3. The doctrine of evil spirits in the Apocrypha and in the writings of eats cakiboush the Apocrypha say nothing of Satan (unless Wis 2, on which see below, refers to him), they clearly teach the doctrine of Sauda or evil spirits. These are not angels, nor, apparently, fallen angels. They have power to plague and even slay men, but can be driven away by fumigation, and bound by the angels. Asmodeus is repre- sented in To 64 as being in love with Sarah, daughter of Raguel, and as having killed in succes- sion seven unfortunate men to whom she had been married (38). The angel Raphael advises Tobias the son of Tobit to marry her, and provides him with a charm, in the shape of the heart and liver of a fish thrown upon the ashes of incense, to drive away the demon. The smell causes the evil spirit to flee into Egypt, where he is bound by Raphael (8!3), If all the other spirits were like this one, they must have had bodies, and must have been inferior in power to the angels. The writer of the Book of Tobit was evidently acquainted with Mesopotamia, and therefore with the Per- sian demonology, which is reflected in his work, although not to the extent of representing the demon as a rival power to that of God. He stops
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short of actual dualism. The author of 1 Mac., speaking of the Akra or citadel which was the headquarters of the Syrian garrison, describes it as ‘an evil adversary (duéBodos) to Israel,’ te. ‘an adversary or devil in stone’; but this simply re- flects the popular conception of the devil as hostile to God’s true worshippers.
Josephus, though silent as to Satan, has a good deal to say about evil spirits, and we may fairly take his views as those current in his time. His theory is that demons are the spirits of wicked men departed, who enter into the living and_kill them unless they can obtain deliverance (BJ VII. vi. 3). The art of exorcizing evil spirits is also known to him. By the use of certain incantations, and especially by the application to the nostrils of the demoniac of a fire-coloured root called barras, which grew near the fortress of Machzerus, the demon can be expelled. Josephus speaks of this as the discovery of Solomon, and says he saw one Eleazar releasing demoniacs in this fashion (Ant. VII. ii, 5). He gravely affirms that great care must be exercised in the handling of this root, otherwise fatal consequences will follow. On the soil being removed, it may, however, be safely taken by tying a dog to it ; as soon as the dog moves, it dies, but the plant has been rendered innocuous (BJ VI. Vio).
4. Demonology of the Alexandrian Jews.—lf the Pal. demonology of the two centuries preceding the fall of Jerusalem be characterized by an ele- ment of triviality, that of the Alexandrian Jews is marked by one of vague generality. In the LXX heathen gods are uniformly demons, and not merely nonentities as in the Heb. text. The same view is taken by the Alexandrian author of Bar 38-5®, who in his hatred of idolatry charges the Israelites with having sacrificed to devils and not to God (47). In the Book of Wisdom the subject is dealt with on a higher plane of thought. ‘God created man for incorruption, and made him an image of his own proper being; but by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, and they that are of his portion make trial thereof’ (25). This is interesting as being the first clear allusion in Jewish literature to the narrative of the Fall as told in Genesis. It is also a philosophy of the history, for it ‘substitutes a personal devil for the serpent,’ and is, moreover, a tolerably precise state- ment of the doctrine of original sin. But itis only a passing allusion that the writer makes to the subject ; he does not return to it, and his views do not reappear in other writings of the Alexandrian Jews. Philo, who makes only a single reference to evil spirits as exciting impure desires in man, adopts another explanation of the Fall (de Gig. 4). Yet the recurrence of this view in Rev 12’, and its acceptance by Christian theologians, show that it must have had its advocates.
5. Pronounced development of demonology in the Jewish pseudepigrapha.—In the Jewish pseudepi- erapha, highly composite works containing many Christian elements, and ranging over one or two centuries before and after the Christian era, much light is thrown upon the development of demon- ology. These writings embody a mass of hetero- geneous material which had considerable influence in shaping NT doctrines, and in no direction is this influence more marked than in that of demon- ology. The only demon named in the Apocrypha is Asmodeeus (To 3° 1”), but in the pseudepigrapha we meet with many others. Beliar, probably the Belial of 2 Co 6, appears in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, in the Sibylline Oracles (21%), and in the Ascension of Isaiah (42) as the Anti- christ. The latter work further describes him as the ruler of the world (18 24), which will be the scene of his manifestation (42). In the Book of
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