankind his own inglorious rebellion by turning mankind away from
the adoration of the Creator. He is the first «self-made» individual, who stubbornly
prefers the misery of evil to the joy of loving what is good. In Job, Ezekiel 28, and
Isaiah 14 one can clearly see then that these elements of the Hebrew tradition point to
an origin of evil at the dawn of time, evil conceived of in the very Jewish sense of
everything that knowingly refuses to fulfill the purpose for which the universe was
made: to know and love God, «You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your might» (Dt 6:5). This refusal against nature is
the source of all that is intrinsically evil and disruptive to the cosmic order, and
Satan’s rebellion epitomizes this disruption. This act of choosing darkness can only
be understood as evil if God is totally innocent, the God who infinitely loves his
creatures and invites them to share his divine life in the family bond established by
the covenant relationship63.
The seventh explanation attempts to grasp the historical metabolism of the
concept by proposing a dualist tension: Satan is the personification of the dark side of

62
Cf. Is 14:15; Ez 28:16; 19; Jb 1:12-19; 2:7. This theme becomes clear in the N.T. cf. Lk 13:6;
Heb 2:14-15.
63
The covenant was sealed by blood, Ex 24:8 «this is the blood of the covenant», blood symbolized
life, «For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life», Lv 17:14a. The sprinkled blood
on the people and on God’s altar, covenanted Israel into a new sharing in the life of God. As God
had promised Abraham: «And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring
after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your
offspring after you» Gn 17:7. So Moses can say to Israel not only are they sons of Abraham, but
«You are the sons of the LORD your God», Dt 14:1. Israel is in God’s family, as his children. Satan
was once counted among the sons of God, cf. Jb 1:6, 2:1, but he scorned that privilege.
47
divinity, that element within YHWH which obstructs the good. Isaiah 45:7 seems to
engage this paradoxical idea when God says: «I form the light, and create darkness: I
make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these», where «evil» ra’ is sometimes
translated here «woe» or «disaster». The view that God has a good and a evil side is
dualism, which is rejected by Modern Orthodox Judaism and most of Jewish tradition
(except some forms of Kabbalism). Scripture affirms that God allows evil but he does
not condone it: «The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works»
(Ps 145:17); «There is no injustice in him» (Ps 92:15). Dualism is further rejected by
the Jewish Christian authors of the New Testament, where the devil cannot be
considered the dark side of God because «God is light, and in him is no darkness at
all» (1 Jn 1:8). In fact Jesus will say in the Gospels, «No one is good except God
alone» (Mk 10:18) – God is so good that everything is empty of goodness in
comparison. So the dualist tradition cannot form the trajectory within which orthodox
Judeo-Christian concepts of Satan emerged. The overwhelming data of Hebrew
Scripture attests that God acts in justice, he does not choose evil nor encourage it:
«What God hates he does not do... he has no need of wicked man» (Sir 15:11-12).
The Biblical YHWH has no dark side, he is the «light», «the Rock, his work is
perfect, for all his ways are justice, a God of faithfulness without iniquity» (Ps 27:1;
Dt 32:4). But Second Temple Judaism recognized that God allows evil so that his
creatures to be tested by evil and good, so that by freely rejecting evil their true
dignity may be revealed, and they may be worthy of receiving the reward of sharing
in the resurrection from the dead in the age to come (olam haba)64.
So what is the origin of evil? In Genesis’ two accounts of creation, God made
all things perfectly good (Gn 1:31), but evil entered the universe along with suffering
and death by the free choice of intelligent agents whom God created (cf. Gn 3:1-24).
The path of evil is revealed to man by the serpent who lied to Eve, saying «God
knows» that if you eat the fruit that God forbid «you will be like God [Elohim]
knowing good and evil» (Gn 3:5). The serpent is hardly interested in humans
becoming like God or gaining wisdom. His only goal is to reproduce in humans the
same rebellion he chose – to become their own gods – so that he could watch them
endure the same fall he suffered. It is never God’s will that humans sin (Gn 2:17; Sir
15:11-13), but God allows his beloved creatures the freedom to choose: «I have set
before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life!» (Dt 30:19). The
tension between good and evil in relation to God is resolved by the concept of
salvation. One perpetual historical motif of Hebrew scripture65 is that God permits
64
The Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead, while not explicit in the Pentateuch is attested in
the canonical prophets and psalms, Is 26:19; 66:22-24; Dn 12:2-3; Ez 37:12; Hos 6:2; Ps 16:10;
133:3. To have a share in the resurrection of the dead, the age to come (olam haba), «the new
heavens and new earth», Is 65:17; 66:22, was the hope of Jews since the Second Temple period.
Believers in the doctrine included the highly influential Pharisees, who set the tone for Orthodox
Judaism from the Maccabean revolt through the revolt of Bar Kokhba in 135 A.D.
65
E.g. after the Babylonian captivity and destruction of the temple, God promises to draw the
people into greater intimacy and glory with God than they had before, Hg 2:4-5, 9. Cf. also the story
of Joseph whose brothers left him for dead and sold him into slavery. After much suffering, Joseph
48
evil and suffering only if in his mercy and wisdom he can bring a greater good out of
it in the fullness of time.

2. THE DEVIL IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

2.1. Understanding the devil’s identity.

The topic of evil, and consequently Satan and demons is often neglected in
Biblical Theology. However M. F. Unger correctly stated that «together with
angelology and satanology, demonology forms an important branch of theology»66. In
Christian theologies the subject of Satan and demons is not very popular, and yet it is
essential for understanding the New Testament 67 . According to M. J. Erickson
consideration of the topic of evil angels presents a problem, since dealing with them
in connection with good angels would tend to suggest a parallel68. While there is
some kind of parallel between good and evil angels they are both created beings
subject to the will of God. Satan and demons play a central role in opposing the
kingdom of God in the New Testament where every writer makes reference to
demonic powers in some way or another69.
For the New Testament writers several unifying themes emerge as crystal clear
concerning satanic power, its nefarious influence and how to be freed from it:
Firstly, in the New Testament worldview Satan has great authority because, as
John writes in an uncontroversial way: «We know that we are from God, and that the
whole world lies in the power of the evil one» (1 Jn 5:19). Thus the devil is often
called «the ruler of this world» by Jesus (Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), «the deceiver of the
whole world» (Rv 12:9), and even «the god of this world» (2 Cor 4:4). Hence it is not
surprising that the final supplication in the «Our Father» prayer is for protection from
satanic power. It is not, as it is commonly translated, «deliver us from evil» but
precisely «deliver us from the evil one», that is, from the devil70. The present world is

becomes a prince in Egypt, and he says to his brothers Gn 50:20: «As for you, you meant evil
against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as
they are today». Joseph saves his brothers and their families from famine. God’s love, wisdom and
mercy triumph in the end, bringing the family together.
66
M.F. UNGER, Biblical Demonology, 1-2.
67
In terms of sheer quantity the spirit of evil is named about 120 times in the N.T. with various
names and titles, he is called Satan (33 times), devil (32), evil one (12), dragon (12), Beelzebul (7),
serpent (5), enemy (4), prince of demons (4), ruler of this world (3), tempter (2), prince of the
power of the air (1), Belial (1), god of this world (1), etc.
68
J.M ERIKSON, Christian Theology, 18-19. Matthew depicts Jesus speaking of «the devil and his
angels» (Mt 25:41). Satan’s demonic horde is referred to as «his angels» (Rv 12:9). And Paul
complains that he has been afflicted by an angel of Satan (2 Cor 12:7).
69
T. LING, The Significance of Satan, 84.
70
Matthew 6:13 seems not to be referring to abstract evil, but to a person, hence the
masculine/neuter singular adjective with the article τοῦ πονηροῦ, «the evil one». That πονηρός was
a name for the devil in early Christian communities can be inferred from its common usage in the
49
described as «the present evil age» (Gal 1:4) or «an evil and adulterous generation»
(Mt 12:39) whose people are unwittingly enslaved to «the spiritual forces of evil in
the heavenly places» who are «the cosmic powers over this present darkness» (Eph
6:12; cf. 2:2-4). In this dark milieu believers in Jesus are called to shine like
luminaries, «You are the light of the world» as Jesus said in his greatest sermon (Mt
5:14; cf. Phil 2:15). Although Satan has power over the world, he is powerless to
harm the followers of Jesus who have «overcome the world» by faith (1 Jn 5:4, 18).
The authors of Christian scripture were convinced that in the midst of Satan’s empire
over the world, the spread of the reign of Christ in the hearts of humanity would be
unstoppable71. Thus in Matthew Jesus so boldly promises Peter: «You are Peter, and
on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it»
(Mt 16:18). Satanic power is crushed under the feet of those who are baptised and
accept to live by Christ’s grace that is limitless and life-changing (Acts 2:38; Rom
16:20). How is satanic power crushed?
Secondly, Satan was one of «the sons of God» as a creature (cf. Jb 1:6; 2:1;
38:7) but he is not divine. Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God by nature «for in
him the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily» (Col 2:9). The mystery of Christ
thus sheds light on understanding the mystery of Satan. As defined from scripture
Jesus is the Word though whom all things were created; he is «true God and eternal
life» (Jn 1:1-4; 1 Jn 5:20). Christ is a divine person, eternally existing in God before

New Testament, not only in the synoptics (e.g. Mt 5:37; 13:19, 38) but also in Jesus’ high priestly
prayer in John 17:15, «I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from
the evil one». This term for the devil had also found its way into Johannine (1 Jn 2:13-14, 3:12,
5:18-19) and Pauline epistles (2 Thes 3:3; Eph 6:16).
71
The unstoppable power of faith in Christ is a common theme throughout the New Testament.
Faith moves mountains 1 Cor 13:2; Mt 17:20; 21:21. The epistles of the late first century reflect a
towering confidence that the power of believers is from God and thus is omnipotent. Ephesians
speaks of «the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power in us who believe» which is nothing less
than the power of the resurrection from the dead and enthronement with Christ on God’s heavenly
throne, Eph 1:19; 2:6. While acknowledging that «the whole world lies in the power of the evil
one» early Christians are confident that the devil is no match for believers in the Son of God, «this
is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith» 1 Jn 5:19; 5:4. Where did this confidence
come from? In Acts and Matthew Jesus sends out the apostles, in order «to make disciples of all
nations» Mt 28:19, as the witnesses of his resurrection they are to bring God’s kingdom «in
Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth» Acts 1:8. For this mission Jesus
gives them «the promise of my Father,» the Holy Spirit, so that they be «clothed with power from
on high» Lk 24:49. Indeed the first chapters book of Acts bears witness to the boldness of the early
Church even when faced with torture or martyrdom. But that’s not all. The conviction that all
nations were destined to embrace faith in Christ may have stemmed from the belief that God’s
fulfilment of the Davidic covenant which Christ fulfilled and is fulfilling through his Church as the
Gospel spreads. That the kingdom of Messiah would reign over all nations is clearly implied in the
messianic psalms and Danielic prophecy, «Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession» Ps 2:8, cf. 72:8. In Daniel the Messiah is «the Son of
Man» who will receive «dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and
languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion... his kingdom shall not be
destroyed» Dn 7:14; that Messiah’s kingdom will put an end to all other kingdoms, see Dn 2:44.
50
time began (Jn 17:5). Thus he is uncreated, one in being with God the Father. And so
the Fathers explained that in the fullness of time this eternal Son assumed a human
nature in order to save mankind. He was born of a virgin and revealed to the world at
his baptism when God said: «This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased»
(Mt 3:17; cf. Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22)72. The devil however is a mere creature, finite and
dependent on God for his existence – because of his rebellion, he is doomed to
destruction. Jesus warns humanity of the danger of falling into «the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels» (Mt 25:41; cf. Rv 20:10).
Thirdly, the New Testament is clear that the reason the Son of God came into
the world was «to destroy the works of the devil» (1 Jn 3:8; cf. Jn 12:31). So to
understand the devil and his work one must understand Christ in the fullness of his
divinity. In order to accomplish his work destroying evil the Son of God assumed a
humble human nature (Phil 2:5-11), «to reconcile to himself all things, whether on
earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross» (Col 1:20). Christ-God’s
humble «obedience unto death even death on the cross» destroyed the proud devil,
showing that God is infinitely powerful not because he rules in heaven but in his
tender humility he chooses to suffer. He became human in order to demonstrate
divine love: to make his life a gift of love, a gift of life to those who were dead (Mk
10:45). By self-sacrifice as «our Paschal Lamb» (1 Cor 5:7), Christ makes atonement
for all sin, which is the true cause of death (Heb 9:26) and thus he breaks Satan’s
cruel empire over mankind. Jesus freely protects believers under his precious blood
and saves them from the destructive power of Satan just as the Israelites were saved
from the angel of death by hiding under the blood of the Passover lamb (Ex 12:12-13).
All this is due to faith and baptism where the believer came to participate in Christ’s
death and resurrection: «that through death [Jesus] might destroy the one who has the
power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were
subject to lifelong slavery» (Heb 2:14b-15; cf. Rom 6:1-6). It should not surprise us
then that for the New Testament writers in order for their message to be successful it
must expose, though the light of Christ, the empire of Satan and his intimate power
over human psychology, which Jesus reveals to be things «hidden from the
foundation of the world» (Mt 13:35) 73.
John’s gospel shows how difficult Christ’s message about Satan is for people
to hear, Jesus is rejected when he tries to reveal that human desires are corrupt,
addicting them to sin, for «everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin» (Jn 12:31;
8:34). Thus even to «the Jews who believed in him» but refused to recognize their
sins, Jesus says plainly «you are sons of your father the devil, your will is to do your
72
The Church Fathers from St Ignatius of Antioch onward (107 A.D.), challenged by heresies,
began to define Orthodox belief in the early centuries, they recognized the full divinity of Jesus
which they supported through reflection upon scripture, cf. Rom 9:5; 1 Jn 5:20; Ti 2:13. Jesus does
things that only God can rightly do, such as forgive sins, Mt 9:2, and receive worship Mt 2:11;
14:33; 28:17; Lk 24:52. John’s Gospel is especially revealing of Christ’s divine nature, cf. Jn 1:1,18;
8:58; 10:30; 17:5, 21. That all things were created through him and for him, cf. Jn 1:3; Col 1:16-17.
73
For Jesus as the one who reveals the devil’s deceptive power over human psychology cf. Jn 8:44;
Mt 5:37; 15:18-20; Eph 2:2-14; 2 Tm 2:26; Rv 3:17; 13:3-4.
51
father’s desires» (Jn 8:31, 44)74. Jesus calls sinners back to God because the «ruler of
this world» has injected desires like poison into the human heart, such as greed,
malice, envy, etc (Mt 15:19). Sometimes this message did not win Jesus many friends,
as this pericope in John 8 ends with Jesus «hiding in the temple» as his audience
picks up stones to kill him (Jn 8:59). But after Christ’s resurrection and the coming of
the Holy Spirit his apostles are empowered to preach «with gentleness and respect»
(1 Pt 3:15) the fullness of the message of eternal life that Jesus commanded them:
«that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all
nations, beginning from Jerusalem» (Lk 24:47). The apostolic community of early
Christians celebrated their faith in unity and humility (Acts 2:42-47). They rejoiced in
the resurrection of Jesus as a victory of God over Satan (26:18) and by their faith in
the victory of Christ they also were victorious, even martyrs were crowned as princes
of eternal life as Jesus says to the persecuted community in Smyrna: «Behold, the
devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested... Be faithful
unto death, and I will give you the crown of life» (Rv 2:10). Like in Job, suffering
under the devil is allowed by God to make the spiritual excellence shine in his elect
through their unbreakable union to Christ (Rom 8:17f). The martyrs remembered how
Christ died for love of them, and they rejoiced to die for love of him, as St Peter was
«to glorify God» by the gift of his life (Jn 21:19). Only by understanding the malice
of Satan’s power as a kingdom that had enslaved humanity in fear of death can it be
explained how Jesus had liberated mankind from all fear. Jesus inspired Stephen to
be fearless to do good and love the truth even in the face of hatred and evil, forgiving
and praying for those who were killing him (Acts 7:60). Jesus has ushered in a new
kingdom, a new order, by the power of his resurrection and heavenly enthronement,
not a kingdom built on fear but on freedom, the total gift of self: «the glorious
freedom of the children of God» (Rom 1:4; 8:21).
No doubt, modern scholarship tends to shy away from directly talking about
demonic forces and their malice toward human beings. But the New Testament
reflects a spiritual richness of these concepts, interpretations, and assumptions,
deriving in part from Hellenistic thought and partly from that of contemporary Judaic
traditions which were synthesized and capitalized upon. The New Testament authors
remark that their Messiah came «in the fullness of time» (Gal 4:4) or «at the last of
the times» (1 Pt 1:20) so that God’s salvation would be announced at a time when
man was most ready to hear it, that is, they would be ready to accept the full truth
about the kingdom of God vis-à-vis the authority of darkness 75 . Indeed without
74
In John’s first letter he elaborates on the relation of the sinner and the devil: «Whoever makes a
practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning», 1 Jn 3:8.
Ironically Satan’s rule lasts as long as a person claims to be innocent, because «if we say we have
no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us» but «if we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness», 1 Jn 1:8-9.
75
Paul, for example, writes in Gal 4:4, «When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his
Son» (emphasis mine). For «last days» or «end of time» see also Acts 2:17; 1 Pt 1:20; Heb 1:2; Jas
5:3; Eph 1:10 where the «last days» are viewed by writers the New Testament as the time when the
salvation prepared by God in the Old Testament in accomplished by Christ who through the Church
52
acknowledging the kingdom of Satan one cannot welcome the kingdom of God, so
the tension between darkness and light of the two kingdoms is vital76. This tension is
summed up by the author of the Acts of the Apostles when Jesus tells Paul of his
mission, «To open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from
the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place
among those who are sanctified by faith in me» (Acts 26:18; cf. 1 Pt 2:9). This is
essentially the message of salvation; without Satan there is no need for salvation. It is
also the reason why Christian scripture is full of thanksgiving and praise, thanking
God that he had «transferred us» from «the authority of darkness» to «the kingdom of
his beloved Son» (Col 1:12-13). If Christians communities were not joyful their
message would not have succeed – a main source of Christian joy is the experience of
freedom, peace, and unity – even in the midst of persecution. Of this divine joy Paul
reminds the new believers: «You received the word in much affliction, with the joy of
the Holy Spirit» (1 Th 1:6). The conviction is that God’s love lives in them, love
which had set them apart from the world and saved them from demonic influence.
The demonic terminology, so central to the Christian message, is found
especially in the apocalyptic and rabbinic traditions from which the Christian authors
synthesized Greek and Jewish concepts of the devil, thus the New Testament’s
diabology and demonology are essentially those of Hellenistic Judaism 77. Moreover,
the New Testament does not move the tradition of the concept of the devil strikingly
beyond the position of late Second-Temple Jewish Apocalyptic tradition. Indeed it is
precisely because of the possibility of sincere belief that demonic powers exist and
effectively rule the world that the New Testament message succeeds within the
cultures in which it was proclaimed. The two literatures, apocalyptic Jewish sources
and the New Testament, are almost contemporary and arise from the same
Hellenistic-Jewish milieu.
In these two literatures the devil is a creature of God, yet regarded as the chief
of the fallen angels. Most of the time the devil acts as if he had far greater power as
lord of this world, chief of a vast multitude of spiritual and physical powers, angelic
and human, arrayed against the kingdom of God. Satan is not only the chief opponent
of God but he has under his sovereignty all who oppose God’s will. In other words,
all who disobey God’s commandments place themselves unknowingly under the
will bring the triumph of God’s peace on earth and gift of God’s Spirit (cf. Jl 2:28-32; Is 2:1-4; Mi
4:1-4; Gn 49:1).
76
For the essential tension between God’s kingdom of light and Satan’s authority of darkness see
especially Johannine literature and the Pauline epistles e.g. Jn 1:5;3:19-21;8:12;11:9-10;12:31-
36,46; 1 Jn 1:5; 2:8-9; Rom 13:12; 2 Cor 4:4-6; Eph 5:8-14; Col 1:12-13; 1 Thes 5:5. This tension
explodes into a cosmic war in the apocalyptic literature, Rv 12:7-17; 19:11-21.
77
Like the O.T., the N.T. does not contain a systematic teaching on demons. Traces of late Second
Temple Jewish demonology are nonetheless clear. What distinguishes the Old from the New
Testament is that the latter accepts the existence of the devil’s dominion, which constitutes the
opposite of God’s heavenly polity. At the same time, ‘evil’ acquires a more specific form and the
devil is considered the chief of all evil spirits. Initially, certain notional differentiations were made
on the basis of these spirits’ provenance, but these were finally abandoned. The Evangelists and St.
Paul employ various names for the devil and his instruments.
53
control of Satan, they are «bound» by him, at least partially (Rom 11:32; Gal 3:22).
In this capacity, Satan appears very much as the principle of evil. Christianity, like
apocalyptic Judaism, refused to embrace dualism, as we find for example in
Mazdaism78.
As Satan is the opponent of the good God, YHWH of Judaism, so he is the
opponent of Christ, the Son. As Christ commands the armies of light, Satan
commands those of darkness to make war on humanity (Rv 12:17; 13:7; 16:14;
17:14; 19:11-21), and the human soul and the whole cosmos is torn between the two
realms, good and evil.79. In the end, Satan and his powers will be cast down and
annihilated, and Christ’s new heavens, new earth and a redeemed humanity will be
established forever (Rv 21:1; 2 Pt 3:13; Rom 8:19-23).
The traditions of Mazdaism, Orphism, Hellenistic religion and philosophy, and
late Judaism assigned wide powers to «the evil one» inherent to their tradition. This
power assigned to the devil remains evident in New Testament Christianity of the
first century. Cultures accepted and perhaps, reinforced, these traditions because they
partially answered the question of theodicy, to which the Christianity gives a response
in the fullness of its Jewish/Hellenistic context.
Jesus did not teach his followers that Satan and the demons existed, they
already knew that from their culture; Jesus taught them how to subdue these forces
through exorcism. Before delving directly into the New Testament demonology as
such, one should note its unity with Jewish demonology. When we, from our modern
perspective, understand with greater lucidity the similarity of New Testament
writings and Jewish traditions about demons we can understand better the sheer
amazement of the apostles at seeing how their ancient Adversary had truly been made
subject to them (Lk 10:17-19). How far the Jesus traditions exceed or transcend the
basic boundaries set by Jewish tradition, or if they do so at all, will become clear as
Jewish elements are enumerated, and one can see the Christian character stand in
relief. Jewish apocalyptic traditions propose the first indications of a demonic
hierarchy that will be crystallized in the New Testament with Satan emerging so
clearly as the head while all the other demons remain nameless, almost disappearing
behind the shadow of their leader. The only exception to this is found in Revelation,
were we see the name of several significant demons alongside Satan such as Abaddon
78
Mazdaism is the proper name of Zoroastrism which bases its faith in Ahura Mazda (Divine
Mind/Wisdom), the Great God and only creator of the reality, has been proclaimed by his prophet
Zarathustra (Zoroaster) as the original faith of the Aryans (Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians).
79
The good God is the creator of all and the guarantor of their goodness, who gave mankind
intellect and responsibility to be good stewards of creation, Gn 1:26-28. But Satan and his kingdom
have infiltrated the minds of humans, seducing them to ignore God and to use creation for selfish
ends, abusing themselves and others. The devil, in his desire to destroy what God loves, has
corrupted humans, convincing them to turn the planet into a war zone for the sake of perverse
desires, greed, hate, lust, pride, etc, Jas 3:6; 4:1-17. But Christ comes to destroy this old world, to
cleanse human hearts, to recreate humanity, and proclaim the kingdom of God on earth; that is, a
new human community that resembles a family, based on love of the Father and love of neighbour,
this family alone will receive salvation in the final judgment. E. KOSKENNIEMI – I. FRÖHLICH, Evil
and the devil, 131.
54
or Apollyon (Rv 9:11), and Wormwood (8:11). But Revelation also gives us the
clearest indication of Satan’s absolute lordship over the demonic world.
In the Book of Parables of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71) Azazel stands forth as not
only the most wicked of demons as we saw in the section above, but as their chief; to
him is ascribed many the same motifs as are ascribed to Satan in the Gospels80. The
Enochic tradition of Azazel and the «devil and his angels» in the New Testament (Mt
25:41), share the same characteristics, they have provoked the same rebellion among
humans and will endure the same chastisement – and will be judged by God’s Elect,
the Messiah who sits on God’s throne (1 En 55:4; cf. Mt 25:31; Acts 17:31; Rom
14:10). What the New Testament will reveal in much greater depth is how the
mysteries of Satan’s kingdom play out in human life, how «the whole world [that]
lies in the power of the evil one» (1 Jn 5:19) will be redeemed by Jesus, how the
mystery of Satan’s deceptive power is successful and yet defeated by Christ’s word
(Jn 8:44; Rv 12-13; 19:15f), how Satan is «to make war on the saints and to conquer
them» by means of the antichrist (Rv 13:7; 1 Pt 5:9; 2 Th 2:3-12), and how precisely
«his kingdom» of death will be destroyed in the end (Mt 12:26; 13:43; 1 Cor 15:26;
Rv 20:9-10). Thus it is safe to conclude that the spirits of evil in these traditions are
not only influential and parallel but roughly identical to the Satan depicted in the
Gospels.
None of these parallels should surprise us. The Christian authors did not
inhabit a symbolic universe that was different from the worldview of their Jewish
tradition; the experience of knowing Christ did not deny that worldview, it confirmed
it. Jesus’ astounding resurrection confirmed for the Galilean fishermen that these
bizarre religious traditions were actually true, especially the exalted visions of
apocalyptic Judaism. With all its spiritual symbols, the rebellion of demons, the
victory of the Lord of Spirits, and the final judgment – themes that Jesus himself
80
All the writers of the New Testament seemed to be familiar with the Enochic traditions and were
influenced by it in thought and diction. See J.C. VANDERKAM, 1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch
in Early Christian Literature, 124-126. Enochic demonology is particularly parallel to the Christian
scripture, for example: The fallen angels are described as «the hosts of Azazel» which is a military
idiom that indicates a captain-army relationship, 1 En 54:5; 55:4; this is comparable to the war in
heaven led by «the dragon and his angels» Rv 12:7-9. For these spirits «chains [are] being
prepared», 1 En 54:4, which is a precise motif found in 2 Pt 2:4; Jd 1:6; Rv 20:1-2. On the «great
Day» God’s vengeance will cast them into «the burning furnace», 1 En 54:6, parallel to Jesus words
in Mt 13:42; 25:41; Rv 9:2; 20:10. And until that day these ungodly beings are bound in the outer
«darkness», 1 En 10:4-7 parallel to Jd 1:6; Mt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30; Eph 6:12; Col 1:13. Final
judgment in 1 Enoch 55:4 reveals a flurry of royal motifs in which God’s mysterious «Elect One»
presumably the Messiah, is revealed, he «who sits on the throne of glory» and who finally «judges
Azazel and all his associates, and all his hosts in the name of the Lord of Spirits», 1 En 55:4. The
place accorded to Azazel is a significant attribution, because in 1 Enoch many wicked spirits are
named, but only one emerges as their representative – as if he were himself their scapegoat. No
other demon but Azazel is called the source of all sin. Although Azazel is not named in the New
Testament where many other names for the devil are given, it seems reasonable, nevertheless, to see
this Jewish tradition by which a chief demonic spirit clearly existed as sharing to some degree the
same general worldview as, for example, the Pharisees of New Testament who speak of «the prince
of demons», Mt 9:34; Mk 3:22; Lk 11:15.
55
speaks about in the Gospels – all this spiritual metaphor had become a reality by the
raw fact of the resurrection. How? Thomas who first doubted the resurrection later
exclaimed, as he fell to his knees before the risen Jesus, «my Lord, and my God» (Jn
20:28). And the New Testament records that the apostles had seen with their eyes that
Messiah had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven; Christ’s ascension
confirmed for them the prophecies of heavenly enthronement. Every New Testament
book reveals a conviction that Jesus the Messiah is enthroned at the right hand of
God, for this reason Psalm 110:1, which predicts/confirms this enthronement, was by
far the most commonly referenced verse in the New Testament. 1 Enoch confirmed
as well that as soon as Messiah was enthroned in heaven, he was thus ready to judge
the living and the dead (1 En 55:4) as Jesus promised and his apostles proclaimed81.
Although the phenomenon of Jesus may have opened the apostles eyes to more
deeply engage the demonic world as a metaphysical reality, he did not do so by
esoteric study but by direct experience: He sent them to proclaim the kingdom of God
(Mt 10:7; Lk 10:9), and to touch with their hands and see with their eyes the
miraculous signs of the kingdom, including exorcism (Mt 10:8; Lk 10:17). Being free
of demonic influence was no longer an issue of maintaining ritual purity through
washing, a privilege for the elite who had the «luxury» of being holy. Jesus shocked
his society by teaching the opposite: «Blessed are the poor, theirs is the kingdom of
God» and, «It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of God» (Lk 6:20; 18:25). For Christ purity is a quality of
the humble heart; it is not in the external appearance afforded by wealth (Mt 23:25;
Lk 11:39). Furthermore, since God reveals the secrets of the kingdom to simple
children (Mt 11:25; Lk 10:21) no longer is demonology an esoteric study only for
people like the Essenes, the strictest and purist sects of religious visionaries at
Qumran, but the secrets of demonic power were something that the uneducated men
of Galilee could explain without fear. Their message was that all people, great and
small, who accept faith in Jesus had been set free from all demonic forces by the
«new covenant» in the blood of Christ: «You who were far off have been brought
near by the blood of Christ... you are fellow citizens with the saints in the family of
God» (Eph 2:13, 19). Christ’s only mention of covenant, in fact, is right during the
Passover meal on the eve of his crucifixion: «This cup is the new covenant in my
blood» (1 Cor 11:25a) showing that his blood was the new Passover, not an execution
but a free gift of liberation from evil and thus the fulfilment of the Jewish Passover
that was at the centre of all their tradition (Ex 12:13). Christ asked his apostles to «do
this, whenever you drink it in remembrance of me» (1 Cor 11:25b)82. For the New
Testament authors «the blood of the covenant» is the foundation of the Christian faith
81
Jesus speaks of final judgment in Mt 25:31-32a: «When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and
all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the
nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the
goats». For Jesus as final judge see also Acts 17:31; 1 Tm 4:1; 1 Pt 4:5, etc.
82
Paul faithfully records in the Eucharistic institution narrative which is by far the longest tradition
that Paul records from Jesus’ life, 1 Cor 11:23f parallels the Synoptic Gospels which were probably
written after Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
56
and the everlasting sign of God’s love (cf. Ex 24:8). Nothing communicates more
eloquently the love of God than «the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ» (1 Pt 1:2;
Heb 12:24) which represents both the Father’s free gift of eternal life though the gift
of his only Son (Jn 3:16) and Christ’s tender self-sacrifice «poured out for many for
the forgiveness of sins» (Mt 26:28). The Church Fathers believed that by worthily
consuming the «New Testament» (Lk 22:20) 83 , that is, Christ’s «blood» in the
Eucharist, God would protect his children from all demons, wash away the sins of the
world and reproduce in human beings the fidelity, love and divine sonship of Christ84.
What is dark and uncertain at Qumran, namely the efficacy of exorcistic
prayer 85 , is brought into the full light of confidence by the resurrection of Christ
celebrated every Sunday, «the Lord’s day», by Christians in the «breaking of the
bread» in Jerusalem and eventually throughout the empire (Rv 1:10; Acts 2:46). What
was for Jews a fearful supplication for deliverance from demonic evil became the rite
of baptism as a manifestation of total salvation for the soul, an infusion of Divine
Life, and an act of union to a victory already accomplished on the cross (Ti 3:4-7). In
the New Testament language, «baptism now saves you»; just as Noah’s family was
saved from the flood while all the godless perished (1 Pt 3:2), so Christian initiation
has apocalyptic importance: «Jesus... delivers us from the wrath to come» (1 Th 1:10).
The old creation passed away in the flood, and likewise this «present evil age» will
be totally destroyed (2 Pt 2:5) because it is corrupted by the domination of Satan and
«the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away» (1 Cor 2:6). The fact that the
apostles saw Christ as «the stone that the builders rejected [which] has become the
cornerstone» (Ps 118:22; 1 Pt 2:4, 7) means that God wants a whole new cosmic
temple, a new creation, built on Christ who «appeared as a high priest of the good
things that are coming» (Heb 9:11) – salvation is being integrated into this new living
temple (Rv 3:12), but how? By his love and humility Christ transformed the curse of
death into an act of praise, «a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God» (Eph 5:2). Jesus’
sacrifice and resurrection «destroyed» the devil «who has the power of death»
because death is no longer terrifying or uncertain but is now a means «to glorify
God» and to enter with Jesus into heaven (Heb 2:15; Jn 21:19). Like the Jewish high
priest on Yom Kippur discussed above (1.3), Jesus the high priest represents all Israel,
humanity, and the cosmos that will be reconciled to God «once and for all… by the
sacrifice of himself» (Heb 9:26)86. Therefore Christ’s crucifixion is the sacrifice of all
creation as an act of worship; it constitutes a prophetic destruction of the whole

83
Novum Testamentum is the Latin translation of καινὴ διαθήκη, Lk 22:20, «new covenant». Cf.
also 1 Cor 11:25; Heb 8:8; 9:15; 12:24; all related to the blood sacrifice of Christ as a fulfillment of
«new covenant» promised by Jer 31:31f, cf. Ez 37:26; Hos 2:18.
84
Cf. 2 Pt 1:4; Gal 4:6; John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, PG XXXVI, 3.
85
See section 3.3 below for discussion of exorcism at Qumran.
86
Cf. Heb 9:12 in Hebrews Christ’s death is seen as the ministry of the high priest on Yom Kippur:
«he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by
means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption».
57
cosmos and the reconstruction of a new one87. «If anyone is in Christ he is a new
creation» (2 Cor 5:17) because as the old world passes away God is busy constructing
a new cosmic temple with «living stones», human souls, built upon «the cornerstone»
of God’s Son who «grows into a holy temple in the Lord»88. To be an everlasting
dwelling place for God (Zep 3:17) seemed to be, to the amazement of the apostles, a
fulfilment of the original vocation given to Israel to call all the nations to worship
God as «a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation» and to be the blessing of
Abraham to «all the nations» (1 Pt 2:5,9; Gal 3:8-14; cf. Ex 19:5-6; Gn 22:18). What
is the blessing? God’s blessing is not the wealth of this age but eternal life in the
kingdom, a blessing that is only hinted at in the Torah but confirmed elsewhere in
Hebrew Scripture: «On the mountains of Zion... there the LORD has commanded the
blessing, life forevermore» (Ps 133:3b). Daniel prophesies:
«Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are
wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to
righteousness, like the stars forever and ever» (Dn 12:2-3)89.

This idea is proclaimed by Jesus says in John «I am the resurrection and the
life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live» (Jn 11:25; cf. 5:29). So
baptism into Christ was conceived of as an exodus for God’s people from this world
into the resurrection, entry into God’s family and a whole new creation (Gal 1:4; 3:27:
6:15). For early Christians the perspective of full assurance in eternal life in Christ
would be essential for confronting and understanding the full reality of the devil who
has «the power of death» (Heb 2:14). Baptism is seen as a spiritual union with
Christ’s death as victory over this world dominated by the devil and as a resurrection
into Christ’s eternal glory90. Therefore baptism acts as Jesus’ most powerful exorcism
by which «the ruler of this world will be cast out» for «all people» (Jn 12:31-32; Mk
10:39). Paul writes of Christ’s victory over the demonic forces: «Having forgiven us
all our trespasses, cancelling the record of debt that stood against us... This he set
aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to
open shame, by triumphing over them» (Col 2:13-15)91. If all sins are washed away,
Satan can no longer «accuse» a person in the final judgment, and so Jesus fulfils the
87
Christ’s death means the destruction of three temples: the temple of Jesus’ body (Jn 2:21), the
Jerusalem temple (Mt 24:2; 27:51), and the whole cosmos at «the close of the age» (Mt 24:3f).
88
Cf. 1 Pt 2:52; Eph 2:21; Gal 1:4; 6:15.
89
For other references in Jewish tradition to the resurrection of the dead cf. Is 26:19; Ez 37:1-12;
Hos 13:14. The bodily resurrection of the dead was a tenant of the belief of the Pharisees but denied
by the Sadducees. Cf. Mt 22:23f; Acts 23:6f; 24:21 Jesus and Paul defend the doctrine of Pharisees
against the doubting Sadducees. The resurrection in Daniel is paralleled in John 5:28-29; 11:23-26.
90
Cf. Jn 16:33; Rom 6:2-5; Jesus speaks of his death as a baptism into which his disciples will be
baptised, Mk 10:39. For Pauline discussion of the everlasting glory of all who were dead and now,
by God’s grace, are alive and enthroned with Christ in heaven see Eph 2:4-9. For new heavens and
new earth cf. 2 Pt 3:13; Is 66:22.
91
For strong evidence that «rulers and authorities» refers to demonic forces see Eph 6:12.
Ephesians is a letter that is theologically parallel to Colossians.
58
high priestly role of Joshua in Zec 3:1-1092. Through simple baptism commanded by
the risen Christ to all nations (Mt 28:19), the eschatological judgment and the doom
of demonic forces was no longer just an esoteric hope for the Essene religious elite
but something joyfully announced from the rooftops by fishermen: «Now when they
saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated,
common men, they were astonished» (Acts 4:13a).
The devil is responsible not only for the corruption of human minds and the
cosmos but for natural ills as well, such as death, disease, and storm, whether simply
sent as diabolical afflictions of innocent people or meant as punishment for sins. Thus
Jesus says about the woman with a «spirit of infirmity» whom he heals: «this woman,
a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years» (Lk 13:11, 16). Moral
evil, i.e. seduction to harm self or others for the sake of a perceived gain, may exist in
mankind without Satan, but his role as «tempter» is primordial; that is, from the devil
come the thoughts or suggestions to the human mind that, if acted upon, would result
in disaster (Mt 4:3; Gn 3:1-24). Satan and his powers resist the kingdom of God
every day, in every place by working in a hidden way in order to convince human
beings that they need to rebel in some way and that they desire the evil that they in no
way need, because Satan knows that all those who disobey God’s rules fall under his
power (Jn 8:34, 44; 1 Jn 3:8). The horns and darkness of the evil one (Rv 12:3), his
spiritual authority over the air and the underworld (Eph 2:2; Jude 6), his ability to
change shapes «into an angel of light» so as to deceive (2 Cor 11:14), and his malice
by which he prowls like a roaring lion to devour human souls (1 Pt 5:8), and the other
iconographical features assigned to the devil in the New Testament, are figures of
speech that can only hint at the insane fury of «the god of this age» (2 Cor 4:4) and
his immense power on earth.
Thus the devil, as we have amply shown, is neither merely symbolic nor
peripheral to the New Testament message. The fact that the modern western culture
has largely lost belief in the devil cannot be proof of his non-existence, but could be
evidence of the magnitude of his deceptive power. In the absence of scientific proof
into the subject, majority opinion cannot be a good indication of whether unseen
realities exist93. So what can empirical reality tell us? Despite technological advances
in science, human beings find themselves more ethically deficient than ever, that is,
they choose things that are objectively bad for them. This fact is seen politically as

92
Jesus playing the role of Joshua in Zec 3 may have been what Paul had in mind in writing about
Christ’s atonement in Rom 8:1-4. Note especially the metaphor of Jesus, though innocent, is being
clothed «in likeness of sinful flesh and for sin» v. 3, seems parallel to Joshua «being clothed in
filthy garments» Zec 3:4. On the cross Jesus brought «in the flesh» all mankind’s sin before God to
receive condemnation. God, by accepting Christ’s pure sacrifice in atonement for sin, took away
that sin so that «There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus» Rom
8:1. Raising Christ from the dead God clothed him in a new, pure garment like Joshua, Zec 3:4,
making Christ «the firstborn of all creation… the firstborn of the dead» (Col 1:15, 18). Also Jesus’
name happens to be Yeshua, Aramaic from the Hebrew ‫ יהושע‬Joshua.
93
E.g. If the majority of people did not believe in or were ignorant of the Pythagorean Theorem, it
would not be any less true.
59
even «advanced» nations slip all too quickly into war, racism, and genocide. It is seen
socially as the fraternal love in many communities and families has grown cold:
poverty, isolation, and homelessness abound. It is seen individually as people are led
to «cope» with their life through drugs and alcohol, or other forms of self-inflicted
abuse. Suicide, mental illness, hopelessness and depression consume a large
percentage of western society, even children. The horrifying statistics of human
misery seem to be not only the result of irrational forces, nor to an organic deficiency
that brings about a common hysteria, but they are indicative of a will inclined towards
dehumanization, a will capable of blinding a person from seeing that his desires are
his own worst enemy (cf. Jn 8:44). Who can explain the mindless annihilation of
innocent life in war and famine unless mankind were victim of deception on a mass
scale? Who else but the devil would have the intelligence, patience, and malice
capable of warping and consolidating human selfishness and greed down through the
centuries into the machinery of war in which so little is gained and everything is lost?
All this is contrary to the mind of God, expressed in his commandment blessing of
Adam and Eve: «Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth» (Gn 1:28). God loves human
life and created humans to flourish as care-takers of creation. Christian scripture,
about which society has become largely ignorant, tells us that human beings are
responsible to decide between right and wrong. God who is light has given every man
the light of reason: «And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, but
men loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil» (Jn 3:19).
If man ignores his conscience, forgets God and chooses evil, God respects man’s
freedom in a terrifying way – by giving him the desire for evil that destroys him
instead of the desire for the simple good that will benefit him (Rom 1:24-25). In his
war against mankind (Rv 12:17) Satan is the manifestation of the malicious will bent
towards human corruption. His claim over mankind is achieved by enslaving them to
self-destructive and perverse desires that are contrary to God’s law: violence, theft,
manipulation, lies, sexual immorality, greed, etc. God, in his infinite mercy, gave the
world his Son Jesus who is always ready to heal every person that turns toward him
for forgiveness. This is Christianity, and if it is true then it would be to the devil’s
advantage not to be known, not to be exposed – so that his enslavement of humanity
may continue undetected. Thus from the New Testament perspective at least, the fact
that people do not believe in the devil is only confirmation of his talent. He seems to
have been true to his role as the «father of lies» and «Satan, deceiver of the whole
world» (Jn 8:44; Rv 12:9). He is not only deceiver but destroyer, bent on bringing
humanity to destroy itself and the planet through senseless wars (cf. Rv 20:8). As
Paul says: «The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep
them from seeing the light» (2 Cor 4:4). And so, as world suffering increases it goes
without saying that the devil has performed one of his greatest tricks on the
«educated» West in the modern era: convincing the world that he does not exist.
The chief characteristics of the devil at the time of the New Testament can be
enumerated in the following points: 1) The personification of evil; 2) A cause of
physical harm to people by attacking their bodies, infiltrating their members, or

60
possessing them; 3) The tester of people and tempting them to sin in order to destroy
them or recruit them in his struggle against the Lord; 4) The accuser and punisher of
sinners; 5) The head of a host of evil spirits, fallen angels, or demons; 6) The one
who has assimilated most of the qualities of ancient destructive nature spirits or
ghosts; 7) The ruler of this world of matter and bodies until such time as the Lord’s
own kingdom would come; 8) One who is in constant warfare against Jesus Christ
and 9) One who would be fully annihilated by Christ at the end of the world. Herein
the concept of the devil in Christian Scripture is given its basic contours94.
However, as time passed, the Jewish and Christian traditions began to part
company. Judaism generally followed the Rabbinic tradition in strictly limiting the
role of the devil. Christianity – both erudite and popular – developed the concept
much more expansively. Christian tradition came to identify the devil and the demons
more completely with the fallen angels, removing the devil further from his heavenly
origin as one of the sons of God, and allocating him to the demons as their prince.
The nature and ranks of the good and evil angels, along with the extent of their
powers over nature and over humankind, became further elucidated in early Christian
tradition. Some questions addressed included whether devils and demons had bodies,
and, if so, what kind. Satan’s rebellion and subsequent fall from grace came at the
beginning rather than at the end of time, where he is identified as serpent of Genesis
and as Lucifer, the fallen celestial being.

2.2 The Gospels.

All Gospel accounts portray a virtual explosion of demonic activity that takes
centre stage in numerous episodes during the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. The
significance of demonic activity in early Christian literature, such as cases of
possession, affliction of humans and exorcism of evil spirits, perhaps denotes that a
shift in the Jewish perception of the demonic has occurred in the era leading up to the
first century A.D. The understanding found in the Jewish Scriptures (both Hebrew
and Greek traditions) of demonic affliction does not include autonomous or semi-
autonomous evil spirits that are able to afflict humanity whenever they desire95. As
already mentioned, the limited exposition of evil spirits in these traditions depicts
them operating under the authority of God to test the faith of his people.
In the Western world these confrontations of Jesus with demons in the synoptic
Gospels pose interpretive problems for many readers of these texts 96 . Since the
94
G. GILBERT, Demonology in the New Testament; S. JOUBERT, When the Dead Are Alive! See also
C. YEBOAH, Demon, 338.
95
However, Job is afflicted as a result of a kind of «wager» between God and Satan, by which
Satan received God’s permission first to take everything away from Job, and then to afflict him with
illness: «Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life», Jb 2:6. Cf. section 1.4 above.
96
The methodology of interpreting the synoptic Gospels, and Mark in particular, has also been the
subject of debate. Some scholars are attempting to refine the technique of redaction criticism as it
may be applied to Mark, and in this respect we might mention two other methods that are being
61
ancient world views things differently from those of today, 97 scholars of ancient
Christianity and theologians frequently look for ways to read the texts about Jesus’
encounters with malevolent forces in order to make it easier for contemporary readers
to come to terms with them. As to be expected, such readings have gone in several
directions, with religious communities as well as scholars sometimes adopting more
than one line of interpretation at the same time. Before offering a perspective that is
commonly overlooked, we note some of these more widely held interpretations.
First, readers understand Jesus’ demonic encounters as stories written to depict
him as one engaged in activity subversive to political oppression. For this, the Roman
domination of Judea-Palestine during the first century B.C. serves as the obvious
backdrop. Thus, for example, the successful exorcism of «Legion» from the Gerasene
demoniac (cf. Mk 5:1-20)98 is made to reflect the conviction that in Jesus’ ministry

used in recent study of Mark. The first is sociological analysis, exhibited in Howard Clark Kee’s
Community of the New Age. Kee analyses Mark’s community, suggesting that it was moulded by an
apocalyptic perspective and that Mark was seeking to redefine and encourage the community in
light of God’s purposes in history. Another direction is determined by the recent interest in the
application of modern literary techniques to the Gospels. These studies focus on the way in which
Mark, as a narrative, is put together and how it may be understood by the contemporary reader.
Mark’s significance is then often seen to lie not in what he actually says but in the deeper structures
created by his ‘narrative world’. Older questions and methods continue to crop up in the recent
literature as well. Notable in this respect is the series of articles by Martin Hengel, which show that
Mark must be taken seriously as a historian of early Christianity and that his obvious theological
interests do not force us to abandon his material as historically worthless. See: E. PRYKE,
Redactional Style in the Marcan Gospel; C. CLIFTON BLACK, The Disciples According to Mark; H.
KEE, Community of the New Age; E.S. MALBON, Narrative Space and Mythic Meaning in Mark; B.
MACK, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins; M. TOLBERT, Sowing the Gospel.
97
Many have felt it necessary to explain how Jesus could have expelled demons, almost as if it was
an embarrassing aspect of his activity. A frequent (ethic) response to Jesus’ exorcisms assumes that
one is obliged to find or retain something normative that does not rest on the exorcisms as such:
since people today (i.e. in the West) do not believe in the existence of demons, we are to regard
Jesus’ activity as an exorcist as an accommodation to beliefs at the time, an accommodation that no
longer needs to be made. So e.g. E. LANGTON, Essentials of Demonology, 147-183, 219-225; S.
BLANCH, Encounters with Jesus, 56-66.
98
See. J. MICALLEF, Marco 5:1-20: Gesù il più forte che signoreggia sul male. Un percorso
esegetico. Scholars treat this passage with greater depth than other exorcism passages. Perhaps this
is because the gospel writers provide a fuller account of the Gerasene demoniac than the other
demoniacs. Perhaps this is because of the remarkable results of the exorcism; namely the response
of the pigs and later the town’s people. However, the net result of the commentaries is not markedly
different from those of Mark 1:21-28. In an attempt to find useful this passage, Western
theologians have searched for metaphorical meanings in the details of the account. The destructive
behaviour of the demoniac becomes the result of sin. The need of the demoniac to be freed from the
possessing demons becomes every man’s need to be freed from the bondage of sin. The plea of
Legion for Jesus to leave him becomes every man's aversion to change. The story is no longer about
a man possessed of a demon but about every man’s struggle with sin and the weaknesses of human
nature. Even scholars who give credence to the existence of demons and take the passage largely at
face value make metaphorical applications. R. Guelich, who supports the idea that the demoniac
was in fact possessed by a legion of demons concludes, «one can hardly miss the repeated emphasis
on the uncleanness of impurity found in the original story...The story of the deliverance of a man
62
God’s rule manifests itself more strongly than the military might of Rome; in Jesus
God’s power is already at work in the present and, as such, marks a visible form of
protest against oppressive socio-political realities99.
Second and closely related to the previous point, the defeat of demonic beings
in the ministry of Jesus is interpreted as having been a way for the Gospels to say
something about the significance of Jesus himself. By ridding people of evil or
unclean spirits, Jesus acts as God’s representative who manifests the reality of
Israel’s eschatological hopes and a new exodus from slavery into freedom. Exorcisms
performed by Jesus thus signify a grander narrative. The deliverance of God’s people
from slavery under demonic power illustrates the restorative power of God who longs
for Israel to rise up and become the covenant faithful people they were called to be100.
Third, Jesus’ exorcisms underscore his activity in a Jewish context, as a Jew.
Because he engaged in the expulsion of demonic beings, Jesus can be compared with
a number of Jewish miracle-workers purportedly based in Galilee. Such a comparison
underscores Jesus to have simply been doing the kind of thing that a Galilean
«charismatic» ḥasid would have done101.
Fourth, There are those interpreters whose comparisons of Jesus’ activities
stand in sharp contrast with those of contemporary healers and exorcists. They stress
features that make Jesus’ ministry distinct and without parallel in his contemporary
world, whether these comparisons draw with sources from the Ancient Near East,
with non-Jewish and non-Christian pagan sources, or with Second Temple Jewish
literature 102 . As such, their focus is on the character of Jesus’ exorcisms as
miraculous and to be read alongside the stories of his healing and nature miracles.

becomes the story of the deliverance of a land». L. Hurtado, who likewise accepts the presence of
demons draws a similar conclusion, comments: «All of this is a powerful picture of how the N.T.
describes the condition of humans apart from Christ: spiritually dead and in bondage to evil», L.
HURTADO, Mark, 83. Also R. GUELICH, Mark 1-8:26, 283.
99
This view is argued by S. EITREM, Some Notes on the Demonology in the New Testament;R.
HORSLEY, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence, 184-190; C. MYERS, Binding the Strong Man, 191-194;
H. WAETJEN, A Reordering of Power, 313-318.
100
Cf. N. WRIGHT, Jesus and the Victory of God, 193-197, 226-229. Referring to Jesus’ legion in
Luke 11:20; Mat 12:28 («If by the finger of God I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has
come upon you»), Wright concludes that Jesus’ exorcisms are clear signs that the God of Israel is
beginning to defeat the enemy that has «held Israel captive».
101
So variously G. VERMES, Jesus the Jew, 58-82; M. BORG, A New Vision, 30-32; B. EHRMAN,
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium; ID., Jesus the Magician; J. CROSSAN, The
Historical Jesus, 142-158, takes up a position that ends up mediating between the views of Vermes
and Smith, arguing that traditions about the originally «magical» Ḥoni and Ḥanina were eventually
domesticated when we meet them in early literature that mentions them (e.g. m. Ta‘an. 3:8 and t.
Ta‘an. 2:13 which is chronicle called also the Scroll of fasting, enumerating 35 eventful days on
which the Jewish nation either performed glorious deeds or witnessed joyful events).
102
See G.H. TWELFTREE, Jesus the Exorcist, 157-174, who states that Jesus is different in the
connection he established between his own expulsion of demons and the dawning rule of God; ID.,
In the Name of Jesus; See further H. STEGEMANN, The Library of Qumran, 237-238; E. EVE, The
Jewish Context of Jesus’ Miracles, 231; T. SÖDING, Wennichmitdem Finger Gottes die
Dämonenaustreibe. (Luke 11,20), 519-549.
63
 Fifth, exorcisms, insofar as they have individuals in view, are concerned with
the re-integration of people who, for any number of reasons, find themselves
excluded from socio-religious institutions of their society. Jesus’ exorcisms have to
do with those who on account of illness or some condition were marginalized,
dispossessed and ritually «unclean». They signify the hope that Jesus brings for their
full inclusion within the worshiping community, doing so despite the criticisms he
would incur from his contemporaries103.
Sixth, exorcisms are sometimes comprehended as stories about the salvation of
people who are, on a profound level, delivered from evil and its effects. This
soteriological interpretation is bound up with an understanding of Jesus as the
essential conduit to salvation. His ministry makes transparent the dawning of God’s
rule (i.e. as an eschatological, salvific event) within the confines of the present world
order104.
One may argue that good reasons have been put forward for any one of the
interpretations outlined above, though some of them take more literally than others
the accounts of Jesus’ encounters with demons. However, these readings seem to lose
some of their force to the extent that they do not view Jesus’ exorcisms as
straightforward, but principally they see them as illustrating something else. Thus
these accounts variously take the exorcisms as communicating something about the
significance of Jesus on a grander scale, to symbolize religious salvation, or perhaps
they mirror socio-political and religious circumstances of conflict surrounding Jesus,
his disciples, and his followers among the early post-Easter communities of faith.
However there is another side of the coin. Exorcisms can be seen based on what they
present themselves to be, that is, encounters by Jesus and others with demonic forces
at work in human beings. It is precisely here in this unedited, prima facie
interpretation that the interpretations shaped by modernist sensibilities frequently
balk, but it is here also that fundamental insights may be recovered. For the ancient
readers of the Gospels the symbolic power of stories about the defeat of evil and
demonic forces (see interpretations 1, 2, 5 and 6 above) could be more clearly
perceived if, in the first instance, they were understood as extensions of more basic
issues such as the power and nature of evil itself, and its harmful effects on human
beings created in God’s image. Another basic issue, largely unexplored, includes the
temporal and cosmological framework within which encounters with evil occur.
One reason why Jesus’ exorcisms have been held as problematic within
religious circles has to do with the following question: can or should exorcisms be
performed today and, if so, what can be learned for this purpose from the New
Testament Gospels? This question is controversial precisely because it either looks
for or tries to avoid something normative within the particular worldview of the
Gospel writers. A negative answer to the above question has opened the way for

103
S.J. PATTERSON, The God of Jesus, 69-73; B.D. EHRMAN, Jesus Apocalyptic Prophet, 187-188;
T.E. KLUTZ, The Grammar of Exorcism, 156-165.
104
So the emphasis of B. NOACK, Satanás und Sotería: Untersuchungen zur neutestament lichen
Dämonologie.
64
interpreters to adopt some of the reading strategies outlined above. But a positive
answer, which holds that exorcism may be a valid religious praxis, places the burden
of authenticity for exorcism on diagnostic discernment. Such diagnosis is made to
stand in tension with approaches to various illnesses and disorders in the medical
professions105. For all their problems, perhaps both of these positions have something
to learn from the other, so that a practical synthesis can be found.

2.3 The Gospel traditions.

What fundamental perspective on demonic power, on the human being, and on

Jesus’ challenge to malevolent forces do the exorcism passages of the Gospels
convey? What understanding of the world and God’s activity within the world can be
inferred? In order to be able to answer these questions we have to regard the Gospel
traditions themselves as indispensable, and at least, hypothetically true.
Jesus interprets his exorcisms as a manifestation of the kingdom of God. In
continuity with Second-Temple Jewish expectation, he sees the time of Israel's
eschatological expectation as a time of freedom from evil spirits and Satan who rules
over them 106 . The Messianic expectation in the Old Testament was that the
eschatological Davidic king would reign over Israel and the nations (Ps 2:8; 72:8) and
he would establish an unbreakable kingdom of everlasting righteousness (Is 9:6-7;
42:1-4; Dn 2:44; 7:14), but nothing is said directly of the Messiah’s subjugation of
evil spirits and his assault on Satan's kingdom (which the Qumran sectarians called
the «dominion of Belial») 107 . As indicated, in one Essene text, it is the angel or
messenger Melchizedek who, as a messianic figure, will eschatologically judge and
punish Belial and the spirits of his lot 108 . Similarly, in the pseudepigraphical
Testament of Levi chapter 18, the eschatological priest is given authority over Belial
and the evil spirits under his authority. It should be noted that Jesus’ success as an
exorcist caused the people to wonder whether he might be the Messiah, the «son of
David» (Mt 12:23). This is not surprising given the expectation that the eschaton
would see the removal of Satan, «the unclean spirit», and spirits under his control
105
See for example the very different approaches in D. BASHAM, Deliver us from Evil; F. MACNUTT,
Deliverance from Evil Spirit; For a thorough exegetical treatment see J.C. THOMAS, The Devil,
Disease and Deliverance.
106
E. BOURGUIGNON, Possession; M. DOUGLAS, Natural Symbols; C. ROTHENBERG, Spirits of
Palestine; G.N. STANTON, Jesus and Gospel; A. WITMER, Jesus, The Galilean Exorcist.
107
If we take Is 14:12-15, and Ez 28:17-19 as literal descriptions of the tradition of the devil’s
humiliation and utter destruction, they only indirectly point to the falling of his kingdom, in so far
as his fall is reflected in the fall of kings of Babylon and Tyre, respectively.
108
Sectarian writings of the Qumran 11 Q Melch 2.11-14. For the Messiah depicted as an angel,
see Malachi 3:1, the «messenger» (‫ מלאכ‬i.e. angel) who will fulfil the messianic hopes of Israel:
«Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you
seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight,
behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts». This messianic figure will purify the priesthood, v.
2-4; cf. Mal 1:11, and usher in the day of God’s final judgment, v. 5.
65
from Israel and the world generally (Zec 13:2). Some Jews drew the conclusion that it
is the Davidic Messiah who, in bringing God’s kingdom of justice on earth, would
bring an end to the kingdom of Satan, even though not every Jew shared this view.

3. EXORCISTIC ACTIVITY IN THE GOSPELS: THE POSITION OF ERIC

SORENSEN.

A full study of all the terms associated with exorcism in the New Testament,
including their usage in the ancient Near Eastern, Jewish, and Greco-Roman contexts,
would be the comprehensive way to approach a study of exorcism in general, but that
approach is beyond the limits of this study and unnecessary for the more limited
aspect of exorcism being addressed here. There are many New Testament passages
that mention exorcisms but few have the biographical information that gives a sense
of the role that demons played in the life of the people who were being exorcized109.
The passages that do give some biographical information, including significant
figures who received exorcism, such as «Mary Magdalene, from whom [Jesus] had
cast out seven demons» (Mk 16:9; cf. Lk 8:2), should be studied to determine
whether exorcism in the New Testament applied to cases of ethical possession (i.e.
demonic infiltration as a result of sin).
At first glance it may seem difficult to find a comprehensive framework around
possession and exorcism in the literature of the ancient Church110. It may also seem
as if possession and disease are regarded as belonging to the same category, and that
the border between them may by blurred. However there seems to be a relatively
clear distinction in the New Testament between the stories where Jesus heals diseases
109
Eric Sorensen in his book Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament, 122, estimates forty-
eight cases. Sorensen cites F.J. DOLGER, Der Exorzismus im altchristlichen Taufritual, 12-13, 127.
110
Though the Catholic Encyclopaedia of 1910 defends the origins: «The practice of exorcism was
not confined to clerics in the early ages, as is clear from Tertullian (Apology 23; cf. On Idolatry 11)
and Origen (Against Celsus, VII.4). The latter expressly states that even the simplest and rudest of
the faithful sometimes cast out demons, by a mere prayer or adjuration, Mk 15:17, and urges the
fact as a proof of the power of Christ’s grace, and the inability of demons to resist it... the order of
exorcists...the Western Church... were instituted shortly before the middle of the third century. Pope
Cornelius (251-253) mentions in his letter to Fabius that there were then in the Roman Church
forty-two acolytes, and fifty-two exorcists, readers, and door-keepers (Eusebius, Church History
VI.43), and the institution of these orders, and the organization of their functions, seems to have
been the work of Cornelius’s predecessor, Pope Fabian (236-251). The fourth Council of Carthage
(398), in its seventh canon, prescribes the rite of ordination for exorcist; the bishop is to give him
the book containing the formulae of exorcism, saying, ‘Receive, and commit to memory, and
possess the power of imposing hands on energumens, whether baptized or catechumens’; and the
same rite has been retained, without change, in the Roman Pontifical down to the present day».
When explaining why exorcism is not as common as it once was, «Infant baptism has become the
rule...with the spread of Christianity and the disappearance of paganism, demonic power has been
curtailed... It is only Catholic missionaries labouring in pagan lands, where Christianity is not yet
dominant, who are likely to meet with fairly frequent cases of possession».[See: on line edition,
access: 04.10.2014], http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05711a.htm.
66
and the stories where Jesus expels demons 111 . This position is comprehensively
defended by Eric Sorensen in his book Possession and Exorcism in the New
Testament and Early Christianity where he extensively debates this issue112. Sorensen
states that the identification between the ministry of healing and that of exorcism in
the New Testament is dubious. The confusion arises because exorcism and healing
ministries in the New Testament are often paired, thus making it difficult to
understand the relationship between them. This difficulty is compounded by the fact
that John does not mention exorcism of evil spirits in his accounts of healings113.

111
In the synoptic gospels, those in need of exorcism are said to «have» ἔχειν «demon(s)»,
«δαίμων»; «δαιμόνια» or an «unclean spirit» πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον Mk 7:25; 9:17; Lk 8:27;13:11). Lk
4:33 speaks of «having a spirit of an unclean demon». In Lk 6:18, one finds the phrase «those
troubled from unclean spirits» οἱ ἐνοχλούμενοι ἀπὸ πνευμάτων ἀκαθάρτων. In addition, it is said
that a person is «demonized» δαιμονιζεσθαι Mk 1:32; Mt 8:16; Mt 4:24; 8:28; 12:22; 15:22; or is
«in an unclean spirit» ἐν πνεύματι ἀκαθάρτῳ Mk 1:23; 5:2. «The act of exorcism itself is most
frequently referred to as driving out» (ἐκβάλλειν) Mk 1:34; Mt 8:16; Mk 1:39;6:13;16:9; Mt 9:33-
34; Lk 1:14. Sometimes exorcism is called healing: ἰατρεύω, θεραπεύω, Mt 15:28; Lk 6:18; 8:2;
13:14.
112
See E. SORENSEN, Possession and Exorcism, 124-135. Eric Sorensen examines how religious
tradition is maintained when in conflict with social convention. The author is specifically interested
in how Christianity overcame stigmas of magic and superstition in its practice of exorcism as it
extended into Greek and Roman areas of Christian mission. Using an historical-critical approach, he
argues for three principal factors at work in confirming the exorcist’s place in religious society:
cultural adaptation (Near Eastern influences on Greek and Roman thought and practice), a tradition
of exorcism founded upon authoritative scriptural example, and innovative theological
interpretations applied to that tradition. Eric Sorensen proposes that the exorcist’s role was adapted
in part by Christianity’s interpretation of demonic possession relative to the concept of divine
possession long familiar to Greco-Roman sensibilities. Early Christians found a suitable metaphor
to express this correlation in the doctrine of the Two Ways, which itself had literary antecedents
both in Greek literature and in Christianity’s own scriptural tradition. Sorensen, concludes that the
application of exorcism to ethical possession is not found in the New Testament, but rather was a
development of the early church due, in part, to changes in the church’s setting as it spread out into
the Greco–Roman world. He summarizes his conclusion about the New Testament understanding of
possession and exorcism saying, «Although the New Testament juxtaposes divine and demonic
possession in ethical contexts, neither Paul nor any other New Testament author connects exorcism
with the ethical purification achieved through one’s renunciation of demonic forces», E. SORENSEN,
Possession and Exorcism, 167.
113
John’s gospel is unique in many respects, one of which being that John is very selective about
the material that he includes in his narrative. He symbolically mentions six or possibly seven of
Jesus’ miracles, or what he calls «signs» while in the synoptic Gospels we find mention of countless
miracles and exorcisms. However the concept of demonic possession is not alien to John. During
his preaching Jesus is often accused of «having a demon», Jn 7:20; 8:48; 10:20, ironically perhaps
to this same audience Jesus returns the favour, telling them: «You are of your father the devil», Jn
8:44. The liberation of the world will come from Jesus death: «Now is the judgment of this world;
now will the ruler of this world be cast out» Jn 12:31; for «ruler of this world» see also Jn 14:30;
16:11. The victim here is not just a crazy demoniac, but the whole world that is under the
possession of Satan, its «ruler». In John the sacrificial death of the Son of God is the definitive blow
to the kingdom of Satan on earth, his judgement, and expulsion from it−with connection to the final
judgement. To speak of this macro-exorcism John uses the same term that is used over thirty times
67
Dennis Hamm summarizes this situation well: «On the one hand, such passages make
it difficult to appreciate deliverance/exorcism as a distinct ministry [from healing]; on
the other hand, some of the passages tempt one to think that all healing is a kind of
deliverance»114. Sometimes, however, there are symptoms of demon possession that
seem impossible to reconcile with illness which would require healing. For example,
often a demon speaking through a person conveys knowledge Jesus’ secret messianic
identity as the «holy one of God» 115 (see Mk 1:23-24; 5:7; Mt 8:29; Lk 8:28).
Assuming that there is a distinction between healing and exorcism 116, the general
correlation between healing and exorcism is prevalent (e.g. Mt 4:24; 15:28; 17:17f;
Lk 6:18; 8:2; 9:42; Acts 5:16). According to Eric Sorensen exorcism was performed
only on those with physiological or psychological problems as a result of demonic
possession and not to those with ethical problems as a result of demonic possession
or influence. It was believed that the effect of demons was medical, and thus
possession manifested itself «as physiological ailments or as self-destructive and
isolating behaviours that often appear as the subjects of medical treatment in the
Greco-Roman world»117. Many demoniacs are not represented as sinners in need of
repentance, so much as victims in need of healing because in the world of the New
Testament demon possession is ostensibly a medical issue (though the Judaism in
Jesus’ day generally viewed medical problems as a result of sin, see Jn 9:2-3). That

to describe exorcisms in the synoptic Gospels, (ἐκβάλλω) «cast out». The casting out of Satan is
declared on the cross where Christ announces his victory saying, «It is finished», Jn 19:30.
114
D. HAMM, The Ministry of Deliverance and the Biblical Data, 56. For the below discussion, I am
indebted to the conversations I had with Dennis Hamm through our personal communications.
According to Hamm the word ‘exorcism’ connotes a church-approved ritual and thus it should be
carefully used when related to Jesus’ and the apostles’ healing and deliverance ministry. Regarding
the relationship between healing and deliverance from evil spirits in the New Testament, it seems to
me that the Palestinian culture ascribed to the power of evil spirits to many more maladies that we
would in our medical culture today. But we do know from experience in our own day that some
kinds of human suffering that do not yield to medical and psychiatric therapy have been mitigated
or healed in the context of prayer for deliverance and formal exorcism. Regarding the Gospel of
John, as stated in the previous note, John presents healings but no individual exorcisms. However
the expulsion of «the ruler of his world» Jn 12:31 (understood as Satan) is achieved as Jesus
describes the culmination of his whole life, death and resurrection as a kind of «macro-exorcism».
This sounds like a way of simply proclaiming that Christ’s death and resurrection is a definitive
victory over the power of evil, but does not give us a clarification about the relationship between
physical healing and demonic deliverance.
115
The implication in these outbursts is not only indicative of illness but of knowledge into Jesus’
messianic identity «What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are – Holy One of God», Mk 1:24. The demoniacs have a knowledge that would be
impossible to explain if they suffered from a mere illness.
116
A distinction that is perhaps more noticeable in Mark who, unlike Matthew and Luke, always
distinguishes the two but who sometimes uses the verb for healing in reference to exorcism.
117
E. SORENSEN, Possession and Exorcism, 124. Neither Paul nor any other New Testament author
connects exorcism with the ethical purification achieved through one’s renunciation of demonic
forces.

68
demon possession is a medical issue seems to be a fair description considering the
portrayal of many of the victims themselves, for example:

1. The Gerasene demoniac is clearly suffering from insanity or mental illness of some
sort (Mk 5:1f; Lk 8:26f; Mt 8:28f).
2. Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law from a fever with language that sounds like he is
casting out a demon (Lk 4:39; Mt 8:15-16; cf. also 5:13f with leprosy).
3. A boy suffers from a spirit that makes him mute, and it causes him to roll around
on the ground and foam at the mouth (Mk 9:19 ff; Lk 9:39 ff.; Mt 9:32-33;12:22 ff.).
4. Jesus heals the ‘unclean spirit’ in the man who speaks of Jesus’ identity, but it is
not clear what the demon’s effect was upon the man beyond throwing him down on
the ground (Lk 4:33 ff.).
5. Jesus heals the boy who is suffering from a spirit that inflicts him with
epilepsy (Mt 17:14ff.).
6. Jesus casts out a demon that causes muteness in a man (Lk 11:14).
7. It is unclear what the little daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman was suffering
from, though the mother is extremely concerned and cries out «My daughter is
severely oppressed by a demon» (Mt 15:22 ff., cf. Mk 7:24 ff.).

On the other hand, other cases may seem to come closer to a description of
ethical possession (i.e. as a result of sin); the accusations against Jesus and John the
Baptist appear as such. The crowd accuses Jesus of having «a demon» because Jesus
accuses them of desiring to kill him (Jn 7:20). However, they seem to be accusing
him more of madness than slander. Even if one considers this as an accusation of
ethical possession (compare Mk 3:21-30, where the crowd accuses Jesus of being
«out of his mind» and of having an unclean spirit) these examples do not provide any
instances of exorcism that could be applied to these cases. John’s practice of fasting
from food and drink, and probably his living in the wilderness, explain why he might
have been considered mentally disturbed and was accused of being demon possessed
(Lk 7:33). Again, even if John’s alleged demon possession is understood as a
supposed ethical possession, no exorcism is performed in John. Therefore, these
examples also do not provide support that exorcism was applied to ethical possession.
In addition to these instances of accusation, the parable in Lk 11:24-26 (also Mt
12:43-45) does not refer to an ethical spirit, but rather is referring to a prophecy of the
afflictions the people will endure for their rejection of the Messiah (cf. Lk 11:14-26).
Lastly, there is the incident where the seven sons of Sceva attempt to exorcize a man
with an «evil spirit», but instead, the man who had the evil spirit savagely jumps
upon them, tears off their clothes, and sends them running out of the house naked
(Acts 19:14-16). Now, conceivably this spirit could be called a «spirit of anger»;
however, it seems that this is more like madness than anger because of the almost
beastly nature of the man’s reaction to the name of Jesus. In the rest of the New
Testament, instances of exorcism are surprisingly absent. Exorcism may be in view in
1 Corinthians 12:10 and 2 Corinthians 12:7, but even so, no information is provided

69
that would suggest that these passages support exorcism in cases of ethical
possession118.

In summary, the survey above indicates that exorcism in the New Testament
applies to those who exhibit phenomena associated with psychological or
physiological disorders that are understood to be the result of demon possession.
While exorcism in the New Testament is performed on those who exhibit strange
phenomena often associated with these disorders, none of the examples of exorcism
involve people who exhibit phenomena associated with ethical problems 119. Other
means, primarily baptism, are instead applied to ethical possession, which is
something all Christians are subject to before they are baptized into Christ. Because
baptism and exorcism are distinguished in this way, this recent application of
exorcism informally conflates exorcism with baptism by applying exorcism to ethical
possession. This is a misapplication of the New Testament practice of exorcism,
similar to the application of some Jewish exorcists in the inter-testamental period, as
well as those in the early Church who formally conflated baptism and exorcism.

3.1 The synoptic Gospels.

118
H. WADDELL, Becoming Friends, 22.
119
According to Sorensen these two kinds of possession arise from a survey of the New Testament,
but that exorcism is not applied to the ethical kind of possession. Because the New Testament idea
of possession relates to both ethical and physiological/psychological problems, one can see how
natural it would be to assume that exorcism is applied to both, especially when one adds the
corollary idea found in ethical contexts of being filled, or ‘possessed’, by the Holy Spirit. According
to Sorensen, a plausible shift was occurring in Mesopotamia around the first century. In particular,
many began to view demonic activity not only as an external activity upon people, but also as an
inward activity within people (this shift is also evident in a comparison of the Old Testament with
the New Testament with respect to demonic activity). Sorensen thinks that Zoroastrianism, was a
likely forerunner to this shift, which he supposes was motivated by its ethical dualism, in which the
human being makes a conscious decision to side with what is wise and good, or with what is
deceitful and evil. Likewise, some sources from inter-testamental Judaism thought that the demonic
world, through indwelling possession, both influences the human ability to make ethical decisions
and adversely affects human physiology. So, he concludes that the New Testament had been greatly
influenced by this shift, even saying that the New Testament writings presuppose the Jewish
demonology of the inter-testamental period. However, in one significant way as related to exorcism,
the New Testament did not follow the practice of some Jewish exorcists in the inter-testamental
period, namely, as Sorensen concludes, «in the New Testament, it is as indwelling possessors who
adversely affect human physiology that they are subject to exorcism, not as possessors who affect
human ethical decisions». See E. SORENSEN, Possession and Exorcism, 160. See also H.A. KELLY,
The Devil, Demonology and Witchcraft, 102. The practice of exorcism in the New Testament
followed the trend by internalizing demonic possession in ways that the Old Testament did not. It
must be shown that though some exorcists took this shift to the point of applying their practice to
ethical problems, the New Testament apparently did not apply exorcism to ethical problems, but
only to physiological/psychological disorders that resulted from demonic possession.
70
 Exorcism is a major theme of the Christian Scriptures. References in the
synoptic Gospels for the practice of exorcism are not wanting120. The presentation of
activity that expels demons is preserved among each of the main literary sources in
and behind the synoptic Gospels; here is a summary of its distribution121:

 tradition in Mark alone – 2 times

Mk 3:13-15 (omitted in par. Lk 6:12-13) – Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples
Mk 6:13 (omitted in par. Lk 9:6) – summary of the disciples’ deeds
 tradition shared by Mark and Matthew – once
Mk 7:24-30 par. Mt 15:21-28 – the Syro-Phoenician woman
 tradition shared by Mark and Luke – 3 times
Mk 1:23-28 par. Lk 4:33-37 – exorcism of a man in the synagogue
Mk 3:11-12 par. Lk 6:18 – summary of Jesus’ deeds at the sea
Mk 9:38-41 par. Lk 9:49-50 – the «strange» exorcist
 tradition shared by Mark with Matthew and Luke – 5 times
Mk 1:32-34 pars. Mt 8:16-17 and Lk 4:40-41 – summary of Jesus’ activity
Mk 3:22-27, pars. Mt 12:24-30 and Lk 11:15-23 accusation of Jesus’ collusion with
Beelzebul (perhaps an overlap of Mark and «Q»)
Mk 5:1-20 pars. Mt 8:28-34 and Lk 8:26-39 – exorcism of the Gadarene man (two
men in Mt.)
Mk 6:7 pars. Mt 10:1 and Lk 9:1 – Jesus’ commissioning of his disciples
Mk 9:14-29 pars. Mt 17:14-21 and Lk 9:37-43 – exorcism of a boy
 tradition in Matthew alone – 3 times
Mt 7:21-23 (omitted in pars. in Lk 6:46 and 13:25-27) – saying about inauthentic
followers of Jesus
Mt 9:32-34 – exorcism of a mute man
Mt 10:7-8 (omitted in par. Lk 10:9) – Jesus’ commission of his disciples
 tradition in Luke alone – 4 times
Lk 7:18-23 (omitted in par. Mt 11:2-6) – Jesus’ response to John the Baptist
Lk10:17-20 (cf. Mark’s longer ending, 16:17-18) – the return of the seventy disciples
Lk 13:10-17 – exorcism of a crippled woman in the synagogue
Lk 13:32 – summary of Jesus’ activity
 tradition shared only by Matthew and Luke – 2 times
Mt 12:22-23 par. Lk 11:14 – exorcism of a blind and mute man
Mt 12:43-45 par. Lk 11:24-26 – return of an evil spirit
120
See e.g. Mt 4:24; 7:22; 8:2,3,16,28-33; 10:1,8;12:22,26,43,45; 13:38,41; 14:26; 15:22;1 7:15,18;
Mk 1:23,27,32,34,39; 3:11,15,22,30; 5:2,8,12,15; 6:49;7:25,26,30; 9:17-18,25; 16:17; Lk 4:33,
35,36,41; 5:12; 6:18; 7:21; 8:2,27,29,30,33-38; 9:39,42,49; 11:14,15,20,26; 13:11,16,32; 22:3; & in
John, refs. to demonic possession: Jn 7:20; 8:48,52; 10:20-21; «Satan entered into» Judas 13:27.
121
The categories set forth below do not strictly follow the four source hypothesis, though
omissions of references to exorcisms within parallel passages in some literary relationship are noted.
The presentation below, which does not presume a particular direction in literary dependence, bears
the advantage of reflecting the proclivities of each Gospel while noting where the parallel pericopes
occur.
71
This list is, in the first instance, revealing because it provides evidence for the
multiple attestation of the exorcism traditions in the synoptic Gospels. And such
attestation comes not only in relation to a documentary hypothesis 122 , but also in
relation to identifiable tendencies of the Gospels independent of each other, each of
which alone refers to the tradition at particular points. A look at these passages as a
whole allows us to make several further observations.

First, exorcistic activity in the Gospels is preserved in different forms. Far

more than simply being the subject matter of Jesus’ encounters in narrative form,
Jesus refers to exorcisms in his teachings and sayings. Exorcisms are also included in
more general summaries of Jesus’ or his disciples’ activity.
Second, it is significant that successful exorcisms in the synoptic Gospels are
not attributed to Jesus alone. Not only do Jesus’ disciples perform exorcisms (Mk 6:7,
13-15; Mt 10:1, 7-8; Lk 9:1; 10:17-20), 123 but exorcism is assumed to be a
condonable activity practiced by those who are not among Jesus’ immediate
followers. This is, for instance, the case with the «strange exorcist» in Mk 9:38-41
(par. Lk 9:49-50). To the Pharisees that oppose him, Jesus says, «And if I cast out
demons by Beelzebul by whom do your sons cast them out?» (Mt 12:27 par. Lk
11:19). Jesus question cannot be understood as a mere argumentum ad hominem, but
it only makes sense if his Jewish contemporaries were exorcising demons. Thus Jesus
speaks of exorcism here as a common practice in his society. Indeed the Jewish
religious elite could not deny the marvellous success of Jesus’ exorcisms, but they
ascribed his exorcisms to the power of Beelzebul in order to deny Jesus the glory of
performing them124. Therefore, in the synoptic Gospels Jesus’ encounters with the
demonic world take place within a religious climate in which exorcisms had a certain
legitimacy as an effective way to combat evil. According to the Gospels, Jesus in his
role as exorcist, participated in a worldview in which exorcism makes sense125.
Third, both the multiple attestation of exorcism in the Gospels and their
recognition as an effective practice among non-devotees of Jesus strengthen the
likelihood that these Gospels constitute the preservation of an early exorcistic
122
If one accepts, for example, such categories as the «triple tradition», «Q», «special Matthew»,
«special Luke».
123
See, however, the disciples’ lack of success to exorcise in Mk 9:18 par. Lk 9:40 and Mk 9:28-29
par/ Mt 17:19-20. Presenting the disciples’ inability underscores Jesus’ role as the expert exorcist.
124
Baal-zebul means «lord of the dung» in Aramaic, it was the most filthy term imaginable. Jesus
himself is called this term by his enemies, cf. Mt 10:25. Beelzebul probably originates as a
pejorative deformation of Baal-zebub, «lord of (the) fly», god of Akron, cf. 2 Kgs 2:1. But Jesus is
undaunted; he uses the term of disrespect launched at him as a springboard to reveal his
quintessential teaching about the kingdom of Satan and the unforgivable sin, Mt 12:24-37.
125
Such a worldview fits well also with material outside the Gospels, such as Acts 19:13 ff. where
«itinerant Jewish exorcists» begin using Jesus’ name in their work. Here it is as if exorcism were an
uncontroversial occupation familiar to Jewish society. The author of Acts includes this account in
an off-hand way not to defend or refute the legitimacy of exorcism but simply to illustrate the
power and fame of Jesus’ name.
72
tradition that was circulating at least during the time of Jesus’ ministry.
Contemporaries of Jesus believed that he was, controversially or not, engaging in
open conflict with demonic beings. However, such relevant individual events,
especially exorcism episodes, were shaped by conventional oral and literary forms.
Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt that a reconstruction of Jesus’ life and
ministry would be omitting something essential if it did not include the claim by
Jesus and others that he expelled evil spirits. Furthermore, since each of the Gospel
writers wished to emphasize the unprecedented magnitude and uniqueness of Jesus’
life, teaching and ministry 126 , there is no compelling reason why a post-Easter
community would generate stories that acknowledged the performance of exorcisms
by people other than Jesus and his disciples. Both on the level of their respective
presentations and in the traditions they variously preserve, the synoptic Gospels leave
a portrait of Jesus, who, as a pious Jew of his time, believed he was able to confront
and subdue demonic power127.

3.2 «Demons» as Evil and Unclean Spirits.

Another feature belonging to the early Jesus tradition has to do with the
consistent presentation of «demons» as evil powers128. In the synoptic Gospels the
126
Example Mk 1:22; 1:27b (par. Lk 4:36); 2:12b; 4:41 (pars. Mt 8:27;Lk 8:25); Mt 7:29; 9:33; Lk
5:26. Of these texts, the depiction of Jesus’ superior ability in performing exorcisms occurs in Mk
1:27b (par. Lk 4:36) and Mt 9:33.
127
For a discussion which stresses inter alia the importance of multiple attestation as a criterion, see
W.R. TELFORD, The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, 88-103. The present study is limited to the
synoptic Gospels precisely because the Gospel of John does not preserve any account of an
exorcism performed by Jesus. This does not mean, however, that the Fourth Gospel completely
ignores this aspect of the Jesus tradition; traces of it are, instead, reconfigured to reinforce
characteristic Johannine interests: (a) The language of casting out (ἐκβάλλειν) demonic power is
taken up in John 12:31, according to which Jesus’ crucifixion is the decisive exorcism of Satan
from the world and all history; Christ’s death is «the hour» of the final «judgment» of «the ruler of
this world» (vv 27, 30-31). By this John can underscore the absolute supremacy of Jesus Christ
crucified as the Exorcist of the whole universe, not just several individual demoniacs. (b) The
accusations of «having a demon», which in the synoptic Gospels are linked to the performance of
exorcisms (cf. Mk 3:22-30; Mt 12:24-32; Lk 11:15-23) and also involve John the Baptist (Mt 11:18;
Lk 7:33), are more widespread in John 7:20; 8:48-49, 52; 10:20-21), where they are made to
function as labels in order to exercise social control over the threat from religious opponents. The
motif of «having a demon» is thus reminiscent of, and perhaps grew out of, accusations surrounding
exorcistic activity as attested in the synoptics. For an excellent discussion and overview of the
Johannine tradition, see R.A. PIPER, The Absence of Exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel, 252-278.
128
See M. PSELLOS – M. COLLISSON, Psellus’ Dialogue on the Operation of Daemons. Also R.C.
THOMPSON in his work The devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, I, 28 lucidly writes that there is
scarcely any perceptible difference between δαίμων and δαιμόνιον. In fact this acute critic observes
(Diss. vi. p. 1, § 8) that ∆αιμόνιον (dæmon), occurs frequently in the Gospels, and always in
reference to possessions, real or supposed; but the word διάβολος (devil), is never so applied. The
use of the term δαιμόνιον is constantly indefinite but the term διάβολος is always definite. Thus
when a possession is first named, it is called simply δαίµονιον, or dæmon, or πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, an
unclean spirit; never τὸ δαίµονιον, or τὸ πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον; but when in the progress of the story
73
following designations occur, sometimes as a single term and sometimes in
combination with one or more qualifying adjectives:

(a) «demon» – δαίμων or δαιμόνιον (Mk 1:34 bis, 39;3:15, 22; 6:13; 7:26, 29, 30;
9:38; Mt 7:22;9:33, 3410:8;11:18;12:24 bis, 27, 28;17:13; Lk 4:33, 35, 41;
7:33; 8:2, 27, 30, 33, 35, 38;9:1, 42, 49;10:17;11:14 bis, 15 bis, 18, 19,
20;13:32)
(b) «evil spirit(s)» – πνεῦμα πονηρόν (Lk 7:21;8:2; cf. Acts 19:12, 13, 15, 16)129
(c) «unclean spirit» – ἀκάθαρτον πνεῦμα (Mt 1:23, 26, 27;3:11, 30;5:2, 8, 13; 6:7;
7:25; 9:25; Mt 10:1;12:43 (Q); Lk 4:36; 6:18; 8:29; 11:24 (Q)
(d) «spirit of an unclean demon» – πνεῦμα δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου (Lk 4:33 [cf. Mk
1:23])
(e) «spirit of weakness» - πνεῦμα … ἀσθενείας (Lk 13:11)
(f) «dumb» or «deaf-and-dumb spirit» - πνεῦμα ἄλαλον (Mk 9:17), καὶ κωφὸν
πνεῦμα (Mk 9:25)
(g) «spirit» - πνεῦμα (Mt 8:16; 9:20; Lk 9:31 [cf. Mk 9:17], 38)

With regard to the history of ideas, three aspects of these expressions are noteworthy.
First, on the level of the Gospel narratives, the expressions «demon» and
«unclean spirit» are used interchangeably (cf. Mt 10:1, 8; Mk 3:22,30; Lk 8:27, 29).
Whereas these terms, respectively, flourished independently in socio-cultural and
religious Graeco-Roman and Jewish spheres, they are here brought into a synonymity
which in a Jewish context could be understood as the «demonization of impurity» –
in other words, everything impure was consigned to the province of demons130. While
this development might imply that exorcism functioned as a means of reintegrating
someone deemed «impure» or outside proscribed perimeters of Jewish society, the

mention is again made of the same dæmon, he is styled τὸ δαιμόνιον, the dæmon, namely, that
already spoken of; and in English, as well as Greek, this is the usage in regard to all indefinites.
Further, the plural δαιμόνια occurs frequently, applied to the same order of beings with the singular;
but what sets the difference of signification in the clearest light is that though both words, διάβολος
and δαιμόνιον, occur often in the Septuagint, they are invariably used for translating different
Hebrew words; διάβολος is always in Hebrew (‫ )צַר‬tsar, enemy, or (‫שטָן‬ ָ ); Satan, adversary, words
never translated δαιμόνιον. This latter, on the contrary, is made to express some Hebrew term
signifying idol, Pagan deity, demon, apparition, or what some render satyr (for δαιμόνιον in LXX
see Dt 32:17; Ps 91:6; 96:5;106:37; Ez 13:21;Is 65:3). From this data we conclude that the word
δαίμων as signifying in its abstract sense an intelligence, was occasionally applied from the earliest
times to deities of the very first order, imaginary beings, but afterwards came to be appropriated to
deified men in Greek tradition; and that the heathen (philosophers excepted) believed in no being
identical with or bearing the slightest resemblance to our God.
129
The restricted distribution of the expression within Luke-Acts suggests that it is a Lucanism.
130
S. KLUTZ, The Grammar of Exorcism in the Ancient Mediterranean, 56-165.
74
early Enochic traditions (so 1 En 6-16) make clear that, as far as Jewish belief was
concerned, much more than halakhic impurity is at stake131.
Second, it is well known that the terms δαίμων or δαιμόνιον are, on the whole,
used neutrally to denote intermediary agents capable of carrying out good or ill in
relation to humans among Greek writers during the preceding and subsequent
centuries132. By contrast, in the Gospels – indeed, in the New Testament as a whole –
the term has acquired an irrevocably negative meaning. It suffices to say that the
emphasis on δαιμόνες as evil powers was able to flourish within a Jewish apocalyptic
setting, as has been set forth in a study by A.T. Wright133. We have seen the nefarious
δαιμόνια take on a more amplified role, being mentioned eight times in the
Septuagint whereas the shedim are only mentioned twice in the Tanakh (Dt 32:17; Ps
106:37). The δαιμόνια replace the idols in some key instances, and they are a cause of
disease and disaster in the LXX (e.g. Ps 91:6; 96:5; Is 65:11). However it is important
to note that already in the Hebrew Bible the worship of shedim (‫« שדים‬demons»
NRSV, Dt 32:17f; Ps 106:37f) and the example of Saul’s affliction by an «evil spirit»,
a paradigm of later demonic infiltration into Judah’s royal dynasty, expose demonic
forces as a root cause of insanity and exile for the nation (see section 1.4 above).
Third, one notes in the Gospels the remarkable distribution and frequency of
the designation «unclean spirit». This expression is without parallel in non-Jewish
literature from pre-Christian antiquity. Here, at least as far as the synoptic Gospels
are concerned, we are on Jewish soil with which Jesus and those who spoke and
wrote about him would have been familiar. This language harkens back to Zechariah
13:2, where in an association with idolatry, the «unclean spirit» (‫רּו ַח ַה ֻטמְָאה‬, τὸ
πνεῦμα τὸ ἀκάθαρτον, LXX) describes Judah and Jerusalem in an dangerous state of
131
The account in 1 Enoch explains the story of Gn 6:1-8 where the rebellious angels breed with
women of the earth (and, in Enoch’s account, these angels teaches the women witchcraft), see
section 3.4 below. This illicit fornication of angels with humans provokes nothing less than the
most extreme corruption of humanity in history: God sees that «the wickedness of man was great in
the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually» (Gn 6:5).
God decides to destroy all life by the Flood and start a new humanity through Noah’s family. D.W.
SUTER, Fallen Angel, Fallen Priest, 115-135, for whom this myth of rebellious angels who breed
illegitimate offspring through women functions as a protest against priests who were thought to be
falling prey to reprehensible incursions of Hellenistic culture. See also A. W RIGHT, The Origin of
Evil Spirits, 46-47.
132
To be sure, there are occasional instances in which δαίμων or a related verb denotes inimical
powers as e.g. in Hippocratic school’s criticism of those who think they (δυσμενέες, δαίμονες) lie
behind illnesses such as epileptic seizures («the sacred disease») and related conditions; Plutarch’s
view that the notion of «evil demons» (φαῦλοι, δαίμονες) derives from Heracleon, Plato,
Xenocrates, Chrysippus and Democritus and the vilifying rhetoric used by orators in Athenian law
courts (e.g. Aeschines, In Ctesiphontem 157; Dinarchos, In Demosthenem 91; Isocrates,
Areopagiticus 73). However as much as daimones could be regarded as harmful to humans, their
malevolence was not addressed by means of exorcistic practices in Greek and Roman culture. On
their essential neutrality in early folk traditions, Homeric and post-Homeric literature, the
philosophical literature (esp. Plato), Neopythagorean thought, Philo, Plutarch, Lucian, Apuleius and
Philostratus (on Apollonius of Tyana). See E. SORENSEN, Possession and Exorcism, 75-117.
133
A. WRIGHT, The Origin of Evil Spirit, 46-47.
75
religious unfaithfulness, which, the prophecy foretells, will be cleansed in the times
of Messiah134:
«On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness... I will cut
off the names of the idols... I will remove from the land the prophets and the
spirit of uncleanness» (Zec 13:1-2).

For Jews of the first century who awaited the reign of Messiah king, the removal of
the spirit of uncleanness would have implications for the Jewish Redemption. In other
words Jesus’ exorcisms of unclean spirits are signs from God that the Davidic
Messiah has come to save the nation and restore the kingdom. Jesus is then on solid
theological ground with his Jewish audience when he points out that his exorcisms of
unclean spirits are signs that God’s kingdom has come135.
Other important references, preserved among the Dead Sea materials, bring us
closer to the climate of the Gospels in that the «spirit of uncleanness» pertains to a
state of being from which individuals seek deliverance or relief from these spirits136.
The malevolent spirit renders its victim ritually unclean and thus unable to participate
in the religious life of Israel. However the Gospels themselves offer virtually no
information about what it is that made the exorcized spirits unclean 137; nevertheless,
the impurity of such spirits is taken for granted. As we will see in section 3.4, the
origins of spiritual beings such as unclean spirits can be understood within the larger
context of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their reception of the Enochic traditions.

3.3. Demonic Possession as Entry into the Human Body: the Earlier Traditions.

Despite the diversity of traditions preserved in relation to the exorcisms of

Jesus, his disciples and others in the Gospels, there is an extraordinary uniformity
when it comes to the way the Gospels describe demons in relation to their human
victims. Almost all the texts portray exorcism as a disembodiment of spirits: they are
«cast out» (ἐκβάλλειν) of the victims whom they have ‘inhabited’ or possessed138.
The image of exit from within reinforces the ubiquitous notion of evil spirits
«entering» (εἰσέρχεσθαι) 139 into individual human beings or «departing»

134
Zohar in Gen fol. 53. 4. & 73. 1.
135
«If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon
you», (Mt 12:28; par Lk 11:20).
136
cf. 11Q11 xix 15; 4Q444 1 i 8; 1QS iv 22; perhaps also 4Q458 2 i 5.
137
The Gospels give us graphic accounts of the severe harm inflicted by the unclean spirits on their
victims leading up to the exorcisms of the Gerasene demoniac (Mk 5:1-20 and par.) and the
possessed boy (Mk 9:14-29 and par.) though without explanation of how the spirits became impure
to begin with.
138
So in Mk 1:34, 3; 3:15, 22, 23;6:13;9:18, 28; Mt 7:2;8:16, 31;9:33, 34;10:1, 8; 12:24, 26, 27 bis,
28;17:19; Lk 9:40, 49;11:14, 15, 18, 19 bis, 20;13:32.
139
Mk 3:27; 5:12, 13; 9:25; Mt 12:29; Lk 8:30, 32, 33; 22:3.
76
(ἐξέρχεσθαι)140 from them. Underlying this language is the assumption that people
can be victims of demons inhabiting their bodies. There is no reason to think that
Jesus’ understanding of the relationship between demonic powers and human bodies
was any different, however shocking it may be to our modern sensibilities.
Among the Jesus sayings, this understanding of exit and entry is perhaps most
clear in a passage from a tradition shared by Matthew and Luke (Mt 12:43-45 par. Lk
11:24-26) and often referred to as «the return of the spirit». Luke’s account, which
seems to be a slightly less redacted version, reads as follows:

(24) When an unclean spirit departs (ἐξέλθῃ) from a person, it passes through dry
places seeking rest; and when it does not find (it), it says, «I will return to my house
from whence I left».
(25) And it goes and finds it swept and put in order.
(26) Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter
(εἰσελθόντα) and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.

The saying is straightforward, and it simply concludes with a warning, v. 26b,

without an accompanying exhortation or explanation. In its present form, this logion
is referring to exorcism141. Here Jesus is remarkably open about the danger that seems
to follow an exorcism: the «last state» being worst than the first is not presented as a
remote possibility, but rather as what can be expected to happen if, presumably,
further measures are not undertaken. In this scenario, without specifying whether the
exorcist is Jesus or not, the exorcistic activity is ultimately ineffectual and even
counterproductive. For this reason a number of interpreters regard this tradition as
one which neither Jesus’ disciples nor the early church would have been likely to
create; because the thrust of the saying is counter-intuitive to the portrait of Jesus
provided in the Gospels in which his exorcisms would ideally be portrayed as
successful 142 . In tracing this saying back to Jesus it is significant that the case

140
Mk 5:13; 7:29, 30; Mt 12:43 (Q); Lk 8:2, 33; 11:14, 24 (Q).
141
We have no reason to believe that this logion is about anything other than exorcism because in
the context of the discourse of both Luke and Matthew, Jesus is talking about, and defending his
exorcism ministry. See Luke’s text (Lk 11:17 ff.) where it is the Beelzebul controversy of that gives
us the context of the the return of the spirit logion and leads right up to it. Matthew places this
logion (Mt 12:43-45) also in the context of his Beelzebul discourse (Mt 12:25 ff.), though his
discourse slightly longer and spread out than Luke’s. Furthermore the language of this logion, the
verbs for spirits ‘going out’ or ‘entering into’ bodies is the same language that the Gospel writers
use when Jesus commands spirits to «go out» of a person’s body in exorcism (Lk 4:35; Mk
1:25;5:8; 9:25; Mt 17:18, etc. note the verb is used here ἐξέλθῃ (v.24), the 2nd aorist active
subjunctive of ἐξέρχεσθαι, «to go out»).
142
This difficulty is recognized by N.T. Wright who, however, tries to resolve this problem by
arguing that the tradition is less about the possible long-term risks of exorcism than it is a parable
about Israel. He also demythologizes Mt 12:43-45 par. Lk 11:24-26 through the perspective of a
grand narrative shared by the Gospel writers rather than to consider it as a tradition of its own and
that may have circulated independently and alongside other reports of Jesus’ exorcisms.
77
described presupposes that the human body can be the dwelling of a demon, its
«house»143 in v. 24, to which it can return bringing in other spirits with it.
The uniformity of demonic corporeal indwelling in the synoptic Gospels stands
out, given that it is relatively rare in sources that pre-date the New Testament
writings144. Far more widespread in Greco-Roman antiquity is language that depicts
demonic activity more in terms of affliction or attack rather than as literal entry. It
remains possible that writers thought demons could inhabit bodies, while not
choosing to depict demonic affliction in precisely this way. However, it is
conspicuous that the language of corporeal habitation that characterizes the Gospel
traditions is not as widespread as one might be led to assume. The distinction
between ‘entry’ of demonic forces into bodies and their ‘afflicting’ people, is a
semantic problem that must be clarified. Thus, before noting a few analogies in
Jewish sources for demonic possession, there are several texts predating the Gospels
that have sometimes been misleadingly understood as references to ‘possession’ in
the strict sense, these include:

First, in the Book of Tobit, there are the fatal attacks by the «evil demon»
Asmodeus against the seven would-be husbands of Sara, as well as the threat posed to
Tobias (Tob 3:8; 6:8,14-15; 8:2). Here the means undertaken to gain control of the
demon (i.e. the smoking of a fish’s heart and liver) are protective and do not formally
amount to any expulsion from a body.
Second, there is the well-known account in the Aramaic document Genesis
Apocryphon (1Q20 xx 16-29) which relates to the biblical story of Abraham and
Sarah in Egypt (Gn 12:10-20). Although Pharaoh and his household are made to
suffer physical sores from a plaguing spirit, the trouble is described more in terms of
an affliction (as in Gn 12:17) than as possession. In line with this, the evil spirit is not
described as entering the body of Pharaoh and then ‘being expelled’ from his body,
but rather, when Abram lays his hands on Hyrqanosh 145 , the spirit is merely

143
Cf. The metaphorical use of «house» in the Beelzebul discourse of Mk 3:25, 27; Mt 12:25, 29
which seems to correspond to «the kingdom» of «Satan» (Lk 11:18) rather than the «house», i.e. the
body of the demoniac (Lk 11:24). And, in fact, «house» in the sense of «house divided against
itself» has gotten lost in its Lucan redaction at 11:17. This further strengthens Luke’s preservation
of a tradition that ultimately derives from another source.
144
J.P. MEIER in his book A Marginal Jew, 405, overstates the matter when he asserts that «demonic
possession as well as obsession became a frequent theme in the Jewish literature of the
intertestamental period». But the instances that Meier cites as evidence (i.e. Genesis Apocryphon
and 4QPrayer of Nabodinus) relate more to what he calls «obsession» than to «possession» (i.e.
entry of spirits into the victim’s body), and he cites with approval the conclusion of J.M. HULL,
Hellenistic Magic and the synoptic Tradition, 62-63 that despite considerable evidence for exorcism
in the Ancient Near East B.C. actual stories of such encounters remain relatively rare.
145
Although there may be a similarity of method between Abram’s laying on of hands in this
passage and the same by Jesus in Lk 13:13, the significance of a comparison between Jesus’
exorcistic ministry and that of Genesis Apocryphon is minimized by the fact that in the latter the
injurious spirit is acting on behalf of God; see E. EVE, The Jewish Context of Jesus’ Miracles, 180-
181.
78
«banished» or «driven away» (‫אתגער‬, line 29)146 from the vicinity so it can no longer
come near and trouble him from the outside.
Third, another example is seen in the fragmentary Apocryphal Psalms text
from Qumran Cave 11 (11Q11), which includes a version of Psalm 91 in the final
column vi. Here the psalms of this text (one of which is called an
«incantation» 147 11Q11 v 4: ‫ )חשל‬form a collection of short pieces to be sung or
recited for the purpose of warding off demonic attacks. Again, there is no evidence
that the demonic powers in view are being thought to «possess» or «indwell» the
human body148.
The same is true in a fourth document which has come to be called Songs of
the Maskil (4Q510-511; 4Q444); in the text, the Maskil’s proclamation in praise of
the splendour of God’s radiance is intended «to frighten and terrify» malevolent
powers who might strike without warning to lead people astray 149 (4Q510 1.4-6 par.
4Q511 10.1-3; 4Q511 8.4; 35.6-9; 48+49+51 ii 2-3).
Fifth it is the «afflicted» (i.e. not necessarily the «possessed») for whom David
in 11Q5 xxvii 9-10 is said to have composed four songs150.
Sixth, Less clear in distinguishing between affliction and possession is the text
of Jubilees 10:7-14. According to this passage, the angels of the Presence give
instructions to Noah on how, for example, to use herbal remedies to ward-off evil
spirits. The herbs are used to combat the malevolent effects of the remaining evil
spirits (a tenth of their original number) who, following the Great Flood, sought to
afflict mankind in an unspecified way and the language of exorcism is not used151. In
all the above cases we note that the verbs for the spirits entering, indwelling, and/or
exiting the body are absent, thus we cannot establish these cases as demonic
possession in the strict sense.
146
For a similar use of the verb‫גער‬, without any concern for the interiority of evil within humans,
see the Hebrew War Rule at 1QM xiv 10: «You (i.e. God) have driven away from [us] the spirits of
[de]struction».
147
According to 11Q11 v 4-5, this incantation may be «spoken at any time to the heavens» when a
demon «comes to you during the night».
148
The term «afflicted» (‫הפגועים‬, cf. 11Q11 v 2) is frequently, without due reflection, rendered as if
it refers to demonic possession in the strict sense (also in relation to the other occurrences of the
root ‫ פגע‬in 11Q5 xxvii 10; 4Q510 1.6; 4Q511 11.4, 8), and the verb used describe the activity of
dealing with the evil forces is ‫( משביע‬hiph. of ‫שבע‬, which carries the sense of adjuring with force).
149
Though at times casually referring to «exorcism», Bilhah Nitzan has emphasized the apotropaic
nature of 4Q510-511 and designated them broadly as a variety of «anti-demonic songs». See B.
NITZAN, Qumran Prayer and Religious Poetry, 227-272.
150
Within the collections of psalms in 11Q5 as a whole, it is important to note that the twin notions
of exorcism, on the one hand, and possession, on the other, are not necessarily absent by virtue of
not being explicitly mentioned. For language that comes closer to that of exorcism, see e.g. the
petition (or perhaps self-exorcism?) in the prayer for deliverance in 11Q5 xix 15-16, especially if
both parts of the petition are to be read as synonymously parallel: «Do not let Satan rule over me,
nor an unclean spirit; let neither pain nor evil inclination take possession of my bones».
151
In any case, text of Jubilees does not clearly affirm whether the stated herbal remedies deliver
one from the effects of evil spirits in the same way as an exorcism (i.e. insofar as they affect
physical ailments), or if the remedies are simply a prophylactic to ward-off evil spirits, or both.
79
 There are, in any case, only a few extant Jewish sources outside the New
Testament and composed before the end of the first century B.C. which, analogous to
the synoptic Gospels, speak of demonic effects in terms of an inhabitation of demons
within the human body. Perhaps the most well-known instance of an exorcism is the
story of «a certain Eleazar» recounted by Josephus who illustrates the continuing
potency of exorcistic prayers attributed to Solomon (Ant 8.42-49)152. Three further
examples from the Dead Sea Scrolls may likewise offer evidence for the embodiment
of evil power.
The first of these is contained in the so-called Damascus Document, a portion
of which is unattested among the later materials recovered from the geniza
(storeroom) of the Ezra Synagogue in Cairo: 4Q266 = 4QDa 6 i 5-7 (with more
fragmentary parallels in 4Q269 = 4QDd 7; 4Q272 = 4QDg1 i-ii; and 4Q273 = 4QDh 4
ii)153. The text describes with precision a condition located «under the hair» (4Q266 6
i 7 + 272 i 15) attributed to a spirit that has «entered the head or the beard, taking
hold of the blood vessels» (4Q266 6 i 6-7) and has rendered the person «unclean»
(4Q266 6 i 11) 154 . As the text focuses on the priest’s duty to confirm when the
diseased person is cured, no procedure of dealing with the spirit itself (such as
exorcism, prayer or other purification ritual) is described in the text. The cure is
deemed to have taken effect when the priest can observe (1) that there are no further
living hairs beyond the dead ones after seven days (4Q266 6 i 11-12), (2) that the
artery is filled with blood again (line 12), and (3) that the «spirit of life» ascends and
descends in it (line 12). While it seems that the cure is effected by the removal of the
disease-causing spirit, the text implies that the «spirit of life» can either co-exist with
it or replaces it within the person once the malevolent spirit is gone. I find it plausible,
then, to regard this text as an instance of «possession», though perhaps a softer
expression such as «habitation» is preferable.
A second text to note occurs within the Treatise of the Two Spirits preserved
within the Community Rule at 1QS iii 13 – iv 26. At first glance it might not seem
clear that the Treatise refers to ‘possession’. In 1QS iv 9-12 «the spirit of deceit»:
(‫ הרוח עול‬line 9) is thought to underlie a number of vices, and the influence of this
spirit, for those who fall sway to its rule, leads them to an «abundance of afflictions»
(‫ )רוב נגועים‬brought about by «all the angels of destruction» (‫כול מלאכ׳ חבל‬, line 12).
Though the precise relation of this spirit of deceit to human beings is not clear,
towards the end of the Treatise such a notion becomes apparent: at the appointed time
of divine judgment, the deeds of humans will be purified from all wrongdoing, and
God will «finish off every spirit of deceit from the inward parts of his (the human’s)
flesh» (1QS iv 20-21 –‫ )לחתם כול רוח עולה מתחמי בשרו‬and in the following phrase it
152
According to Josephus, Ant. 8.45, Solomon «composed incantations with which illnesses depart
and left behind forms of exorcisms with which those possessed by demons drive them out, never to
return» (ἐπῳδάς τε συνταξάμενος αἷς παρηγορεῖται τὰνοσήματα καὶ τρόπους ἐξορκώσεων
κατέλιπεν, οἷς οἱ ἐνδούμενοι τὰ δαιμόνια ὡς μηκέτ’ ἐπανελθεῖν ἐκδιώκουσι); text and translation by
H.S.J. THACKERAY – R. MARCUS, Josephus V. Jewish Antiquities, 594-595.
153
For the edited text and translation, see J.M. BAUMGARTEN, Qumran Cave 4 XIII, 52-53.
154
See further J.M. BAUMGARTEN, The 4Q Zadokite Fragments on Skin Disease, 153-165.
80
describes this as a cleansing from every wicked deed through the spirit of holiness.
The Treatise thus portrays eschatological judgment in terms of a global exorcism155,
this global exorcism is anthropologically focused − it will take place in the flesh of
the human, so that anything that remains from the spirit of deceit within humanity
will be completely annihilated. The text declares that in the present age, the spirit of
deceit indwells human beings, though it is not alone, for both «the spirits of truth and
deceit contend (against one another) in the hearts of man»:
(1QS iv 23‫ )יריבו רוחי אמת ועול בלבב גבר‬in an attempt to control a person’s actions. The
language of possession does not occur and the habitation of the spirit of deceit is not
exclusive; nonetheless, such a spirit, insofar as it is pitched in conflict with the spirit
of truth, manifests itself within the psychology of the human being as the cause of
reprehensible deeds and attitudes (1QS iv 9-11).
Whereas the last two texts only approximate the idea of possession as we
encounter it in the New Testament Gospels, a third offers the clearest example there
is among the Dead Sea materials. The source in question consists of two small
Aramaic fragments bearing the numerical designation 4Q560 156. The incompletely
preserved text refers to male and female poisonous beings that invade the human
body and its parts: they gain «entry into the flesh» (1 i 3:‫ )עלל בבשרא‬where,
presumably, their activities become the cause of «iniquity and guilt», on the one hand,
and of «fever, chills» and problems in the «heart» on the other:
(1 i 4:‫ )עואן ופשע אשא ועריה ואשת לבב‬157 . Column ii of the fragment (lines 5-6)
preserves the beginning of an adjuration formula in which a malevolent spirit is
directly addressed by an exorcist («I, O spirit, adjure» - ‫ אנה רוח מומה‬and «I adjure
you, O spirit» ‫אומיתכ רוחא‬, respectively) who by such means is to bring the spirit
(along with its effects) under control. To be sure, the text does not explicitly refer to
expulsion; however, one may infer that the formula to be recited by the practitioner
was intended to reverse what occurs when the spirit has invaded the body.
While the last three examples do not provide evidence for practices that
immediately underlie episodes recorded in the Gospels, they do preserve language
that conceives of demonic influence in terms of corporeal invasion or habitation. On
the basis of the texts reviewed thus far, a conclusion is that these texts give a
background which enhances the plausibility of the literal theological anthropology of
possession and exorcism assumed in the synoptic Gospels within a Jewish setting.
From what has been written thus far, from the motifs of the proclamation of
God’s reign vis-à-vis the kingdom of Satan to the belief that daimones are evil and
unclean, and that they affect humans by gaining entry into their bodies – we have
seen all these reflected and vividly presented in the early Jesus tradition. Taken
together, they could reflect what Jesus thought his exorcisms signified, how they
155
Cfr. Jn. 12:31, see footnotes 111, 112, 125 above.
156
For important previous studies, see D.L. PENNEY – M.O. WISE, By the Power of Beelzebub,627-
650; J. NAVEH, Fragments of an Aramaic Magic Book from Qumran, 252-261; K. BEYER, Die
aramäischen Textevom Toten Meer, 168.
157
Following the interpretation of Puech (‘560. 4Q Livret magiquear’, 298) contra Penney and
Wise (By the Power of Beelzebub, 631-632, 640).
81
affect the human body, and what happens when they are dealt with. We are now in a
better position, perhaps, to inquire into the nature of this convergence of ideas. Is, for
example, the link between the kingdom of God and expulsion of demonic powers the
creation of Jesus? While there is no doubt that the Gospel writers attribute to Jesus, at
least in terms of his ministry, a distinctiveness that underscored his own extraordinary
power and the power of exorcizing in his name, we may still ask whether the notion
of successful exorcisms provides evidence that God wants to do something new in his
creation, to bring forth new fruits of restoration, and thus make his healing presence
felt among humans158.

3.4 The Demonic in an Apocalyptic Perspective.

It is at this point, perhaps, we can best recognize the value of early Enochic
traditions for the present discussion – especially the Book of Watchers (1 En 1-36),
the Book of Giants (found at Qumran and related to Enoch), and the Book of Dreams
(1 En 83-90). These texts have gained increasing prominence during the last several
decades for a number of reasons, including what we find here about the introduction
of evil into the world159. In the Enochic traditions evil on earth is increased by the
«watchers». These are angels who rebelled against the intention for which God had
created them and, like the parallel myth of «the sons of God» in Gn 6:2-8, they came
down from heaven and took human wives who bore them children, a race of giants,
or the «Nephilim». First Enoch embellishes the Genesis tradition with a detailed
account of the watchers’ corruption of humanity and the forbidden knowledge they
revealed to their human brides, such as the secrets of astrology, magic, and divination.
In both Genesis and Enoch the watchers influence humanity in ways that were

158
Cf. e.g. Ex. 15:26b, «I am the LORD, your healer» and «who forgives all your iniquity, who
heals all your diseases» Ps 103:3, cf. Hos 6:1. The role of YHWH as healer would be taken up by
the Messiah, cf. Is 35:5, 40:1, 53:5; 61:1, whose coming would be like the dawn of justice and
healing for the nation: «But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with
healing in its wings» Mal 4:2; cf. Lk 1:78. Thus it is the healing aspect of Christ’s ministry that is in
Jesus’ opinion the sign par excellence that Messiah has come, cf. Mt 11:4-5; par. Lk 7:22; 4:18.
159
Since the seminal research in the 1970’s a large number of studies have focused on the
significance of the fallen angels myth within Second Temple Judaism and in relation to the New
Testament. Among the publications we find:
D. DIMANT, The Fallen Angels’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls; M. DELCORLE, Myth de la chute des anges.
3-53; J.T. MILIK, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4; P. SACCHI, Jewish
Apocalyptic and its History; J.C. REEVES, Jewish Lore in Manichaean Cosmogony; M.J. DAVIDSON,
Angels at Qumran, 72-108; J.C. VANDERKAM, «1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early
Christian Literature»; J.C. VANDERKAM–W. ADLER, The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early
Christianity, 33-101; L.T. STUCKENBRUCK, The Book of Giants from Qumran; D.R. JACKSON,
Enochic Judaism: Three Defining Paradigm Exemplars; C. AUFFARTH–L.T. STUCKENBRUCK, The
Fall of the Angels; S. BHAYRO, The Shemihaza and Asael Narrative of 1 Enoch; A.YOSHIKO REED,
Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity; A.T. WRIGHT, The Origin of Evil
Spirits ; G. BOCCACCINI – G. IBBA, Enoch and the Mosaic Torah.
82
fundamentally contrary to God’s purpose for the created order160. In Genesis God is
so saddened by the evil he sees among his beloved creatures that God becomes «sorry
that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart» (Gn 6:6). God
decides that a great flood is the best solution: to wipe away all the filth on earth, and
start a new creation through the salvation of Noah and his family.
The early Enochic traditions draw heavily on this specific interpretation of the
Great Flood, namely, as a decisive act of divine judgment due to the excessive evils
provoked by the fallen angels and their giant offspring. It is significant that we find in
Enoch the same motifs and imagery associated with the deluge being employed to
describe the final judgement161, as envisioned by the Enochic authors as God’s final,
eschatological triumph over evil. The Book of Watchers is perhaps the most
influential form of this tradition which, as a whole, while dating to the third century
B.C. contains traditions that may be even earlier. The earliest extant copy of it,
4Q201162, already combines the once separate strands of tradition in 1 En chapters 6-
11 and 12-16163. The resulting narrative, reading chapters 6-16 as a unit, focuses on
the fallen angels who give bad council to humanity during the antediluvian period (1
Enoch 7:1; 8:3; 9:6-8a; 13:2b), these chapters also recount the violent activities of
their progeny, the giants, who correspond to the «mighty men» or «Nephilim» from
Gn 6:4. In contrast to Genesis 6, which makes no direct mention of the giants’
involvement in the events leading up to the Flood, the giants in the Book of Watchers
are prominent among those being held accountable for the increase of oppression and
suffering on the earth (1 En 7:3-6; 9:1, 9-10). It is in response to the cries of the
human victims of these giants that, through four principal angels, (1 En 8:4-9:3; cf.
7:6) God’s divine judgment is set in motion, ch. 10. The giants are then punished
through both infighting among themselves (1 En 7:5; 10:9, 12)164and, though less
clearly, through the Great Flood (1 En 10:15; Jub.7:21-25)165.

160
Genesis 6:1-8 predates 1 Enoch, but both texts attest that the influence of these spirits provokes
nothing less than the most extreme corruption of humans in history, where in Genesis God laments
that «the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually» (Gn 6:5). Thus God chooses Noah to start a new creation: «God
said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence
through them... For behold, I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which
is the breath of life under heaven. Everything that is on the earth shall die’» (Gn 6:13a,17).
161
Cf. 1 En 10; 83-84; 91:5-10; 93:1-3 and 93:12-15; 106:13-107:1; Book of Giants at 4Q530 2 ii +
6-7 + 8-12, lines 4-20.
162
There is no reason to question Milik’s paleographical dating of this manuscript to «the first half
of the second century B.C.» – see J. MILIK, The Books of Enoch, 140-141. Scribal errors in the
manuscript make it possible to push the date of a Vorlage to at least the latter part of the 3rd century.
163
On this, see the still useful discussion of C. NEWSOM, The Development of 1 Enoch 6-19, 329.
164
See also Jub 5:9; 7:22; and the Book of Giants at 6Q8 1 and 4Q531 7.
165
Within the early Enochic tradition, punishment of the giants through the deluge is clearest in the
Animal Apocalypse at 1 En. 89:5. In service of paradigmatic interests, the Flood soon became the
primary, if not only, means for the giants’ destruction in Second Temple literature from the 2nd
century on. So esp. 4QExhortation Based on the Flood (= 4Q370) i 6; Damascus Document (CD A
ii 19-20); the destruction of «the giants» is mentioned in Sir 16:7; Wis 14:6; Bar 3:26ff.; 3 Bar 4:10.
83
 The emphasis placed on the divine judgment of these giants in the Book of
Watchers and, subsequently, the Book of Giants was not simply based on the violence
and oppressiveness of their deeds. More fundamentally, there was something
inherently mistaken with the very form of their existence, in that, according to the
Shemihazah strand of the narrative, they are the offspring of an illicit sexual union
between angels and women (1 En 6:1-4; 7:1-2; 9:7-8; 10:9, 11; 15:3-7, 12; cf. Book
of Giants at 4Q531 1). In 1 En 15:3-7, the reason for the loathsomeness of this union
is made explicit: God made heaven and earth and separated the two, but the beings
God assigned to two separate spheres in the cosmos, i.e. heaven and earth, had come
together; by definition, then, their offspring, the giants, were an embodiment of the
violation of the created order (15:4, 9-10; cf. Jub 7:21). Since the giants, as the
offspring of such an illegitimate union, were neither fully angel nor fully human, God
calls them «bastards» and «children of fornication» in 1 Enoch 10:9166.
Both the Book of Watchers and the Book of Giants make it clear that God’s
wrath is against the fallen angels and the giants whom, through an act of divine
intervention (the Flood), had to be categorically and decisively held to account167.
Nonetheless, although the giants are not spared, they are not completely annihilated,
but being subject to the divine judgment, they end up surviving in a radically altered
state. God says: «Now the giants... shall be called evil spirits upon the earth» (1 En
15:8-9). How this alternation of existence has occurred none of the preserved textual
witnesses to 1 En 15 tell exactly168, but the transformation is assumed to come by the
power of God’s command, that is, by his creative word. By God’s command their
physical nature was destroyed while their souls «emerged» from their flesh as «evil
spirits» (1 En 15:9-10). From the bodies of these giants many spirits «have
proceeded» (1 En 15:9) and «gone forth» (1 En 16:1). In their disembodied state
these spirits are commanded to «destroy», that is, to engage in the sort of activities
that they had done before the Great Flood. In particular God commands them to
afflict human beings and work destruction on the earth (1 En 15:10-11); they are to
«destroy without incurring judgment» but only until the eschaton, when God’s justice
will finally triumph and liberate humanity from such evil (16:1).
So how influential was this Enochic tradition? It is important to note that
among the Dead Sea materials several references to demonic beings reflect a direct
166
In 1 En 15:3-4 God pronounces to Enoch his judgement on the ‘crime’ of the watchers, «Ye left
the high, holy, and eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters
of men and taken to yourselves wives, and done like the children of earth, and begotten giants (as
your) sons. And though ye were holy, spiritual, living the eternal life, you have defiled yourselves
with the blood of women». For a fuller account of this, see L.T. STUCKENBRUCK, Giant Mythology
and Demonology, 143-151.
167
It is possible that in taking this view, the apocalyptic Enochic writers were responding to the
view, preserved among Pseudo-Eupolemos traditions cited by Eusebius (Eccl. Hist. 9.17.1-9 and
9.18.2), that retold the biblical story to allow for the survival of the deluge by the giants who
became a key link in the transmission and spread of revealed culture between pre- and postdiluvian
times. See further, L.T. STUCKENBRUCK, The Origins of Evil, 118-187.
168
It is possible to reconstruct an aetiology behind the existence of demons based on 15:3-16:3
where the Book of Giants which may have been an elaboration on parts of chapter 10.
84
influence from the Enochic tradition and may even have the giants’ postdiluvian
existence in view. For example, the Songs of the Maskil speak of the «spirits of the
bastards» (‫ רוחות ממזרים‬4Q510 1.5), this bizarre and unforgettable expression is
named within a longer catalogue of malevolent forces; and so we would rightly
compare it to 1 En. 10:9, where the Codex Panopolitanus reads τοὺς μαζηρέους,
«bastards» as a transliteration from Hebrew (‫ )ממזרים‬or Aramaic (‫)ממזריא‬. Another
likely reference to the spirits of the giants is also made in at 4Q511 35.7;
48+49+51.2-3 and at 4Q444 2 i 4 where these spirits are beings who must be brought
under control through the hymns of the Maskil directed to God169. Furthermore, in the
above mentioned Apocryphal Psalms text (section D.3), at 11Q11 v 6, the demon
visiting during the night is, assuming the text restoration is correct, addressed as
«offspring of] Adam and seed of the ho[ly] ones»170. This explanation of the origin of
demons as disembodied spirits emanating from the giant offspring of the fallen angels
continues in later Christian literature, picked up in Testament of Solomon (5:3; 17:1),
the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies (8.12-18: giants designated as «bastards» and
«demons»), Tertullian’s Apology (22), Lactantius’ Institutes (2.15) and
Commodianus’ Instructions (3)171.
So 1 Enoch gives us an interesting picture of the possible origin of evil spirits
of greater and lesser authority, which afflict humans by divine decree. For one thing,
one might ask ‘why are spirits destructive?’, ‘why are they unclean or evil?’ and
‘why do evil spirits hate humans?’ The New Testament itself cannot answer these
questions. But in the light of Enochic tradition we discover a plausible explanation:
the giants were by nature destructive because their birth was against the will of God,
after the flood their spirits are commanded by God to destroy (1 En 16:1), and they
disrupt human life out of jealousy for humanity that has managed to escape the
deluge with both body and soul intact. Also Enoch fits well with the Gospel message
that in the final judgment God has reserved peace, blessing, and mercy for his
righteous elect (1En 1:8), whereas these spirits are all doomed.

169
Armin Lange describes the procedure of this text as a «hymnic exorcism»; cf. Lange, «The
Essene Position on Magic and Divination», 383, 402-403, and 430-433 (bibliography in n. 48), who
applies the same category to 1QapGen xx 12-18; Jub 10:1-14; and 12:16-21. On the problem of
categorising the passage from 1QapGen in this way, see L.T. STUCKENBRUCK, Pleas for Deliverance,
560-562.
170
For the expression «holy ones» as referring to the fallen angels, see also Genesis Apocryphon
(1Q20) ii 1, vi 20 and Book of Watchers at 4Q201 1 i 3.
171
See the overview e.g. in VANDERKAM, 1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian
Literature, 76-79 and A. YOSHIKO REED, The Trickery of the Fallen Angels, 141-171, including a
discussion of texts in which the fallen angels themselves are identified as demons.
85
3.5 Jewish Apocalyptic Perspective and the Gospel Traditions.

Before determining the significance of the Jewish traditions just reviewed with
regard to understanding Jesus’ confrontations with demonic power in human beings,
it is appropriate there to draw several negative conclusions.
First, none of the Enochic traditions contains any of the more technical
messianic language such as «kingdom of God» which in the Gospels is related to
Jesus’ exorcism ministry and plays such a prominent role in Jesus’ proclamation.
Second, the Enochic traditions do not provide any narrative accounts of
exorcisms that may serve as examples to be compared with stories about Jesus’
activity. 1 Enoch is apocalyptic literature, not historical narrative like the Gospels and
the Book of Acts.
Third, unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls, not a single instance among the Gospels,
whether narrative or saying, explicitly identifies a demon as a giant or «bastard
spirit» living in a postdiluvian state of its existence.
However, God’s destruction of the «ancient giants» or «proud giants» in the
Flood is explicitly mentioned in late Jewish extra-canonical literature written just
before New Testament times: Wisdom 14:6; Sirach 16:7; Baruch 3:26-28172. These
references are in keeping with the Dead Sea Scrolls, revealing that the tradition of the
giants was not a religious peculiarity of Qumran, but the story was widely known and
current among mainstream Judaism from Jesus’ day through the time of the New
Testament authors173.

172
The context of the flood as an apocalyptic event is fascinating: cf. Wis 14:6: «And from the
beginning also, when the proud giants [ὑπερηφάνων γιγάντων] perished, the hope of the world
fleeing to a vessel, which was governed by thy hand, left to the world seed of generation» (i.e.
Noah’s family); and Sir 16:7: «The ancient giants [τῶν ἀρχαίων γιγάντων] did not obtain pardon for
their sins, who were destroyed trusting to their own strength». See also Bar 3:26-28. These
references can be compared thematically and linguistically to 2 Pt 2:5 «If [God] did not spare the
ancient world, but preserved Noah... when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly». The
phrase «world of the ungodly» (κόσμῳ ἀσεβῶν) is unique in the N.T. and highly reminiscent of the
Enochic tradition. Firstly, «ungodly» (ἀσεβής) is only used nine times in the N.T., over half the
instances are in 2 Peter and Jude in passages evocative of the judgment spoken of in 1 En 1:9 which
is quoted in Jude 14-15: «It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied,
saying, ‘Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all
and to convict all the ungodly (ἀσεβεῖς) of all their deeds of ungodliness (ἀσεβείας) that they have
ungodly committed (ἠσέβςσαν), and of all the harsh things that ungodly (ἀσεβεῖς) sinners have
spoken against him’» (emphasis mine). So we can see here a strong thematic and linguistic parallel
between late Jewish Wisdom literature (Wis, Sir, Bar), and the N.T. catholic epistles of 2 Peter and
Jude precisely on the same subjects peculiar to 1 Enoch: (1) the Flood as a decisive act of divine
judgment against the «ancient giants» and the «world of the ungodly» (Sir 16:7; 2 Pt 2:5); (2) the
judgment in Noah’s day as a prefiguring of God’s final judgment as a cataclysm where «the
heavens and the earth... will be set on fire an dissolved», bringing about a «new heavens and a new
earth in which righteousness dwells» (2 Pt 3:6-13; cf. 1 En 10:13ff; 72:2; Is 66:16, 22; Rv 21:1).
173
The New Testament Epistle of Jude 14-15 makes a famous quotation of 1 Enoch 1:9 (see
previous note) concerning God’s final judgment. Although 1 Enoch was apparently widely known
during the development of the Jewish canon, due to its midrashic nature (i.e. 1 En 1 is a midrash of
86
 What, then, might the early Enochic traditions and the trajectory of
development they set within the Dead Sea documents contribute to the picture of
Jesus the exorcist? Let us hypothesize for a moment that the Enochic traditions
contributed to the narrative background in which the Gospels were written; in that
case the story of the giants could function in several ways in understanding the
exorcism ministry of Jesus.
First, it could offer one way of explaining why demons were thought to be so
intent on entering the bodies of human beings. Demons entering bodies is a
distinctive feature of demonic possession in the synoptic tradition, as we have shown
(cf. 3.3). In the light of 1 Enoch demonic entry in the Gospels could be understood as
an attempt to recover a form of existence the giants had lost. Entering in human flesh
the spirit would seek to recover its «house» or something reminiscent of its former
body (Mt 12:43-45; par. Lk 11:24-26) and set up a kind of ‘base of operations’ or
‘resident evil’ from which it could «afflict, oppress, destroy» its victim like a parasite,
causing the maladies, violent behaviour, and psychosis seen in the Gospels (1 En
15:11)174.
Second, the story of the giants gives an explanation as to why unclean spirits
would make humans suffer, and what is the source of their rage. The birth of the
«bastard» giants was against the will of God who had separated angels from mankind
for their own good, as Baruch writes «the giants were born... not these did God
choose, nor did he give them the way of understanding» (Bar 3:26-27). So the giants
are by their very nature self-destructive, violent, grotesque, and distorted. Although
they neither fear God nor love him, God found a use for them: after the flood their
disembodied spirits were commanded by God to «destroy without incurring
judgment» until the eschaton (1 En 16:1). «The spirits of the giants afflict, oppress,
destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth… And these spirits shall
rise up against the children of men and against women because they proceeded [from
them]» (1 En 15:11-12, emphasis mine). The giants would be furious that God
rescued Noah’s righteous descendants from the Flood and had not rescued them, and
so their spirits would conceivably delight in afflicting humans out of jealousy and
malice. Just as «the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not
submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot» (Rom 8:7), so the spirits of the giants are
unclean, unruly, and godless, with their mind set on consuming human «flesh». The
giants have nothing but contempt for humanity, reminiscent of Paul’s axiom «for the
mind of the flesh is death» (Rom 8:6). Their goal is thus to reproduce in humanity
their own godlessness, war, and chaos, and eventually to make them taste death, that
is, the separation of soul and body that they experienced under God’s wrath. This
Deut. 33), it was excluded from the Jewish Tanakh and Septuagint canons. See VANDERKAM, 1
Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature, 76-79.
174
For examples of demonic possession provoking violence, destruction, and insanity, see e.g. Mk
9:17-22, Lk 9:38-42; A classic example is the Gerasene demoniac: «And no one could bind him
anymore, not even with a chain... he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces.
No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he
was always crying out and cutting himself with stones» (Mk 5:3-5; par. Mt 8:28-34; Lk 8:26-39).
87
violent, domineering depiction of the giants fits well with the picture of possession in
the Gospels. For example the father of a possessed boy in Mark complains that he has
a spirit seeking «to destroy» the child, ruthlessly casting him into situations of danger
and severe pain (Mk 9:22; par. Lk 9:38). This abuse is comparable to the self-
inflicted misery suffered by the Gerasene demoniac who cuts himself175.
Third, the story of the giants serves to locate the problem of demonic evil
within an apocalyptic/eschatological framework that makes sense; in other words, it
would explain for Jews of first century the origin and the final destiny of the «unclean
spirits» of the Gospels. Although Jesus indicates their destiny is eternal destruction
when he says that damned souls must go to «the eternal fire prepared for the devil
and his angels» (Mt 25:41), the Gospels offer virtually no information about what
made the exorcized spirits unclean, nor why the angels fell, nor why they must be
punished. The Enochic tradition provides a possible background that can address
these questions.
On the one hand, the giants’ punishment (the loss of their bodies) was a
decisive act of God. On the other hand, although the giants were allowed to survive
into the postdiluvian period as disembodied spirits, their altered mode of survival was
that of powers who are conscious of living in an already defeated state. Even the
demonic world knows its obliteration is assured (cf. Rv 12:12). God wiped away evil
from the face of the earth by the water in the Flood and he will do so again by the fire
of «the Day» of judgment (1 Cor 3:13; 2 Pt 2:5-9; 3:6-13). This fire will not only
dissolve the world, but it will separate, according to their works, the wicked who will
fall into ruin from the righteous who will shine with eternal peace and joy in God’s
light176. Accordingly, imagery from the Flood narrative is adapted in 1 En 10 as the
prophecy looks forward to an eschatological judgment when all evil, including evil
spirits, will be destroyed once and for all, «led off to the abyss of fire, to the torment
and the prison in which they shall be confined forever... and destroy all the spirits of
the reprobate and the children of the Watchers, because they have wronged mankind»
(1 En 10:13-16). Thus an interval or «meantime» is established between the Flood
and final judgment; this is the age during which evil spirits originating in the giants
can operate, testing human beings under God’s permission, albeit under restriction,
knowing their time to wreak havoc on humanity is limited (1 En 16:1; Jub 10:7-9).
Interestingly the spirits’ awareness of this judgement is reflected in the Gospels
where we see the evil spirits saying to Jesus such things as: «O Son of God, have you

175
Cf. previous note on the Gerasene demoniac. In Mark the possessed boy’s father expresses his
grief to Jesus: «‘And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth
and becomes rigid... From childhood... it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him.
But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us’» (Mk 9:18, 21-22)
176
Compare 1 En 58:3: «And the righteous shall be in the light of the sun, And the elect in the light
of eternal life» to Jesus’ words on the final judgment at the end of the age in Mt 13:43: «Then the
righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father». Both of these may be references to
the famous resurrection of the dead and final judgment spoken of in Dan 12:2-3 or possibly the
eternal light of Zec 14:7. Although in Dan 12:2-3 the righteous teachers will «shine... like stars
forever», but no mention of the sun is made.
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come to torment us before the time?» (Mt 8:29) and «Ha! What have you to do with
us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?» (Lk 4:34). That the spirits fear
torment and destruction «before the time» makes sense only these spirits were aware
of the coming time when their torment is assured, that is, at the final judgement 177.
This self-awareness of the coming judgment of evil spirits is fascinating because in
the Old Testament canon it is not explicit, and seems totally absent – only in Jewish
apocalyptic literature of the Second Temple period, and in the Christian literature that
continued in that tradition, is this affirmation made explicit.
In many New Testament epistles and in Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels we find
an interesting comparison between the coming day of judgment and the Flood of
Noah; since these two events form the central backbone of the Enochic tradition, we
can infer that the same apocalyptic milieu is at play. Jesus warns (Mt 24:37-39; par
Lk 17:26) «For as were the days of Noah so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware
until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of
Man». The Flood was the sudden manifestation of divine justice; it is the timeless
reminder to man of the importance of choosing between good and evil – salvation for
the just and punishment for the wicked178. The letter of Jude 14-15, in warning of the
coming of God for eschatological judgement, famously quotes from the prologue of 1
Enoch (1:9). This prologue describes the prophecy of Enoch as a word of blessing (1
En 1:1) for God’s faithful remnant in the end times who like righteous Noah will be
saved while the rest of civilization − all evil men and evil spirits − will be destroyed
in a cataclysmic recapitulation of the Deluge.
In this sense the Gospels present us with a world order which, as in Qumran
and Jewish apocalyptic tradition, temporarily falls under «the dominion of
wickedness»179 or, similarly, the «kingdom» of Satan (Mt 12:26 par. Lk 11:17-18).
who claims authority over «all the kingdoms of the world»180. Jewish contemporaries
of Jesus who undertook means to curb the influence of demons could, against such a
background portrayed in 1 Enoch, proceed with a certain measure of confidence
because they believed the God of Israel would have the final victory. The Jesus
tradition does not introduce the notion of an eschatological tension between the
‘already’ and ‘not yet’ as far as the fate of demons are concerned, but his tradition

177
Mk 5:7; Lk 8:28; cf. also Mk 1:24 par., and Jas 2:19: «You believe that God is one; you do well.
Even the demons believe – and shudder!». They shudder presumably because they know their doom
is near; God judgment over them is imminent.
178
Cf. Dt 30:19: «I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life,
that you and your offspring may live» (cf. Sir 15:16-17; Jos 24:15; Pv 1:29). For other references to
Noah and God’s judgment see Heb 11:7; 1 Pt 3:20-21; 2 Pt 2:5; 3:3-7.
179
For «the dominion of wickedness» among the Dead Sea materials, see esp. 4Q510 1.6-7 par.
4Q511 10.3-4.Cf. 1QS i 23-24, ii 19; 1QM xiv 9-10 par. 4QMa = 4Q491 8-10 i 6-7;
4Q177=4QCatenaa iii 8; 4Q390 2 i 4. For a thorough treatment of demonic powers at Qumran as a
whole, see the article written by L.T. STUCKENBRUCK, Demonic Beings and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
180
Lk 4:5-6; par. Mt 4:8-9; cf. Lk 22:31-32; cf. «the ruler of this world» Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11.
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intensifies this tension as the space for the confident practice of exorcism
characterizing Jesus’ ministry.
Fourth, God’s act of delivering humanity in the deluge and punishment of evil
is associated with royal divine authority, that is, the power that a king would exert
over his kingdom. God’s response to evil and his promise to save the righteous
happen following petitions in which the archangels address God inter alia as «King
of kings» (1 En 9:4). Moreover, one of the Book of Giants fragments (4Q203 9) is
understood as a petition appealing to God as king, by «your great rule»:
(‫)מלכות רבותכה‬, in the hope that God intervene and punish the fallen angels and giants,
as he did in the Deluge. Indeed, Enoch’s petition for justice in the Book of Dreams (1
En 84:2-6), which also appeals to God’s kingship, anticipates and is followed by the
punishment of the terrible state of corruption in the world before the Flood181. This
fits well with the Gospel narratives, where the Jewish people who have suffered
Roman occupation and the false messianism of Herod, are anticipating the restoration
of the royal power of the kingdom of David and «waiting for the consolation of
Israel» promised by God (Lk 2:25; cf. Is 40:1).
Fifth, in view of the framework outlined here, one may then well ask: what do
the Gospel stories of exorcisms performed by Jesus and others assume happens to
demonic powers when they have been expelled? Those who understood themselves to
live in a world inhabited by demons would not have thought exorcism is a matter of
extermination or total destruction. Instead, spiritual forces are by these means
relocated. This is the view affirmed in Lk 11:24-26 (par. Mt 12:43-45; cf. section 3.3
above) and is presumed by all the accounts of Jesus’ confrontation with malevolent
spirits. Even the Gadarene demoniac episode provides another case in point, with its
two-stage exorcism that builds on the presumption (articulated by ‘Legion’ in Mk
5:12, «send us into the swine so that we may enter into them») that such a transfer is
what customarily happens. Therefore, despite the story’s attempt to highlight the
distinct authority with which Jesus has commanded the situation, the drowning of two
thousand swine indwelt by the spirits (5:13) does not mark the end of those spirits.
The final act of complete subjugation lies ahead.
Sixth, and following from the last point, the «return of the spirit» logion, as we
have seen, acknowledged that exorcized powers can return, and they do so in such a
way that the person’s condition is worse than before. This reflects an outlook that evil
power is malicious and eager to destroy human victims, and, once extricated from the
human body, needs to be kept at bay or negotiated in order for the person to remain in
an improved state of being.

181
The theme of royal divine authority in curbing or dealing with the effects of demonic power may
be also implied in the Songs of the Maskil mentioned in section E above. The writer of the songs
holds two convictions in tension: a belief that one now lives during a time of «a dominion of
wickedness» during which «the sons of light» can be expected to suffer and be «plagued by
iniquities», and a belief that despite this the threats posed by such evil powers, which are temporary
in any case, can be neutralized until the present age is brought to an end (cf. 4Q510 1.6b-8 par.
4Q511 10.3b-6).
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 Seventh and finally, the very idea that exorcism is needed at all is not based on
an understanding of a person as someone objectively perverse, weird, or invaded by
evil. The Enochic tradition and a number of texts that drew upon it regarded demonic
powers as inherently out of place in the world and alien to the cosmic order as God
has established it182. If the notion of possession is considered a possibility within the
worldview of 1 Enoch, instead of undermining the dignity of this or that individual, it
could actually function to preserve their integrity – in that they would be innocent
victims loved by God and in need of deliverance and spiritual restoration. Whatever
their problems, human beings are God’s beloved creatures, sharing his image and
likeness, and thus they remain integral to the created order.

3.6 Conclusions

1. The synoptic Gospels underline the success of Jesus as one whose power is
superior to that of demonic powers in the present age and into eternity. Jesus’
prominence as the exorcist par excellence is also reflected in the effectiveness
attributed to the use of his «name» by others (Mt 7:22; Mk 9:38; Lk 9:49; 10:17).
There is every reason to think, then, that the presentation of Jesus in the Gospels
stressed the miraculous character of his deeds. At the same time, Jesus’ counter-
demonic manoeuvres fit logically within the framework of an apocalyptic worldview
that some, even if not many, of his pious Jewish contemporaries shared. The
consideration of the Second Temple context may provide one way of getting past the
hermeneutical conundrum associated with Jesus’ exorcisms. In parts of the Western
world, readers of the Gospels have become accustomed to the dramatic, spectacular
character with which the descriptions of these episodes are invested in the text. While
such a reading rightly picks up on the significance being attached to the person of
Jesus, it may inadvertently serve to make Jesus more remote or even bifurcate readers
around the misleading question of whether or not there is any place in religious
communities today for such or similar activity. It is possible to perceive exorcism, a
hermeneutically, cosmologically and sociologically controversial part of Jesus’
activity in which he directly combats demonic forces, not only as miraculous but
even as a realistic approach, informed by his pious Jewish context. Such a
conceptualization proceeds on the basis of a twin-fold recognition that (i) evil is a
persistent reality that cannot be wished away or extricated from human experience
through scientific advancement alone and that (ii) from a standpoint of faith, spiritual
health is assured through divine victory in the created order and the humans who
suffer.
2. If one aims to take the theology of the New Testament sincerely, that is, in
the light and context within which it was written, the exorcisms of Jesus must be
understood within a larger framework of conflict between God and Satan. Satan's
goal is to lead people away from God, to denature the human created in God’s image,
182
For a discussion of this as a fundamental principle within some of the early Enochic texts, see L.
STUCKENBRUCK, The Eschatological Worship by the Nations, 191-208.
91
and generally to destroy God’s good creation. In this battle both God and Satan have
at their command an invisible army of spiritual beings, angels and demons
respectively. One means employed by Satan in his effort to destroy God’s creation is
infiltration into human life, that is, demon possession. The fact that possession and
«indwelling sin» (cf. Rom 7:20) exist in human bodies is evidence of the power of
Satan in our world. And therefore it is also clear what is the significance of exorcism.
Jesus illustrates this by using a startling image of demonic possession: «Or how can
anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds
the strong man? An then he will plunder his house» (Mt 12:29, par. Lk 11:21-22).
The strong man here is Satan and the world is his house (cf. Mt 12:25). Jesus the
exorcist will «bind» the strong man and «will plunder» his house; thereby he will
give spiritual health and salvation of human beings who had been suffering under the
tyranny of Satan. When Jesus expels demons from tormented people, it is visible
evidence that the power of Satan is broken. Jesus the exorcist is in the unique position
of re-establishing human membership in the peace and joyful freedom of God’s
«family», his kingdom (cf. Eph 2:1-8; 12-22). Hence, Jesus indicates the final goal of
his ministry is entry into the kingdom, «But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God,
then the kingdom of God has come upon you» (Mt 12:28). The exorcisms of Jesus
lose their meaning if they are disconnected from this context.
In this context we see that Jesus’ exorcism ministry, and that of his disciples
who exorcize demons in Jesus’ name, constitutes the proclamation of the fall of the
kingdom of Satan and the opening of heaven to blessed souls. We can now better
understand how Jesus can so boldly encourage his disciples who have performed
exorcisms in his name (Lk 10:18-20): «And he said to them, ‘I saw Satan fall like
lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and
scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you.
Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that
your names are written in heaven’». Thus the followers of Jesus can rejoice, because
they march forward with him into heaven, and have nothing to fear from Satan, death,
or suffering at the hands of demons.
3. Jesus himself speaks about Jewish exorcists who did not believe in him, and
at the same time exorcism was being performed in the contemporary pagan
environment 183 . As we have seen, the Gospel writers single out Jesus among all
exorcists, emphasising the ease and simplicity of Jesus’ exorcist ministry. But the
‘ordinary’ exorcism apparently did not free people from anything except the concrete
sufferings that came with the possession. These victims were not transferred into a
completely new reality but rather continued to exist in a realm where demons had to
be appeased, scared off, etc. The whole culture of antiquity was dominated by fear of
demons and possession, and the ancient practice of exorcism rather supported and
emphasized this fear, rather than serving to remove it. Here the exorcisms of Jesus
are significantly different. He not only frees the possessed from their sufferings, he
transfers them into a brand new reality, a new realm, where the power of the demons
183
Cf. e.g. Mt 12:27; Mk 9:38-41. Pagan here means non-Jewish.
92
are finally broken and thus where there exists no longer any fear of demons (cf. Mk
9:25; Col 1:13).
4. In the New Testament we do not find explicitly pronounced the same
combination of demons and idols, paganism and possession, that we found in the
literature of the ancient Church. We have to remember, however, that the Jewish
conceptual material which forms the background for the texts of the ancient Church,
are older than or contemporary with the New Testament. One would therefore a
priori expect that the same understanding was presupposed also in the New
Testament. Perhaps this Jewish context tells us why the evil spirits in some places of
the New Testament are called «unclean», a likely reference to Zec 13:2 (cf. Mt 10:1;
12:43; Mk 1:23; 3:11; etc., see 3.2 above). It is also striking that even in the New
Testament the majority of the exorcisms take place in the «border area» against
paganism, in «the Galilee of the Gentiles», while not one takes place in Jerusalem184.
5. There is a large degree of continuity in all of the material presented. We are
confronted with a set of ideas which received its first expression in Judaism in the
«inter-testamental» period, which was carried forward and received a Christological
centre in the New Testament writings, and which was developed further in its
Christian form in the literature of the ancient church. Central elements in this set of
thoughts are the following: (i) the connection between demons and idolatry, between
paganism and possession (a theme which we will explore further in the next chapter);
(ii) Christ as the conqueror of the demons; (iii) Christ having «bound the strong man»
showing the power in Christian exorcism that prefigures his resurrection; and (iv)
situating exorcism primarily on the Church's border toward paganism.
6. The evidence that Jesus was an exorcist is not confined to the New
Testament185. In particular, the memory of Jesus’ success in this field may be alluded
to in a tradition by the rabbis which goes back to the earlier period during which such
traditions were gathered and codified (A.D. 70-200). According to this tradition:
Jesus was hanged on Passover Eve. Forty days previously a herald had cried, «He is
being led out for stoning, because he has practised sorcery and led Israel astray and
enticed them into apostasy»186. This is probably an echo of the charge laid against
Jesus by the Pharisees preserved in Mark 3:22, «He is possessed by Beelzebul and by
the prince of demons he casts out demons». These two very different sources provide
mutual confirmation that neither the Pharisees nor their heirs were able to dispute the

184
The most profiled stories are Mk 7:24-30: the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman (in
modern Lebanon); Mk 5:1-20 par.: the man in the tombs in Syria east of the sea of Galilee, where
the villagers held pigs, and therefore were pagans. The two remaining complete exorcism stories
leave the question whether paganism was involved unanswered: Mk 1:23-28 par.: the man in the
synagogue of Capernaum; Mk 9:14-29 par: the boy with an unclean spirit.) Here we also have to
mention one exorcism story outside the gospels, the one in Acts 16:16-18. This story is especially
interesting because it so clearly does not connect possession with disease, and because the
connection with pagan cult here is unequivocal (cf. v. 20f). O. SKARSAUNE, «Possession and
Exorcism», 157-171.
185
J.D. DUNN − G.H. TWELFTREE, Demon-Possession and Exorcism 175.
186
Sanhedrin 43a.
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success of Jesus' power and renown where demons or evil spirits were concerned.
What they could do was cast doubt on the source of that power, to give reason for
their non-belief. The tradition of Jesus’ exorcistic prowess therefore quite securely
grounded in historical reminiscence and can be reasonably considered authentic.
7. The use of Jesus’ name in exorcisms by others testifies to the fact that Jesus
was a renowned exorcist. His own disciples used his name in exorcism with great
effect both before and after Easter (Lk 10:17; Acts 16:18), and interestingly, others
outside the circle of Jesus followers evidently sought to harness the same power by
evoking Jesus’ name in the same way (Mk 9:38; Acts 19:13). The lasting fame of
Jesus as a powerful exorcist is attested by the occurrences of his name in the
incantations preserved in the magical papyri (PGM IV:1233, 3020). It is a logical
conclusion that the power attributed to Jesus’ name in exorcism reflects the
considerable success of Jesus’ own ministry of exorcism187.
8. We have seen not only exorcism stories but exorcism sayings in the Gospels:
that is, sayings of Jesus where he clearly refers to his exorcisms. Several of these
have been gathered together by Mark and Q (assuming Q to be the common source of
traditions shared by Matthew and Luke):

i) Mark 3:22-26, Jesus’ house divided saying as a reply to the Beelzebul charge
(parallel in Q, Mat 12:24-6/Lk 11:15-18), «How can Satan cast out Satan? If a
kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is
divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up
against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end».

ii) Matthew 12:27-28 the Spirit of God/finger of God saying (par. Lk 11:19-20):
«And if I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out?
Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out
demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you»188.

iii) Mark 3:27, the strong man saying (Mt 12:29 follows Mk; Lk 11:21-22 may
preserve the Q version): «No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his
goods, unless he first binds the strong man; then indeed he may plunder his house».

iv) Mark 3:28, the blasphemy saying (Lk 12:10 may preserve the Q parallel in a
different context, while Mt 12:31-2 has joined both versions into a composite saying):
«Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever
blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has
forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin».

187
J.D. DUNN – G.H. TWELFTREE, Demon-Possession and Exorcism, 214.
188
These two verses make perfect sense together thematically, and they are logically joined by the
conjunction εἰ δὲ «but if». The same verses are echoed in Lk 11:19-20 where the only notable
difference is that the «Spirit of God» is replaced by the «finger of God».
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 According to Twelftree and Dunn few today would deny that all these sayings
go back to Jesus. Moreover, they are all placed in the narratives precisely where
Jesus’ exorcisms had stirred up controversy. As Jesus’ response to accusations made
against him, they provide an invaluable insight into Jesus’ own understanding of his
ministry and of the significance of his exorcisms, as we shall see here below189.
9. For the moment we need simply note that since such sayings can be traced
back to Jesus himself with a fair degree of certainty, they provide adequate
confirmation that Jesus, among other things, was an exorcist. Had the picture of Jesus
as exorcist been entirely the creation of the early church, we would not have expected
Jesus to have the obligation of defending his exorcism ministry from social attacks or
the religious elite. If the Gospel authors made up these stories they would have reason
to portray him as successful exorcist, yes, but not a highly controversial one in the
eyes of the Jewish authorities. The Gospels portray Jesus’ exorcisms and healings as
motivation for these Jewish authorities who sought Jesus’ execution. Therefore since
Jesus’ execution is a historical fact that no one questions, the motives behind the
execution must also be clear, identifiable, and unquestionably true. If not the Gospels
themselves would lose all credibility to their first century Palestinian Jewish
audience, in Matthew’s case at the very least. These authors would have no reason to
risk retelling the Beelzebul controversy in such detail if it were not true, which
operated as a smear campaign against Jesus: unable to deny the raw fact of his
exorcisms his religious enemies sought to paint him as an agent of Satan. But if those
who sought Jesus’ death could not deny the exorcisms of Jesus then neither can the
modern reader, without the gross historical oversight of assuming they are false
before examining the available data.
Therefore let us take a critical eye to the exorcisms of Jesus. If these exorcism
accounts were fake we would expect them either to be (i) less in number, (ii) less
controversial, or (iii) less unique and more like the exorcisms of Jesus’
contemporaries. If we take seriously for a moment the hypothesis that Jesus’
exorcism ministry is a fabrication, it would make sense for the gospel writers to
depict that aspect of his ministry as something that could be kept secret, revealed only
to a select few. This is so that, conceivably, when the Gospel narratives were
published this «revelation» of Jesus’ «true exorcist identity» could be believable,
because it would have been information that was previously unknown to the reader.
But the opposite is true: it assumed that this information is well known to the reader.
Regardless of their opinion of Jesus of Nazareth, the oral tradition that Jesus was a
successful exorcist is not presented as a little-known-fact but a well-established,
indisputable truth, one that sparked no little controversy by the Jewish authorities
who attributed the power of his exorcisms to the prince of demons (Mt 9:34). As they
stand, the Gospels depict the exorcisms of Jesus not as esoteric but ubiquitous; not as
hidden but famous; not as secondary but central – even and especially in John’s
gospel where Jesus as the cosmic Exorcist par excellence plays a crucial role in the

189
J.D. DUNN – G.H. TWELFTREE, Demon-Possession and Exorcism, 214.
95
Johannine understanding of Christ’s crucifixion190. If exorcism were not a facet of
Christ’s ministry that the masses found unforgettable, how could Matthew for
example, in writing to a Jewish audience in Palestine, have the audacity to claim in
his first chapter depicting Christ’s ministry that Christ’s «fame» as an exorcist and
healer spread «throughout all of Syria» so much so that «great crowds followed him»
bringing their possessed loved ones across great distances to be exorcised by
Jesus?191. Here one can plausibly imagine a gospel writer exaggerating the exorcistic
fame of Jesus to make a point, but simply to invent ‘Jesus as exorcist’ totally out of
thin air would seem unlikely given the sheer quantity of data to the contrary,
throughout the Gospels and beyond. Exorcism was Jesus’ claim to fame, far and
wide, from the hill country of Judea to the northern port cities of Phoenicia, Tyre, and
Sidon (Mt 15:21-22). All people, from Jesus’ bitter enemies to his friends, seem to
have had to deal with the raw fact that Jesus was successful in performing many
exorcisms, and the Gospel writers themselves are willing to gamble the authenticity
of their entire message on this proposition.
If the accounts of Jesus the exorcist were fake we would expect at least some
of them to confirm more closely to contemporary parallels of exorcism in Jesus’ time.
For example, there is no report of Jesus using physical aids, as in Tobit (burning the
heart and liver of a fish), or Josephus (the smell of a root), or the magical papyri (use
of amulets) – all such formulae are totally absent. He does not pray in his exorcisms,
as does Hanina ben Dosa192 nor lay his hands on the demoniac, as in the Genesis
Apocryphon 193 . Perhaps most striking of all, he does not invoke any authority or
power source. In his healing ministry, like in exorcism, Jesus is depicted as ever
serene, with gentleness he gives the simple word that heals. In contrast the use of a
powerful name was quite typical if not mandatory in exorcisms of antiquity and the
formula, «I adjure you by …», is very common in the later magical papyri (e.g. PGM
IV). Had the early church, in their depiction of the action of Jesus’ exorcisms, been
illustrating a saying like Mt 12:28, quoted above, we might have expected Jesus to
say something like, I adjure you by the Spirit of God. And where Jesus’ habit of
prayer was so important, as in Luke, we might have expected Jesus to be depicted as
praying before tackling the demon. If the Gospel accounts were not true we would
expect Matthew, Mark, or Luke to have ‘slipped up’ somewhere in their elaborate
fabrication of Jesus the exorcist, and included at least one element of exorcism
common between Jesus and his contemporaries. What we do find is Jesus saying I
command you (Mk 9:25). This is wholly unprecedented. And yet it is in accord with
190
How John depicts Jesus as the Exorcist for the whole cosmos is explained in footnotes 111, 112,
125 above. For an excellent discussion and overview of the Johannine tradition, see R.A. PIPER, The
Absence of Exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel, 252-278.
191
Cf. Mt 4:24-25: «So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick...
those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds
followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the
Jordan». This text leads right up to Christ’s greatest teaching in Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount.
192
Berakhoth 34b; G.H. TWELFTREE, Jesus the Exorcist, 160.
193
See G. VERMES, Jesus the Jew, 74.
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Jesus’ distinctive style; because unlike the Jewish scribes/rabbis who teach by
referring other eminent teachers of Halakhah, Jesus shocks the crowds by teaching in
a totally new way: «as having authority» all his own194. This personal authority by
which Jesus so naturally and effortlessly exorcises spirits, is something that no one
had clearly anticipated and no one since has repeated.
Jesus was remembered as one who cast out demons with authority during his
ministry − a memory preserved by historical documents that depict the invocation of
his name by would-be exorcists both during and after his ministry, both within and
without Christian tradition195. It seems well-founded, therefore, to conclude by the
uniformity, quality, and sheer quantity of data presented here that the manner of
exorcism attributed to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels is plausible. Even with a critical
eye on the metaphysics of exorcism itself, what is written in the Gospels could be
seen as an echo of Jesus’ own distinctive style, at least, as far as the eye-witnesses
understood it and Jesus spoke about it. This position is justified by close examination
of the earliest and best data available: the uniformity and ubiquity of the gospel
depictions of exorcism, their place within first century Judaism and the larger
Hellenistic world, and the apparently unforgettable way that Jesus conducted himself
as an exorcist was something remembered by critics and devotees alike. To dispute
the historicity of the Gospel narratives which depict Jesus as a successful exorcist
seems unfair, flying in the face of the mass of the plain evidence available. This
evidence because it fits well within the context in which it is presented and can be
traced back to the earliest centuries in its raw and un-manipulated form, still stands
up to criticism and retains its plausibility in the modern era. In the light of the data
presented and without new evidence to the contrary, to write Jesus the exorcist off as
fantasy would be a seemingly unwarranted abuse of the historical-critical method.
10. Finally, the approach to the phenomenon of possession during the first
period of Christianity does not primarily stem from the problem of a «disease» that
needs to be cured, but so much as a case of spiritual infiltration of the non-baptised in
a society where idolatry was commonplace. Idolatry, or occult spiritual practices
conducted outside the protection of Jesus’ name, can often leave the soul vulnerable
to spiritual attack and penetration without the person’s awareness of danger. Here the
spiritual entities invoked – be they gods, goddesses, angels, or daemons – become
merely a spiritual mask under which degenerate spiritual forces may infiltrate the will,
a phenomenon noted even in the Hebrew Bible (cf. section 1.3 above). Demonic
infiltration and occult practice will be discussed in the next chapter with reference to
the Church Fathers’ interpretation of New Testament texts. In any case the Gospels
depict that the spirits seeking to indwell human flesh are not neutral in their attitude
to humans. As Jesus’ teaching reveals, the demons are eager to find a point of

194
Cf. Mt 7:29. For examples of Jesus’ deliberate, bold modification of Jewish tradition: You have
heard it said... but I say to you; Mt 5:21, 27, 33, 38, 43; cf. Lk 6:27; Jn. 5:34 and his confidence in
the supreme authority of his words, Amen, amen, I say to you Jn 1:51; 3:3, 5, 11; 5:19, 24, 25; 6:26,
32, 47, 53; 8:34, 51, 58; 10:1, 7; 12:24; 13:16, 20, 21, 38; 14:12; 16:20, 23; and 21:18.
195
J.D. DUNN – G.H. TWELFTREE, Demon-Possession and Exorcism, 214.
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infiltration to return to their «house» (Mt 12:44) so that like a «strong man» who
binds his victim (12:29), they may bind their hapless victims to the misery of self-
destructive behaviour patterns (Mk 5:5; 9:22). This topic is not completely without
relevance in our neo-religious age where one plays with the spirits – and where a
certain type of paganism is on its way back!

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