away, The sickness, the consumption which will trouble mankind, Ilarmlul to the flesh, injurious to the body, The evil incubus, the evil alu, the evil inatikum. The ev\\ nian, the evil eye, the evil mouth, the evil tonglM . Against my body never may they come. My eye never may they injure . . . Into my house never may they enter, O spirit of heaven conjure, O spirit of earth conjure.' •
A comparison of this vast system of belief in evil spirits and in incantations, which prevailed in Babyionia, with the later Jewish traditions of demonology, at once reveals the close connexion between the two. During the exile these Baby- lonian traditions efl'ected an entrance into the Jewish world of ideas, and there became per- manently domiciled.
But while tj' is obviously borrowed from the Bab. iidu, its signification was by no means the same. For on^ is used in the sense of deities of the heathen, diok cnS.x. Now, the attitude of ancient Israel towards foreign deities varied con- siderably in diflerent periods of the nation's history. The continued declension of the people towards idolatry in the pre-exilic times clearly shows that, in the popular mind, belief in the power as well as existence of foreign deities was firmly rooted. Many OT passages clearly indicate this, Jg 6" 9**, Nu 21» (cf. Jer 48« 49'), 1 S 26'», Ru 1" 2" (see Baudissin, Stud, zur Semit. Religiunsgesch. Hefti.). In other words, the religion of Israel in early times was henotheism rather than monotheism. In fact, monotheism came very slowly to displace the ' monarchic polytheistic ' beli£f of primitive Israel. It is true that, from the 8th cent. B.C. downwards, the 'other gods' are called 'no gods,' 'emptiness,' 'wind,' 'vanity' (or 'breath'), ' corpses,' and ' dead ' ; but these are terms which are rather selected to express the utter powerless- ness and insutiiciency oi foreign deities in com- parison with tlie supreme miglit of J", the true living God of Israel, than to assert their absolute non-existence, t
Accordingly, in the two passages Dt 32" and Ps 106", the word nnp ' demons ' is used to describe the subordinate position, as compared with J", of the Moabite deities, to whom the Hebrews sacri- ficed in the time of Moses. Baudissin rightly observes in reference to Dt 32" ' when in the Song of Moses it is said that J" alone has led Israel, and no strange god (ijj Sk) was with Him, we '^ must merely understand that the active influence ^ of strange gods over Israel is excluded, but that their existence was rather recognized than y denied.'
The use of o-iif* in these two passages may, in fact, be regarded as tlie first step taken by Israel in the direction of demonology, under Babylonian
• See Tiele, Babj/lon-Auyr. Getch. p. 648 ff. ; Hommcl, OacK Babul. Atlur. p. 383 ft. The subject was first comprehensively dealt with in Lenomiant's ChaUUxan Magic, about twenty yean utto. The latist work is L. W. Kinif's llab. Magic and Horceri/, Cunt\farm Trzln/rojn the Koui/unjik CoUectimtt in B.M.
t Baudissin (it. p. Ti) in our opinion errs in holding that, In all passages which describe the victorious conflict in which J' engages with the gods of the heathen, we have merely poetic personification ot the latter, e.g. Is 10', Jer 46*>. The langusjfe ol Ei 1511 ' Who is like unto thee, O J", among the gods (C'^t<5, cf. Ps 77"*'' lO-SS 00*, In which comparison is made be tween God and the deities of other nations), clearly i[)dicat«i that trnns kind ot existence and power, however slight, Is assigned to the latter. That the terms D7'7i<, '>jn, ifly, i*S DM^K, eto., cannot be pressed Into signifying the absolute denial of existence. Is recognised by Baudissin himself (A p. 101 ad /In.).
592
DEMON, DEVIL
DEMON, DEVIL
influence, the deities of foreign nations being relegated to this subordinate rank, and desig- nated by this lenii. Elsewhere in OT and in the literature ol a l:iter period, we find the deities of the heathen identified with the host of stars. Of this we have an example in the apocalyptic section in Isaiah (24-26), which is placed by many critics, with good reason, in the Greek period, not much earlier than the Maccabaean book of Daniel. In Is 24" we read ' And it shall come to pass in that day, that J" \vil\ visit the host of the height in the height, and the kings of the earth upon the earth, and they shall be carried away captive to the pit, and shut up in the prison, and the moon shall grow pale,' etc. This is a fresh development of the old pre-exilic Heb. conception of the heavenly host of attendant personal powers or angels, repre- sented as stars. This belief is reflected in Micaiah's vision (I K 22"), Deborah's song (Jg S**"), and embodied in the name niKj^ m.T, which frequently recurs in prophetic literature (AJm 5", Is 1' 6* etc.),* and thence passed into post-exilic psalm liturgy (Ps 103" 148^). In the apocalyptic passage Is 24-', the host of the height are the heathen deities identified with fallen angels. Here, again, the roots of the conception of fallen national deities may be found in the influences of the exUe (cf. Is 46'). It is impossible to mistake the significance of the passage la 14"^ —