In the period elapsing between the close of the Apocrypha and the appearance of Jesus, the Jewish ideas of angels, as well as of demons and the D., received an exten sive development. This angelology and demonology, wholly foreign to the older Hebrew religion. was derived in all its essential characteristics from the system of Zoroaster, with which the Jews laid become familiar by their long and close intercourse with the Persian empire during the exile. and subsequently. It was, however, impos sible to transfer the dualism of Zoroaster into a creed so purely monotheistic as that of the Jews: this would have destroyed the foundation on which their entire history rested. Two beings, equally eternal, equally powerful, was an idea which no Hebrew —mindful of the glorious deliverance of his forefathers out of the land of Egypt, of the law given amidst the thunders of Sinai, of the manna in the wilderness, of the triumphs in Canaan, and the•golden psalms of David—could for one Mottent entertain. But, on the other hand, now that as a nation the Jews were become weak and of little account, hemmed in, and crushed by mighty and advancing empires, no conception could seem more true, or prove more consolatory, than that which permitted them to attribute their misfortunes to the agency of a demoniacal race, beaded by a potentate only infe rior to Jehovah himself. They could now believe that God had not forsaken his "chosen people." Thus, the dualism of Zoroaster suggested the kingdom and royalty of Satan, but the doctrine shaped itself in harmony with the national monotheism. The D. and his demons were represented as having been originally angels, who had fallen from their " high estate," been punished by God, and had therefore assumed a position of hostility, without, however, being able to materially frustrate the divine purposes. Thesq opinions found an almost universal reception among the people, as well as among those Jewish theologians who, along with the Mosaic law, held oral tradition to be an authentic source of religious doctrine. Indeed, the only Jewish sect which rejected them, was that of the Sadducees, who considered them, as also the doctrines of the resurrection from the dead, of the Messiah, of the Messianic kingdom, of the last judg ment, of rewards and punishments, and of angels and demons, to be new. outlandish anti-Mosaic myths and theories. This conflict of opinion among the Jews prevented their ideas of the D. and demons from obtaining, in spite of their broad diffusion, a dogmatic and systematic stability. The populace and the Pharisees believed fervidly in the existence of such evil spirits; but their conceptions had not only all the heat, but all the confusedness of superstition.
In this condition were the Jews when the New Testament lifts up the veil of oblivion that had partially dropped on the face of the nation more than two centuries before, and the light of history again falls brightly on its features. We now find a swarm of demons in Palestine. These unclean spirits, however, can be exorcised. When expelled from the soul of the demoniac, their proper home is "the abyss" (Eis ten abus WM, Luke viii. 31). According to the popular conceptions, therefore, we must suppose their dwelling to be a dark subterranean region, although, like the demons of the Old Testament, they inhabit also the earth and the air. They were not, as the Greeks and Josephus thought, the evil spirits of dead men, but had angelic natures (see Matt. xxv.
41), and formed a society governed by a chief, called Satan, Devil, Beelzebub, Belial, etc. lie is now firmly seated in the popular imagination as a fallen angel; but as yet there is no hint of his having seduced his followers from their allegiance to Jehovah, or of their having fallen at the same time. This idea first appears in the book of Revelation, chap. xii., where mention is made of a great war in heaven between Michael and his angels on the one hand, and the D. and his angels on the other. "And the great dragon was cast out," says the writer, "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Whether or not these popular conceptions of the D. and his influence were materially or spiritually interpreted by Christ himself, it is impossible to say. Ile may either have accommodated his language to suit the popular mode of realizing the power of evil (a supposition which involves nothing unworthy of his sinless character), or (for this is the only other hypothesis compatible with a belief in his divinity) he may have intended to recognize the essential truth of that doctrine of an evil personality which the Jews derived from, or, at all events, developed under the inspiration of Zoroastrian ideas.
But whether Christ meant to accommodate his language to the popular conceptions or not, the primitive church assumed the personality a the D. as an unquestionable fact. The New Testament ideas on this point were not only greatly enlarged, but in many respects entirely changed, partly through the introduction of a considerable num her of heathen notions, and partly through the dogmatic tendencies of the time, in con sequence of which the various statements in the Bible retarding Satan and evil were uncritically and vnhistorically heaped together, and a doctrine of Satanic agency elab orated logically but not theologicallg. Holding firmly to the belief of a Satanic kingdom of darkness opposed to Christ's kingdom of light, the majority of the early Christians ascribed all evil, physical as well as moral, to the D. and his demons; failures of the crop, sterility, pestilence, murrain among cattle, mental maladies, persecutions of the Christians, individual vices, heresies, astrology, philosophy, and especially the whole body of heathenism, with its mythology and religious worship. The heathen gods were believed to he conquered by the work of Christ, but not to be wholly powerless; they sank down into demons, and so a part of their mythology passed into the doctrine of the Devil. It was they who, as demons, meaning to deceive, uttered oracles, were present at sacrifices, and inhaled the sacrificial incense, whereby the notion gained ground that the demon-nature was ever growing more and more sensual and material ized—a notion that reacted again on the conception of hell, which soon began to be painted in coarse, earthly colors, blazing with eternal fire, through which blackened devils and scorched souls flitted in endless torment. From the gross materialism that now vitiated all conceptions of the D. and of demons, sprang the loathsome belief, com mon enough in the early church fathers, but during the middle ages exhibiting itself only in the superstitions of the vulgar—viz., of the carnal intercourse of devils with women. See WITCHCRAFT.