It seems that demons are everywhere in the movies. You could even say that they are one of the rare things that occupy both Hollywood and the church equally! Consider these popular movies which “star” demons. We have The Omen, The Reckoning, and The Ring. We have Rosemary’s Baby, Jennifer’s Body and Jacob’s Ladder. Exorcisms are very popular in the movies. We have: The Exorcism, The Last Exorcism, The Exorcism of Emily Rose and My Best Friend’s Exorcism. And let’s not forget demon movies that have developed into series. Two will have to do. First, we have The Evil Dead (an ancient Sumerian text conjures up seven movies and a TV series) and second, consider The Conjuring (three films in the original series, three more featuring Annabelle, two more featuring the Nun and one that features La Llorona—that’s a lot of conjuring!). Apparently, demon movies like one-word titles: Insidious, Sinister, Possession and, for those with no imagination, Demons. They also like titles involving places: The Amityville Horror, The Lodge, The House on Willow Street; and if that was not enough to scare you, we have The Evil Down the Street. And then we have the simple, but effective titles: The Medium, The Rite, and of course, The Exorcist. Jeepers creepers, there’s even a demon movie called, Jeepers Creepers! Hollywood, apparently, loves demon activity.
When you read the gospels, you also encounter a lot of demon activity, but the Gospels are not infatuated with these spiritual beings like Hollywood is. Hollywood glorifies demons and the horror that they cause; the Gospels, if you will allow me the play on words, demonize them. Not only that, but Hollywood uses demons and devils to scare us, but the gospels portray demons and impure spirits as being feeble and frail when Jesus encounters one. True, at first, they appear terrifying and dangerous, but when Jesus encounters one, the veil is lifted and we see it for what it is: powerless and pathetic. Hollywood wants scary battle scenes where demons are this close to winning, but that is not what we find in the Bible. Instead, Jesus speaks the word and the demon is cast out. Matthias Henze (Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings Between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus; Fortress Press, 2017) writes:
“When Jesus casts out demons, the evangelists make clear that this act of exorcism manifests the superiority of the kingdom of God as it breaks into the present world order. To the Gospel writers, Jesus’ exorcisms are not incidental acts of kindness or random stories of healing. What Jesus is confronting is nothing less than an opposing power of a different kind, a well-organized kingdom of demons and unclean spirits.”
In short, New Testament demons should make very bad Hollywood supervillains. All one has to do is to speak the name of Jesus and they crumble. And yet, I can understand why Hollywood turns to demons, but I am still a little murky in my thinking about why the New Testament mentions them at all. After all, why promote a Babylonian theory about evil spirits with absolutely no biblical support? And yet, demons were strongly seen as very real and very active in the Second Temple period. Henze writes:
“Early Jews and Christians never questioned the existence of demons and unclean spirits, they simply took their existence for granted. To them, there was nothing extraordinary about this; spirits of various kinds were simply a part of daily life.”
Here’s today’s question: What happened between the Old Testament (where there is no demonic activity to speak of) and the Gospels (where there is an abundance of demonic activity) to make people believe in demons? I think we would all agree that is a rather dramatic change, and I think we would all agree that the answer will be found in the literature of the Second Temple period, in books like “1 Enoch,” “Jubilees” and the “Dead Sea Scrolls.”
We looked at “1 Enoch” last week. Enoch is the first of the books in the Second Temple period to discuss demons at length. You may recall that the first 36 chapters of “1 Enoch” are a self-contained book called, “The Watchers.” These 36 chapters are an interpretation and an expansion of the first four verses of Genesis 6 and explain the origin of demons. In a nutshell, “The Watchers” state that male angels in heaven lusted after women on earth and, figuratively and literally, crossed the line to have sex with them. Figurately crossing the line, because this was in direct opposition to God’s will and literally crossing it because they left heaven and came to earth. Permeated with angel love, these women conceived and gave birth to giants. Unfortunately, these giants were wicked and dramatically increased the sin and violence on the earth. To stem this evil tide, God flooded the earth so that the only ones who survived were in the ark. But there was an unintended consequence. When these gigantic human-angel hybrid drowned, their corpses produced evil spirits (angels, after all, are immortal)m and these demons went on a rampage to inflict pain and suffering and destruction on all of God’s creation, especially all of humanity. And while these demons existed from Genesis 9 to Malachi 4, they choose to keep a very low profile. So much so, as any reader of the Old Testament can tell you, we can’t even tell they are there. But once the Old Testament ends, demons begin to play a very active role in the world. We see this clearly in the pages of the Gospels and Acts.
But “1 Enoch” was just the first book to discuss how demons came into the world. In the second century BCE, roughly one-hundred years after “The Watchers,” Jewish scholars composed the book of “Jubilees.” Henze calls “Jubilees” “an imaginative, at times fanciful, retelling of Genesis and parts of Exodus.” While “Jubilees” retells some of the stories of Genesis and Exodus, it also introduces some stories of its own (stories we do not find anywhere else in the Bible). These stories were designed to interpret the biblical story and, at the same time, answer perplexing questions people in the Second Temple had about life. To do this, they read back into the Bible their questions and found their answers (much like the authors of “1 Enoch” read back into Genesis 6 and found the Watchers). One other interesting fact, while “Jubilees” is its own work, it is clearly built on and related to the “Book of the Watchers.”
Jubilees 10 is particularly important for our purposes. It describes the situation a couple of generations after the flood. Here we read (Jubilees 10:1-3 — from The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, R.H. Charles Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913):
“And in the third week of this jubilee the unclean demons began to lead astray the children of the sons of Noah, and to make to err and destroy them. And the sons of Noah came to Noah their father, and they told him concerning the demons which were leading astray and blinding and slaying his sons’ sons.”
Here’s the situation in “Jubilees.” Years after the flood, demons began terrorizing Noah’s grandchildren. Noah’s sons come to Noah to inform him of these demonic attacks on their children and to beg him to intercede for them. And so, Noah prays that God would protect his grandchildren and other people from these wicked spirits. And then, he goes a step further and prays that all these demons would be bound and thrown into hell. Noah prays (10:5-6):
“And Thou knows how Thy Watchers, the fathers of these spirits, acted in my day: and as for these spirits which are living, imprison them and hold them fast in the place of condemnation, and let them not bring destruction on the sons of thy servant, my God; for these are malignant, and created in order to destroy.”
Now, that’s a pretty good prayer, and God is inches away from granting Noah’s request when Mastema, the chief of all the demons, comes before God and offers a compromise. He asks God not to cast all the demons into the prison of hell, but only to imprison 90% of them. The other 10%, he says, are needed to help him in his work of terrorizing those humans destined for destruction. And God grants Mastema this request and allows 10% of all the demons to continue their ravaging of humanity. By the way, the word, “Mastema,” in Hebrew means, “Adversary.” It is a synonymous name for Satan and is often used as such in the “Dead Sea Scrolls.” Satan is the chief leader of the demons, and he is the one who asks God to allow a portion of the demons to remain on earth to do their worst. And here’s the strange part: God grants his request. One-tenth of the demons will remain in Satan’s employ and wreak havoc on earth.
Henze writes:
“Jubilees tells the same story of the demons who emerged from the giants we saw in Genesis 6, but in Jubilees, the story is given a new purpose. It has become an etiology, a story of origins that seeks to explain a basic component of the human condition: it provides an explanation for the dark side of human life. It answers the question of why humans are afflicted by various ills and why they commit evil. This is all the doing of the evil spirits who act at the command of Mastema. Why did Noah not ask God for the total destruction of all demons, and why did God listen to Mastema? Jubilees uses the story about the origin of the demons to explain a reality of the human condition. There is no denying that illness and misstep are still part of human life today. So Jubilees had no choice but to allow some of the spirits to roam free—one-tenth, to be exact. And yet, Jubilees also offers some consolation. After all, God allowed only one-tenth of the demons to remain that initially afflicted Noah’s grandchildren. Things could be considerably worse.”
“Jubilees” was written to find a way where God can be acknowledged as sovereign over all things, but not be blamed for the evil in the world. How can this be? “Jubilees” posits demons as the solution. Mastema and his demon hordes bring evil into our world, not God. True, God allows demons free reign on earth, but he is not responsible for their actions. They are independent agents at work in our world. But although they are free to do what they can, they still must answer to God. According to “Jubilees,” God has set a limit on how much havoc these evil spirits can create. They can just do so much, but not a whisker more. And just as we saw in the “Book of the Watchers,” so here in the “Book of Jubilees,” we see that, one day, God will judge Mastema and all of his demons for their crimes against humanity. These days, we will see demons inflicting harm on people everywhere, but those days are numbered. And Mastema knows it. One day, all will be put to rights. This is the hope and promise of “Jubilees.”
Now, “Jubilees” raises just as many questions as it answers. We still don’t know why God agreed to Mastema’s request or where the biblical grounds for any of this is located. It seems like “Jubilees” was eager to find an explanation for why there was evil in the world, and they forced their ideas about Satan and demons onto the text. Let me just say it—pinning the origin of demons onto a few verses in Genesis 6 is tenuous at best. But we have to give these Jewish scholars credit. They came up with a theory that lots and lots of people still embrace today (maybe you found the origin of your belief in demons today!).
Now, there is one more source that we need to look at before we can begin to wrap this series up. We need to look at the “Dead Sea Scrolls” and see what they have to add to the conversation. And we will do that next week.
In the meantime, I want to leave you with two devilish quotes and a few disturbing questions. First, Thomas Merton said: “In the devil’s theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.” Second, Goethe said: “We are our own devils; we drive ourselves out of our Edens.” Do you see yourself in either quote? Are you consumed with always being right? Do you need everyone else to be wrong? Where are you seeking to sidestep God so that you can do what you want? Where are you driving yourself out of your own Eden? You may not have any answers now, but these are good things to think about as we wait for next week’s installment.
Thanks for reading. Advice from the Dead Sea Scrolls is coming next week!
