Europe's inner demons

This account in I Enoch dates from the second century before Christ; and later Apocrypha were to elaborate on it. Many of them treat of these demons and the nefarious activities which they carry on under the command of their leader, who is called now Mastema, now Belial or Beliar, now Satan. In the Book of Jubilees (c. 13 5-105 B.C.) Mastema commands a tenth part of the evil spirits, the other nine-tenths being bound in “the place of condemnation”. Within the limits prescribed by God the evil spirits or demons wreak destruction on the earth — but they are also seducers, they tempt human beings to every kind of sin.

⁽⁹⁾ This is still plainer in the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (109–106 B.C.). Here the chief of the fallen angels, Belial, emerges as the antagonist and rival of God, with whom he competes for the allegiance of men: “Do you choose darkness or light, the law of the Lord or the works of Belial?”⁽¹⁰⁾

His subordinates tempt men to fornication, jealousy, envy, anger, murder — and also to idolatry, or the worship of the pagan gods.

Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls present a very similar picture. Whatever the sect that produced them, it clearly subscribed, at least at certain times, to much the same demonology as the Jews who wrote or read the Apocrypha. Moreover in some of its writings one finds an idea which was to undergo a spectacular development in later centuries: the idea that the Devil (Beliar, Satan or whatever) has his servants amongst living men and women — human collaborators, as it were, of the host of evil spirits. In the document known as The war of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness which dates from about the time of Jesus, the sect is looking forward to a fifty years’ war in which its members, as “the sons of light”, will exterminate the heathen, who are called “the sons of darkness” and also “the sons of Belial”. “This shall be a time of salvation for the people of God, an age of dominion for all the members of His company, and of everlasting destruction for all the company of Satan. . (for the sons) of darkness there shall be no escape.”⁽¹¹⁾ And again, “Cursed be Satan for his sinful purpose and may he be execrated for his wicked rule! Cursed be all the spirits of his company for their ungodly purpose and may they be execrated for all their service of uncleanness! Truly they are the company of Darkness, but the company of God is one of (eternal) Light.”

⁽¹²⁾ In other words, the Devil and his servants, human and demonic, form a single host and are all alike doomed to be overthrown and annihilated.

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The demonology which figures in some of the Jewish Apocrypha and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls is also present, in a modified form, in the New Testament.⁽¹³⁾

For unlike Yahweh in the Old Testament, God in the New Testament has formidable antagonists in Satan and his host of subordinate demons; the Gospels, Acts, the Pauline Epistles, the Book of Revelation, are full of references to the prodigious struggle. Now Satan’s role is to oppose the new religion which was to become Christianity; he is the relentless enemy of Jesus, and of those who follow Jesus, he is forever plotting to seduce these followers from their allegiance and to ruin them in body and soul. Indeed the whole world is pictured as divided into two kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the Devil. Over against the kingdom of Christianity, which being the kingdom of God is full of light and radiance, stands the kingdom of Satan, where the powers of darkness prevail. Satan strives to prevent the extension of Christ’s kingdom; while Christ’s mission is to destroy the kingdom of Satan.

The Devil’s power is manifested in whatever draws men away from God, and above all in any and every form of resistance to Christian teaching. It is, therefore, manifested in the Jewish religion; writing around the end of the first century, John makes Jesus say to the Jews who reject him, “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lust of your father ye will do.”⁽¹⁴⁾ More emphatically, it is manifested in paganism. Indeed for Paul, writing between A.D. 50 and 70, Satan is the ruler of the whole world in so far as it has not, or has not yet, turned to Christ: “The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”⁽¹⁵⁾ His own task is to go to the Gentiles, “to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God”.⁽¹⁶⁾