It may be having just endured Hallowe’en, but I feel like I have been quite literally inundated with ghouls, goblins, ghosts, witches and a host of other demonic images! At the same time, I have been working on studies around the way in which the adversary and associated entities seek to lead us astray, and demons play a big part in our Western understanding of this whole thing. However, my understanding now is that the demons (Greek ‘daimonia’) that we encounter in the bible have little to do with the Hallowe’en variety of spooks we have had to deal with.

Demons in the Old Testament

When you review the Bible in its original languages, you rapidly come to understand that to ancient Israel a demon was a foreign god, an entity other than Almighty God. In Psalm 96 we see these demons, or inferior foreign gods, compared to the Holy One of Israel. The Hebrew quite literally says that ‘all the gods (elohim) that people worship are nothings (elilim), but that the God of Israel made the heavens.

Sing to Adonai a new song! Sing to Adonai, all the earth!
Sing to Adonai, bless his name! Proclaim his victory day after day!
Declare his glory among the nations, his wonders among all peoples!
For Adonai is great, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared more than all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but Adonai made the heavens.
In his presence are honour and majesty; in his sanctuary, strength and splendour.
(Psalm 96:1-5 Complete Jewish Bible)

 The Greek version of this Psalm, in the Septuagint, wrote that the gods of the nations are demons. Effectively the psalmist is saying that demons are lesser gods. There is a similar approach in Exodus where the Septuagint account of the golden calf has Moses declaring that the makers of the golden calf had sacrificed to demons and not to God, that they worshipped gods they did not know (Ex 32:31). This perspective makes Aaron’s claim that the bull simply materialised in the fire very interesting (Ex 32:24), as it can be read to suggest there were supernatural happenings going on in that episode.

A New Testament understanding

The New Testament takes a similar approach when Paul uses this verse in 1 Corinthians 10, as he uses the same words to state that the calf-worshippers were sacrificing to demons and uses that verse to warn the Corinthian church against being ‘companions to demons’ (1 Cor 10:7). He uses the same form of words in Athens: “Sha’ul [Paul] stood up in the Council meeting and said, “Men of Athens: I see how very religious you are in every way!”
(Acts 17:22, Complete Jewish Bible) Where this translation uses ‘religious’ many use ‘you are respectful of your gods’. The Greek here is fascinating because it has Paul using a compound word ‘deisidaimonesterous’ comprising ‘deisi’ – respectful and ‘daimon’ – demon.

You also have two things going on here. First, Paul’s audience is not offended by his use of the word demon. Secondly, he doesn’t use the word demon in a scary or spooky sense. In fact, the reality is that his audience probably assumes that Paul is speaking about non-Greek gods – foreign demons – which is perfectly fine by them.

Similarly, we see use of ‘baalzebul’ and ‘baalzevul’ in connection with demons in the Gospels. ‘Baalzebul’ literally meant ‘lord of the high places’ whereas ‘baalzevul’ was a clever Hebrew word play that poked fun at the worship of baal. Baalzevul literally means lord of the flies. Worshippers of baalzebul sacrificed animals in the hills, closer to their god, and the meat left there after the sacrifice caused swarms of flies to hover over the sacrifice sites.

What I am trying to highlight is that biblical demons were not ghastly or ghoulish creatures that terrified all and sundry. That is reserved for evil spirits. Demons were simply another nation’s deity – equally wrong, but a very different proposition.

Evil spirits

So what words are used for evil, or unclean, spirits in the Bible? Well, in Hebrew, the words used are ‘ruach tum’ah’, which literally means impure (or ritually impure) spirit. As a comparison Noah is described as ‘tamim’ or ritually pure.

Other words used in this sense include ‘shedim’ – this is an Akkadian loan word that is used twice, in Psalm 106:37 and Deuteronomy 32:17, both in conjunction with the idea of sacrifices to devils. There is also ‘sei’rim’ – this is used in Leviticus 17:7 and is literally translated as ‘hairy goat devils’, which I find fascinating in that the goat is regularly associated with evil spirits (and also with Azazel – a fallen angel described in the Jewish Book of Enoch).

The Greek used in the Septuagint and New Testament is somewhat broader but focused around ‘pneuma’.
Here is a selection of puema words aligned to unclean or evil spirits. I think it is important to appreciate that these seem to be used interchangeably and also specifically.

• Pneuma akatharton – This is used broadly across the New Testament and appears some 20 times, normally in the Gospels, Acts or Revelation. Jesus’ first public ministry when cleaning the man with an unclean spirit in the synagogue uses ‘pneuma akatharto’ It is also used in the Septuagint, to translate the Hebrew ‘ruach tum’ah’ (Zech 13:2).
• Pneuma daimonion – A demonic spirit.
• Pneuma ponero – This is normally used to describe people in trances.
• Pneuma pythonia – Yes, you have got it: it is used to describe the girl with the snake spirit in Acts 16:16.
• Pneuma planes – This is used in conjunction with a spirit of error.
• Pneuma alalon – A spirit of muteness.

It seems to me that over the ensuing years we have collapsed the understanding of demons and unclean or evil spirits into a singular heading of ‘demon’. I am not sure if this is helpful; it certainly shifts the meaning and understanding of these words which were of significance to Jesus and the disciples. My sense is that we need to return to this phased understanding whereby demons are understood to be lesser gods (maybe the fallen angels that appear in the book of Enoch?) and unclean/evil spirits are seen as separate entities (maybe – this is just a suggestion – the offspring of these fallen angels which humanly perished in the flood but perhaps continue as these evil/unclean spirits? Gen 6:1-4).

Fixing our eyes on Jesus

Clearly, we don’t want to spend a long time focusing on the enemy and his servants, as we are to fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:1). But a simple clarification and understanding of the terms that Jesus and his followers understood will help us to better understand the Bible as we study the relevant sections.