Devils, Demons
and Angels
THE WORDS devil and demon are not
English words originally, but were borrowed from Greek. The English word
demon was taken directly from the
Latin daemon, which, in turn, goes back
to the Greek daímon or daimónion. In
Pagan Greece, a demon was a kind of
immaterial or spiritual being who occupied a position in the universe midway
between humanity and the Gods and
could travel into either realm. Among
other things, demons could serve as
messengers between the two realms.
These demons were not always malevolent, but quite often were benevolent
or indifferent toward humanity.
The English word devil has a slightly
more complicated history, going back
to Old English (Anglo-Saxon) deofol,
which is related to German Teufel and
Dutch duivel. All three of these words
can be traced back to the Gothic diabaulus. The Gothic word, in turn, was
borrowed from Greek diábolos, which
originally meant a slanderer, a liar, a
perjurer, and so forth. That is, a diábolos is just a person – any ordinary person – who cast aspersions on others or
spoke falsehoods.
The same Greek word was also
borrowed into Latin as diabolus. As
Latin evolved into French, Spanish,
Portuguese and Italian, the Latin word
became diable in French, diablo in
Spanish, diabo in Portuguese and diavolo in Italian.
Angels are demons, too
Like so many other things, the meanings of these two words – demon and
devil – were greatly changed by the
coming of the monotheistic religions,
Judaism and Christianity. The Hebrew
Scriptures – including some books that
the rabbis would later reject – began
to be translated into Greek by Greekspeaking Jews, as early as the fourth
century before the Christian era. This
old Greek translation of the Hebrew
Bible is usually called the Septuagint.
It had an enormous influence on all the
books of the New Testament, which
were also written in Greek.
In the Septuagint, the kind of
im­material or spiritual Being that the
Pagan Greeks called a demon is sometimes still called a demon (daímon or
daimónion), More often, however, it is
called an angel (ángelos). The Greek
word ángelos just means a messenger,
and it originally referred to ordinary
people who carried messages. Applied
to demons, the word just emphasizes one of the functions that those
Beings have.
In the Septuagint, as in the New
Testament, there was no moral difference whatsoever between a demon
and an angel: an angel can be either
good or evil, just as a demon can. The
New Testament speaks in one place of
“the devil and his angels” (Matthew
25:41). In another place, it describes
a coming war in heaven, which the
Archangel Michael and his angels
will wage against Satan and his angels
(Revelation 12:7, 9). The popular view
that such Beings are called angels when
they are good and messengers of the
Christian or Jewish God, but demons
when they are evil and messengers of
the Devil, has no basis in the Bible. It
is a somewhat later development, as we
shall see below.
Satan, the adversary
In the Hebrew Scriptures, there is also
the occasional mention of a being called
ha Satan. This phrase just means “the
adversary.” In the Septuagint, however,
Hebrew ha Satan is usually translated
as ho diábolos, literally, “the slanderer,
the liar.” This is something of a mistranslation, but it seems to have been
a traditional one. (In these phrases,
the Hebrew ha or Greek ho simply
means “the.”)
The New Testament, being written
in Greek and heavily influenced by the
Septuagint, most often uses the same
phrase, ho diábolos, “the Devil,” to
refer to the same Being. In a few places,
however, he is called ho Satanas, which
is simply a transcription (with a Greek
ending added) of the Hebrew phrase ha
Satan. Very rarely, he is simply called
Satanas, without the word ho (meaning
“the”). In these cases the word seems
almost to be used as one of the Devil’s
proper names, Satan.
Demonizing the old gods
For monotheists, naturally enough, the
many Gods and Goddesses of the Pagan
Greeks could not be thought of as actual
Gods, but had to be called by some
other word. The early Christians, like
the Jews, had no doubts about the existence of these Beings, but they saw them
as subordinate Beings under their One
God. Since the word demon originally
referred to spiritual Beings subordinate
to the Pagan Gods, Jewish monotheists,
naturally enough, extended its range to
cover the Pagan Gods as well. “For all
the Gods of the Pagans are demons” –
so claims the Septuagint (Psalm 95:5).
(In the Hebrew and English Bibles, this
is Psalm 96:5.)
Christians easily followed suit,
beginning with Paul: Pagan sacrifices
before images of their Gods are sacrifices “to demons (daimónia), not to
God” (I Corinthians 10:20). Christians
were to shun these sacrifices, which
are a form of idolatry, as they would
shun any sin. It is not too great a jump
from all this to the notion that all
the Pagan Gods are themselves evil
Beings, and one small jump further
turns every demon into an evil Being.
And, of course, if all demons were evil,
what should Christians call Beings of
the same kind who serve their God?
The word angel was at hand, and so
it acquired its present, more limited
meaning: angels good, demons bad.
– Robert Mathiesen