DEMON, DETIL, Gr. ialiuav, or Sunbnov (more
frequently), Heb. i^, Syr. '\'>X», Aram, ten} (cf. Assyr. Hdu). The supposed Heb. root is [nis*] ' to
be mighty,' hence ' to rule,' Arab. jLj (cf. ti^ ' to treat violently, to destroy '). Demoniac, Jai/uofi- f6/«m. For 'devil' (properly Jid/}o\os, see Satan) RV rightly substitutes 'demon' wherever the Greek text has iaiiiMvwv.
Both physical and moral evil may be regarded from two standpoints — (1) As existing in man physically in the form of bodily disease, or spiritu- ally as moral evil ; (2) as having a source outside man. It is with physical and moral evil in the latter aspect that we are now dealing. Among the Hebrews, both in pre-exHic and post-exUic times down to a comparatively late period of the Christian era, both moral and physical evil were attributed to personal agencies. This conception of personal evil agencies, that affected man's body and soul, exercised a profound and enduring influence over the minds of Christ and the apostles, and played a very considerable part in the writings of the Church Fathers.
In tracing this conception of evil spirits influenc- ing man to its primitive sources, we shall find that it has its springs in early Semitic ideas which surrounded the Israelite people in the dawn of their history. Baudissin has clearly shown how the demonology of the Grseco-Roman period of Judaism emerged out of the earlier polytheism. On this we shall have more to say later on. But it should be noted that that polytheism was itself the outcome of the principle called by Tylor, in his well-known work Primitive Culture, by the name 'animism.' Even early mankind instinctively Bought for causes, and interpreted the forces and other manifwtations of nature as personal, i.e. as emanating from beings analogous to himself (cf. Siebeck, Lehrb. d. Religionsphilosophie, p. 58 ff. ). Thus primitive man dwelt in a cosmic society of superhuman agencies, some of which ministered to his well-being and others to his injury. At the dawn of human consciousness man found himself confronted by forces which he was unable to control, and which exercised a baleful or destructive influence. Hurricane, lightning, sunstroke, plague, flood, and earthquake were ascribed to wrathful
Sersonal agencies, whose malignity man would en- eavour to avert or appease.
The nomadic Arabs of the time of Mohammed believed in the existence of hostile powers or
Jinns, who were held to be the inhabitants of lonely spots, and Mohammed himself recognized their existence just as fully as his heathen con- temporaries did. Various names were given to them, viz. Ghul, 'Ifrit, Slid, 'AIM ; and we have likewise feminine names. The word Ifrit, which occurs so frequently in the ' One thousand and one nights,' is also found in the KorS,n (Sur. 27. 39), and according to Wellhausen means, like the Heb. Tyj?, 'hairy.' * ' The desert is full of these spectral shapes. whoever spends his time there as a traveller must steel his heart against them. A child of the desert must be on friendly terms with the wolf and on terms of intimacy with the ghul.' On this subject consult W. R. Smith, RS', p. 119 f.
A. The Demonolooy of the OT. — The paral- lels which we find in OT to the Jinn of ancient as well as modem Arabia may now be noted. Isaiah, in an oracle describing the doom of Edom, por- trays a scene among Edom's ruined fortresses, when ' one I'lV (hairy satyr) shall call out to an- other, and Lilith (the night hag) shall take up her abode ' (Is 34"). This Lilith is a demon of feminine sex. The same mythical creature meets us in the cuneiform inscriptions (see Schrader, C'OJii. p. 311). In one of the magical texts cited by Horamel (Seiniten, p. 367) occurs the line (iv. Rawl. 29, No 1, Rev. 23)—
'The lUu, the lilat, the handmaid of LUu,'
The Babylonian lildtu or lilitu is placed in tnis incantation in close connexion with the pla{;ue- demon Namtar. There can be little doubt that this plague-demon was connected in the popular imagination with the Semitic • Babylonian word lildtu, which means ' night,' and so became a word of terror, denoting the night-demon, who sucked the blood of her sleeping victims. This grim feminine personality became a subject for later Jewish legends (see Sayce, Hibbert Led. p. 146), which multiplied these night-demons (lilin).
* Skizzen «. Vorarbeiten, iii. (' Reste dea Arabischen Heiden- thuma '), p. 136 ad fin. But this view appears to me somewhat
doubtful, and the connexion of l>;:>^^yft£ with r'i.C 0$V)
' dust,' seems more probable. When we bear in mind the close connexion between the Jinn and the serpent according^ to Araliic belief (see Noldeice, Zntgchr. fur V 6lkerp8ycholog%e u. Sprachirussen^chaft, vol. i. 1860, p. 412 fF.; and Baudissin, Stud, zur Sernit. Iteligimigesch. i. 279 fif.), we mi(jht connect with this the curse pronounced on the serpent in Gn 3'* ' Dust thou shalt eat* . . . Wincliler, it is true, reffards this as simply an expres- sion of dishonour or disgrace, and compares the phrase tikatu ijtra in one of the Tel el-Amama letters (AUorUnt, Forjfch. iii. 271). But a hint which we obtain from Doughtj-'s Arabia Deierta (i. p. 136) places us on the right traoii both for the explanation of the word '//rtt and of Gn 31^ * Malignity of the soil is ascribed to jdn, ground demons, ahl el-ard. or earth-folk.' Malignant demons are believed to inhabit the seven stages of the under-world (i7). p. 259). I should therefore prefer to cite, as an Assyrian illustration of On S^*, the 8th hne m the Descent of IStar to Hades. tiMr ipru madu biibuttgunu akaliunu tifu, *» place where much dust is their siistnnance, mire their food.' Mr. Buchanan Gray of Mansfield College, Oxford, in a letter which he kindly sent to me on this subject, says, ' I have looked through