Philo’s doctrine of angels, although much akin to that of the Essenes, bore the peculiar stamp of its birthplace. It was a Platonized version of the ancient Hebrew beliefs. The latter formed, indeed, the common basis of both the Palestinian and the Alexandrian angelology; the differences in the developed products were due to the fact that in the one case Zoroastrian, and in the other Platonic, influences were at work. According to Philo, the angels are incorporeal beings who in- habit the air, and are in number equal to the stars. They are comprehended in two main divisions— the inferior angels, who dwell nearest to the earth and are capable of descending into human bodies ; and the higher and purer intelligences (Aéyo= Ideas), whose habitat is the upper regions of the air. It is through the latter that God, who as the
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perfect Being cannot enter into relations with corruptible matter, communicates with the uni- verse. ‘These intermediaries, whose action is purely spiritual, Philo identifies not only with the Pla- tonic Ideas and Stoic Forces, but with the Demons of the Greeks and the Angels of the Jews. Their function is to execute the commands of the Most High, and to protect and direct the souls of good men. Among the infinite variety of the powers two are supreme—goodness and might. It must be said, however, that Philo has no clear-cut con- ception of these mediating forces. At times he speaks as if they were mere abstractions, at other times as if they were persons. But this is the necessary result of the premises from which he starts. As the media by which,He works in the world His Ideas must be inseparable from God ; while at the same time, on the assumption of His aloofness from the world, they must rank as independent entities.
5. Denial of angels by the Sadducees.—In certain quarters, however, during the post-exilic period the doctrine of angels seems to have met with entire rejection. The position of the Samaritans is not quite clear, but at all events they had a doctrine of angels, and in this respect differed from the Sadducees, who maintained that ‘ there is no re- surrection, neither angel, nor spirit’ (Ac 238). This is so far supported by Josephus, who says that according to the teaching of the Sadducees the soul dies with the body (Ant. xvitt. i. 4). How much does this denial of angels by the Sadducees imply ? It is possible that they only rejected the oral Pharisaic tradition and the developed angelology of their day, while accepting the written Scrip- tures and a rationalistic interpretation of the old angelophanies. Yet they were evidently pure materialists, and repudiated the idea of a future life. It does seem strange that they should never- theless have believed in God ; but their God was, like the deities of Epicureanism, entirely separated from the world. In their view the present life was complete in itself, and man had no future judg- ment to face. As adherents of the Epicurean philosophy, they could not accept either the doc- trine of a future life, or the Jewish angelology which postulated a spirit-world created by God, and judged by Him.
B. DEMONOLOGY.—1. The position as reflected im the earlier OT literature.—The development in demonology is still more marked than that of angelology. Among the ancient Hebrews the belief in evil spirits seems to have been of the most rudimentary description, hardly amounting to more than a vague popular superstition. The data furnished by the earlier OT literature is ex- tremely meagre. Ruins and waste places were peopled with weird spectres (sé‘érim), including a night-monster, Lilith, who was specially danger- ous to infants (Is 132 3414).* Mental disease was attributed to the malign influence of eyil spirits, but in such cases the evil spirit is said to have proceeded from the Lorp (1S 164). As His Pro- vidence comprehended alike the evil and the good (1S 2%, Ps 78), there was really no place for demons viewed as the source of evil. The shédim of Dt 32” and Ps 106°”, though illegitimate objects of worship, are not in OT the noxious spirits which they became in the later Judaism, and the story of the serpent in Gn 3'7 is not elsewhere alluded to in any pre-exilic writing. If the belief in evil spirits can be said to have existed in Israel before the Exile, it certainly was not in the widespread
* Although these passages are probably exilic, and coloured by Babylonian influence, the mention of jackals and other animals in connexion with the sé‘irim warrants the conclusion that demons were supposed to dwell in all those animals which haunt the solitary waste.
form which it afterwards assumed. Although those interpreters who have detected a personal being in Azazel (=(?) ‘God strengthens,’ Ly 168) are probably right, in view of the fact that Jehovah receives the one goat and Azazel the other, it does not follow that the conception of the latter arose at an early date in Heb. history. It is probable — that the Priestly Code is not of Mosaic origin, and that this allusion to the ritual of the scapegoat belongs to post-exilic times. There is no subse- quent mention of Azazel in OT, although he re- appears in the Book of Enoch as a leader of the (fallen) angels. Cheyne (‘ Azazel’ in Encyc. Bibl.) thinks he was ‘a personal angel substituted for the crowd of sé‘iriém (or earth-demons) to whom the people sacrificed ; just as the scapegoat was the sub- stitute for the sacrificial victims.’ However this may be, it is clear that he was regarded as in some sense antagonistic to J”; and that the conception of him, if not identical with that of Satan, as Origen (c. Cels. vi. 305) and others have supposed, was at least a step in the direction of that of the devil.