Bible: Commentary, Dictionary, and Joruanal of Biblical Literature

New Testament Research Project |

Journal of Biblical Literature

When did angels become demons? The articles attempts to tackle the issue of Christian mythical folklore verses what is actually written as scripture throughout the Old and New Testaments. The author continues with the basis that as the Christian religion accepted the fallen angels which were cast out with Satan as demonic evil impure creatures. Ancient Jews did not have that same thinking on the subject. He later adds evidence to support his view that this was made up by Christian writers later in the 2nd century.

He describes in the article that the Jews thought of angels and demons as two separate species that should not be mixed. The term Demon in the Jewish vocabulary was used to describe a malevolent being. Whom could be or not be evil, riddled with disease or have some other issue deadly to man’s mental or spiritual well-being.

In (Deut 32:17) “They sacrifice to demons and not to God; to gods they did not know.” Also in Palms there is reference where they sacrificed their sons and daughters to the demons. However Christians translating these passages would have made a mistake by transposing the demon for “šēdîm which is related to the Assyrian šîdu” (Martin, 2010, p. 658). Representing a golden bull they worshipped with wings. Hence Hebrew translators misconstrued words during their translation to Greek.

Greeks us the term daimons to describe gods, goddess, beings with divine powers, being that existed between life and death. So now it is suggested the Greek translators had taken the collection of Hebrew words to describe their view of evil multitude of evil and lumped them into what the Greeks understood in their vocabulary as daimons.

The author continues that historically people have made a mistake on two accounts. First in the story of angels mating with mortal women. They, the angels were not demons. The offspring that were born from the unions and became giants and later killed,...