So ' to be possessed of ' a thing is to inherit it, to have it in possession, Jos 22' ' the land of their possession, wliereof they were possessed.' Cf. Fuller, ffuli/ Warre, 213, 'Charles subdued Man- fred and Comadine his nephew . . . and was possessed of Sicilie, and lived there.' The active lorm is found in Knox, Eist. 265, ' Them hee possessed in the Land of Canaan.'
To be possessed with a spirit (of goodt or evil) is in Ac 8" 16'* simply to be 'held' by the spirit, but elsewliere means to be under the influence of a demon (oaijno;'ij'6/it<'os). See next article.
J. Hastings.
POSSESSION means the control or mastery of the
* The Greek of this familiar passage is it r^ itwtfcnri ufjtait KTT.fftffHi T«,- ^J/fvaf iiMait. There is a various reading *T*i;r«rCi for K-rirtsdt well supported and adopted by Tischendorf. But with either form the meaning is 'gain possession of,' 'win' (ItV), not ' hold in possession,' which would demand the perf. t«nse. The Vulg. gives posnidebilis, after which Wye. 'ye schulen wclde ' ; Tina, has ' With youre pacience possesse youre soules,' and he is followed pretty closely by subsequent versions, the meaning probably always being ' win.' But that the modern misunderstanding is not very modern may be shown from Clement Cotton's tr. of Calvin's laaiah 403 (p. 400), "He is earnest in giving of hope to the godly, wishing them to possesse their soules in patience, until the Prophets were sent unto them with this Joyfuli and comfortable message.' The Latin is t^ua patientfir ticvorcnt morcB tcedium.
t Cf. TincKile's Workt, 1. 97, "The Faith only maketh a man safe, good, righteous, and the friend of God . , , and pciMesseth lu with the Spirit of God.'
will of an individual by another and superhuman personality. This is a familiar feature in early Jewish psychological beliefs, bountl up with the prevalent demonology and angelology of pre-exilian and post-exilian Israel. See art. Demon in vol. L, and for NT especially, p. 593.
That psychological relations were in primitive times construed in material and spatial forms need not be argued here. It is obvious even from a superficial examination of the language em- ployed. Thus in 1 S 16" the ' evil spirit from God' is said to be upon (Si) Saul, and the same preposition is employed in Is 61' of the spirit with which God inspires tiie prophet. Cf. the use of the phrase ' the hand of the Lord w as upon . . .' The spirit of God passed into (3 n^)/) S:iul when he prophesied (1 S 10'" 18'»). On the otlier hand, in 1 S 16''' the evil spirit is said to terrify (ni'3) Saul. In the vision of Micaiah the deceiving spirit pro- ceeds from the presence of Jehovah, and is ' in the mouth' of His prophets (1 K '22--).
The same language, therefore, is employed of Divine inspiration as of possession by an evil spirit. The supernatural agency was considered to pass into the individual and take possession of him, and he became visibly ati'ected thereby. The lips of the prophet were for the time under the control of the Divine supernatural will, wliich spake by the mouth of the holy prophets (Lk 1™; but the same power might also cause dumbness, cf. \'v.^"- --) While admitting that in some cases we have no more than the inevitable language of metaphor, the cumulative evidence of analogy leads us to refrain from pressing this view unduly. Thus the necromancer was considered to be occupied for the time by the spirit of the dead, and was said to be 3i.s' Si's, though language in this case appears to invert the relation (see Necrojnancy under SOR CERY). Similarly, the demon or evil spirit was believed to enter or pass out of the human subject or to be driven out. While subject to his influence, the individual was said to be SaiiiovL^liiuvoi (in
Arab. ^»jk,sv« mejmiin, or possessed by a Jinn).
Demon - possession was manifested by anything abnormal in personal appearance, especially in the strange look of the eyes. Among the many stories about 3&.n related by Doughty in his Arabia Dcserta (vol. ii. p. 188 fF.) the following statement by Amm Mohammed is a good illustration : —
'Last year a jinn entered into this woman, my wife, one evening : and we were sitting here, as we sit now ; I, and the woman, and Hasej-n. I saw it come in her eyes, tltut were fi.xed, all in a moment ; and she lamented with a labouring in her throat. . . . This poor woman had great white rolling eyes, and little joy in them ' (p. 191).
Anything of an unhealthy nature, such as an uncanny expression ; any disease, and especially epilepsy or insanity, was ascribed to demon- })ossession. Epilepsy, in fact, derives its name (^7riXT)^(s, iTn\-q\pia) from having been regarded as due to an assault by demons (cf. Mk 9'^). In New Hebrew the epileptic patient is called nsjj ' over- powered ' (cf. Syr. ^2iI3). In the NT the demon was said to ' bind' (Stii'), seize and rend (xaiaXa- pdv and p-ftaaeiv in the graphic passage Mk 9'*), enter and pass out of {elaipxfirOai and (^ipxeaffat) the liuman subject. The terms predicated of the human subject ni.ay be found in art. Demon, vol. 1. p. 593. Animals were likewise ati'ected, Mk 5'^.