The word daimōn or daimonion seems originally to have had two closely related meanings; a deity, and a spirit, superhuman but not supernatural. In the former sense the term occurs in the Septuagint translation of Deu 32:17; Psa 106:37; Act 17:18. The second of these meanings, which involves a general reference to vaguely conceived personal beings akin to men and yet belonging to the unseen realm, leads to the application of the term to the peculiar and restricted class of beings designated “demons” in the New Testament.

The objections to this ingenious theory are too many and too serious to be overcome. (1) The genetic connection between animism and polytheism is not clear. In fact, the specific religious character of animism is altogether problematical. It belongs to the category of primitive philosophy rather than of religion. It is difficult to trace the process by which spirits unnamed and with characteristics of the vaguest become deities - especially is it difficult to understand how certain spirits only are advanced to the standing of deities. More serious still, polytheism and animism have coexisted without close combination or real assimilation (see Sayce, Babylonia and Assyria, 232; Rogers, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 75 f) for a long course of history. It looks as if animism and polytheism had a different raison d'être, origin and development. It is, at least, unsafe to construct a theory on the basis of so insecure a connection. (2) The interpretation of heathen deities as demons by no means indicates that polytheism is the source of Biblical demonology. On general principles, it seems far more likely that the category of demons was already familiar, and that connection with polytheism brought about an extension of its application. A glance at the Old Testament will show how comparatively slight and unimportant has been the bearing of heathen polytheism upon Biblical thought. The demonology of the Old Testament is confined to the following passages: Lev 16:21, Lev 16:22; Lev 17:7; Isa 13:21; Isa 34:13; Deu 32:17; Psa 106:37 (elsewhere commented upon; see COMMUNION WITH DEMONS). Gesenius well says of Lev 16:21 that it is “vexed with the numerous conjectures of interpreters.” If the prevalent modern view is accepted we find in it an actual meeting-point of popular superstition and the religion of Yahweh (see AZAZEL). According to Driver (HDB, I, 207), this item in the Levitical ritual “was intended as a symbolical declaration that the land and the people are now purged from guilt, their sins being handed over to the evil spirit to whom they are held to belong, and whose home is in the desolate wilderness remote from human habitations (Lev 16:22, into a land cut off).” A more striking instance could scarcely be sought of the way in which the religion of Yahweh kept the popular spiritism at a safe distance. Lev 17:7 (see COMMUNION WITH DEMONS) refers to participation in the rites of heathen worship. The two passages - Isa 13:20, Isa 13:21; Isa 34:13, Isa 34:14 - are poetical and really imply nothing as to the writer's own belief. Creatures both seen and unseen supposed to inhabit places deserted of man are used, as any poet might use them, to furnish the details for a vivid word-picture of uninhabited solitude. There is no direct evidence that the narrative of the Fall (Gen 3:1-19) has any connection with demonology (see HDB, I, 590 note), and the suggestion of Whitehouse that the mention of satyrs and night-monsters of current mythology with such creatures as jackals, etc., implies “that demons were held to reside more or less in all these animal denizens of the ruined solitude” is clearly fanciful. It is almost startling to find that all that can possibly be affirmed of demonology in the Old Testament is confined to a small group of passages which are either legal or poetical and which all furnish examples of the inhibiting power of high religious conceptions upon the minds of a naturally superstitious and imaginative people. Even if we add all the passages in which a real existence seems to be granted to heathen deities (e.g. Num 21:29; Isa 19:1, etc.) and interpret them in the extreme sense, we are still compelled to affirm that evidence is lacking to prove the influence of polytheism in the formation of the Biblical doctrine of demons. (3) This theory breaks down in another still more vital particular. The demonology of the Bible is not of kin either with primitive animism or popular Sere demonism. In what follows we shall address ourselves to New Testament demonology - that of the Old Testament being a negligible quantity.

(a) In the New Testament we are told practically nothing about the origin, nature, characteristics or habits of demons. In a highly figurative passage (Mat 12:43) our Lord speaks of demons as passing through “waterless places,” and in the story of the Gadarene demoniac (Luk 8:31) the “abyss” is mentioned as the place of their ultimate detention. The method of their control over human beings is represented in two contrasted ways (compare Mar 1:23; Luk 4:33), indicating that there was no fixed mode of regarding it. With these three scant items our direct information ceases. We are compelled to infer from the effects given in the limited number of specific instances narrated. And it is worthy of more than passing mention that no theoretical discussion of demons occurs. The center of interest in the Gospels is the person of Jesus, the sufferers and the cures. Interest in the demons as such is absent. Certain passages seem to indicate that the demons were able to speak (see Mar 1:24, Mar 1:26, Mar 1:34; Luk 4:41, etc.), but comparing these statements with others (compare Mar 1:23; Luk 8:28) it is seen that no distinction is drawn between the cries of the tormented in the paroxysms of their complaint and the cries attributed to the demons themselves. In other particulars the representation is consistent. The demons belong to the unseen world, they are incapable of manifestation except in in the disorders which they cause - there are no materializations, no grotesque narratives of appearances and disappearances, no morbid dealing with repulsive details, no license of speculation in the narratives. In contrast with this reticence is not merely the demonology of primitive people, but also that of the non-canonical Jewish books. In the Book of Enoch demons are said to be fallen angels, while Josephus holds that they are the spirits of the wicked dead. In the rabbinical writings speculation has run riot in discussing the origin, nature and habits of demons. They are represented as the offspring of Adam and Eve in conjunction with male and female spirits, as being themselves sexed and capable of reproduction as well as performing all other physical functions. Details are given of their numbers, haunts and habits, of times and places where they are especially dangerous, and of ways and methods of breaking their power (see EXORCISM). Full sweep is also given to the imagination in descriptive narratives, oftentimes of the most morbid and unwholesome character, of their doings among men. After reading some of these narratives one can agree with Edersheim when he says, “Greater contrast could scarcely be conceived than between what we read in the New Testament and the views and practices mentioned in Rabbinic writings” (LTJM, II, 776).

(b) It is also clearly to be noted that while in its original application the term daimonion is morally indifferent, in New Testament usage the demon is invariably an ethically evil being. This differentiates the New Testament treatment from extra-canonical Jewish writings. In the New Testament demons belong to the kingdom of Satan whose power it is the mission of Christ to destroy. It deepens and intensifies its representations of the earnestness of human life and its moral issues by extending the sphere of moral struggle to the invisible world. It clearly teaches that the power of Christ extends to the world of evil spirits and that faith in Him is adequate protection against any evils to which men may be exposed. (For significance of this point see Plummer, St. Luke (ICC), 132-33.)

(d) In the New Testament the range of activities attributed to demons is greatly restricted. According to Babylonian ideas: “These demons were everywhere; they lurked in every corner, watching for their prey. The city streets knew their malevolent presence, the rivers, the seas, the tops of mountains; they appeared sometimes as serpents gliding noiselessly upon their victims, as birds horrid of mien flying resistlessly to destroy or afflict, as beings in human forms, grotesque, malformed, awe-inspiring through their hideousness. To these demons all sorts of misfortune were ascribed - a toothache; a headache, a broken bone, a raging fever, an outburst of anger, of jealousy, of incomprehensible disease” (Rogers, op. cit., 145). In the extra-canonical Jewish sources the same exuberance of fancy appears in attributing all kinds of ills of mind and body to innumerable, swarming hosts of demons lying in wait for men and besieging them with attacks and ills of all descriptions. Of this affluence of morbid fancy there is no hint in the New Testament. A careful analysis of the instances will show the importance of this fact. There are, taking repetitions and all, about 80 references to demons in the New Testament. In 11 instances the distinction between demon-possession and diseases ordinarily caused is clearly made (Mat 4:24; Mat 8:16; Mat 10:8; Mar 1:32, Mar 1:34; Mar 6:13; Mar 16:17, Mar 16:18; Luk 4:40, Luk 4:41; Luk 9:1; Luk 13:32; Act 19:12). The results of demon-possession are not exclusively mental or nervous (Mat 9:32, Mat 9:33; Mat 12:22). They are distinctly and peculiarly mental in two instances only (Gadarene maniac, Mat 8:28 and parallels, and Act 19:13 f). Epilepsy is specified in one case only (Mat 17:15). There is distinction made between demonized and epileptic, and demonized and lunatic (Mat 4:24). There is distinction made between diseases caused by demons and the same disease not so caused (compare Mat 12:22; Mat 15:30). In most of the instances no specific symptoms are mentioned. In an equally large proportion, however, there are occasional fits of mental excitement often due to the presence and teaching of Christ.

It is also evident that Jesus treated these cases of invaded personality, of bondage of depression, of helpless fear, as due to a real superhuman cause, to meet and overcome which He addressed Himself. The most distinctive and important words we have upon this obscure and difficult subject, upon which we know far too little to speak with any assurance or authority, are these: “This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer” (Mar 9:29).

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