patio34 and waiting, I had the following bookmarked. I'm not certain who did the reasearch-I'm searching for it now and will post the information. (The author is Anthony Fitzgerald)
Paul's quotation from Deuteronomy
The origins of ideas about demons
Other references concerning demons in the OT
Goat worship
Satyrs
Before we follow through 1 Corinthians 10:20, "they sacrifice to demons and not to God", Paul's quotation from Deuteronomy 32, it is necessary to say a little more about the different languages used by Paul and the Old Testament writers.
The Old Testament was almost entirely written in Hebrew. Although, as a Pharisee, Paul would have been able to read and speak Hebrew, when he was out preaching the Gospel in the Gentile world, or writing letters to communities of believers, he used Greek, the common language of the day. So when he quoted from the Old Testament, he would be using a translation from the Hebrew into Greek. Sometimes he may have translated a text himself, but it often looks as if he was using a Greek version of the Old Testament widely used by Jews at that time. Although there are slightly different forms of it, this version is known as the Septuagint and was produced by Jewish scholars between 150 and 200 years before the birth of Jesus.
Paul's quotation from Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy was written, by Moses, at the end of the forty years wanderings of the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai, after they had come out of Egypt around 1500 years before the birth of Jesus. It recounts various of their experiences and how, although God had delivered their from slavery and had provided water and food for them, many of them often showed a rebellious spirit against Him. Paul's quotation is from chapter 32. From verse 15 onwards, Moses is describing how Israel turned away from the LORD to worship other gods, the same theme with which Paul opens 1 Corinthians 10. There are many correspondences between the two chapters; note in particular the references to provoking God to jealousy (Deut 32:16, 21; 1 Cor. 10:22).
Paul was quoting from verse 17:
''They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear." (Deut.32:17)
Paul was writing in Greek, and was quoting a Greek translation of the verse. However, and this is a crucially important point, the NKJV, and other English versions, in their choice of the word "demons" (or "devils" in the AV), also follow the Greek Septuagint translation, rather than the original Hebrew. The Hebrew word is one that means "a destroyer" and it is clear that Moses was using it to describe the pagan gods to which Israel had turned. It is also clear that Moses taught Israel that these "destroyers" were, in reality, no gods at all, as God himself said in verse 21:
"They have provoked me to jealousy with what is not God; they have moved me to anger by their foolish idols" (Deut.32:21)
Again, in verse 39, the LORD God says: "Now see that I, even I, am he, and there is no God beside me: I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; nor is there any who can deliver out of my hand." (Deut. 32:39)
All this is only reiterating what Moses had said before in Deuteronomy 4:39:
"Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other."
Notice how the word LORD in this verse is printed in capital letters. Most English Bibles adopt this practice, and for the following reason. Through Moses, God gave to Israel a special name for himself. That name consisted of four Hebrew letters, usually taken to correspond with YHWH in English, and read as "Yahweh" (although we cannot actually know how the Name would be pronounced by the Hebrews 3500 years ago). So wherever the word "LORD" appears in our Bibles, we should remember that this is not just a word showing respect, but also represents the Name of the God of Israel, in contrast with the names of the gods of the pagan nations.
The origins of ideas about demons
The gods of Babylon, from where Israel's ancestors had come, the gods of Egypt, ineffective against the ten plagues, the gods of the nations around Israel in the wilderness, and the gods of the land of Canaan, to which Israel was about to enter, were in reality, no gods at all; they were mere vanities of the human mind. Why did Moses choose a word which meant "destroyers" for these gods? No doubt because those who worshipped them, in the end, brought about their own destruction, as was so dramatically demonstrated in Egypt.
It is, then, highly significant that the Jewish scholars who translated the Old Testament into Greek chose the word for "demons" in this place. It was, indeed, a most appropriate word. As we have seen, it was used by the Greeks themselves to refer to the gods and demi-gods in which they believed. But more than that; it shows us that the Jewish scholars themselves understood the word "demons" to have this meaning. They used it to refer to pagan gods. Moreover, they used it for gods which their own scriptures taught them only existed as destructive ideas in the minds of those who believed in them!
These gods of the ancient world, Babylon, Egypt and Canaan, were not unlike the gods of Greece and Rome. There were hundreds, if not thousands of them. There were the supposedly powerful gods such as Bel and Marduk of Babylon, Ra and Osiris of Egypt and the Baals of Caanan. But there were also lesser gods of rivers, trees, animals, and so on. Some were thought to be kindly disposed to men and women, others hostile. Many of the practices associated with the worship of these gods were, in biblical terms, immoral and were condemned by Israel's God, along with the gods themselves.
Among the lesser gods, like the "heroes" of Greece in later times, there were those who were supposed to be the spirits of people who had died. (In the nations contemporary with Israel, there was the widely-held belief that something in human beings consciously survived death. That same idea has persisted down to the present time, in spite of the fact that the Bible teaches that "the dead know not anything" [Eccl. 9:6]. More of this in Chapter 7). It would depend on what kind of people they had been and how they had died, as to whether the spirits were considered as good or bad. Some of these spirits and other gods too, were thought to be capable of making their homes within living human beings, sometimes for good, but more often than not for evil. Various afflictions, including insanity, were thought to be caused by the indwelling of such spirits. These ideas led to and were encouraged by various groups of people associated with the pagan superstitions: sorcerers, magicians, mediums, who claimed power over these spirits, power to inflict them upon people and to rid people of them .
We shall look at these superstitions in more detail in the next chapter. Suffice it to say here that, around 2000 years before the birth of Jesus, the origins of ideas about people being "possessed" by demons are found in the religions of the ancient world. Moreover, these ideas are all part of religious systems declared by God through Moses to be utterly false.
Other references concerning demons in the OT
There are other places in the Old Testament where the Jewish translators used the Greek word for demons. These reinforce the link with pagan gods. Consider first an example from Psalms 96. In verses 4 and 5, the supremacy of God is declared:
"For the LORD is great, and greatly to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are idols, but the LORD made the heavens." (Ps. 96:4,5)
At first it might seen as if the writer believed that the other gods of the nations actually existed but that his God, the LORD (Yahweh) was simply greater than them all. However, the Hebrew word used here for "idols" weans "things of nought" or "no-things". In the Septuagint, this word is here translated by "demons". So, again, this is what the Jewish scholars understood by the word "demons" - things of nought - gods which did not really exist.
Psalm 106 was written many years after Deuteronomy, but the writer is again speaking of Israel's exodus from Egypt, their wilderness journey and their rebellion against God. Verses 35-39 refer to their idolatry in Canaan:
"they mingled with the Gentiles and learned their works; they served their idols, which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan ..." (Ps. 106:35-39)
This time, the Hebrew word for "idols" means "causes of grief", and is probably intended to include both the images, and the gods which those images represented. As in Deuteronomy, the Hebrew word behind "demons" is the one that means "destroyers"; how dreadfully appropriate in view of the human sacrifice involved! Again, the English versions are following the Septuagint translators who also used the word for "demons" here.
It is clear, then, that these "demons" were the gods of Canaan. The Israelites made their own images of these gods, but the gods themselves had no real existence. They were merely imaginations in the minds of those who worshipped them. Nevertheless, the worshippers of these imaginary gods or "demons" did believe that they actually existed and must be feared; so much so that they were even prepared to sacrifice their children to them. Such can be the dreadful power of totally false ideas possessing the human mind.
This Psalm shows how belief in "demons", pagan gods, could cause people to engage in behaviour which appears to us as insane. There are other examples in the Old Testament. There is the well known incident when Elijah, the prophet of the LORD, confronted the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18). Calling on Baal to hear them, the prophets worked themselves into such a frenzy that they were cutting themselves with knives until the blood poured out. In the New Testament, the man called Legion, believing himself to be possessed by many demons, likewise cut himself with stones (Mark 5:5). Although not quite as gory, the description of the festival in Thailand, with which this study was introduced, shows that similar practices are not unknown today.
The incident involving Legion possibly had connections with another example from the Old Testament. In Isaiah 65:2, the LORD is again speaking of Israel as a rebellious people walking after their own thoughts, and continues in verse 3:
"a people who provoke me to anger continually to my face; who sacrifice in gardens and burn incense on altars of brick; who sit among the graves, and spend the night in the tombs; who eat swine's flesh ..." (Isa. 65:3)
This is another condemnation of Israel's worship of other gods, and it is interesting that the Septuagint adds an extra phrase after "burn incense on altars of brick", namely:
"to demons, which exist not"
Now apparently this phrase is not present in any of the ancient Hebrew texts in existence today. There are two possible explanations of this:
The phrase may have been in the original Hebrew text, but may have been left out accidentally when the manuscript was being copied later.
The phrase may have been an explanatory note which one of the Greek translators first put in the margin, and which then got copied into the Greek text.
Either way, it points up the use of the word "demon" elsewhere in the Septuagint to refer to pagan gods which are merely figments of human imagination.
With this addition, the correspondences between this passage and the incident involving Legion are striking: demons, tombs, swine. The miracle then appears as a dramatic demonstration that "demons which exist not" (except as products of human imagination) are of no account before the power of God in his Son.
The man is also described as having an "unclean spirit". Under the Law of Moses, contact with graves made a person ceremonially "unclean", and swine were categorised as "unclean" animals. Like many of the other miracles of Jesus, this one was probably also intended to be understood as a parable. The apparent transfer of the demons to the swine, and their consequent destruction, would be a dramatic warning to the Jews of Decapolis, where the miracle occurred, to be rid of unclean ideas associated with pagan gods. Decapolis, east of the Sea of Galilee, was a region where Greek influence was particularly strong.
Seen like this, the incident may also be an oblique allusion to Zechariah 13:2:
"It shall be in that day," says the LORD of hosts, "that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they shall no longer be remembered. I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to depart from the land."
Interestingly, in the Septuagint, the word demon appears again later in Isaiah 65:11. The NKJV reads: "But you are those that forsake the LORD, who forget my holy mountain, who prepare a table for Gad, and who furnish a drink offering for Meni". A footnote states that Gad and Meni were pagan deities. The NIV renders their as "Fortune" and "Destiny". However, for the first of these, the Septuagint uses daimonia, demon. In view of the addition to verse 3, considered above, this may also be seen as a reference to the nonentity of the pagan deities referred to here.
Goat worship
There are two more places where the New King James Version, like many other versions, follows the Septuagint and introduces the word "demons" in the Old Testament. They are:
Leviticus 17:7
"They shall no more offer their sacrifices to demons, after whom they played the prostitute."
2 Chronicles 11:15
"Then he appointed for himself priests for the high places, for the demons, and the calf idols which he had made."
If we accept that "demons" refers to pagan gods, these verses present no problem. However, it may be helpful to examine them more closely.
The Hebrew word used is sa'ir and primitively means "a hairy one". It is used in Genesis 27:11 of Esau, because he was a hairy man. But its most common use, over fifty times, is simply for a goat or a kid (a young goat). For example, in Leviticus 16, it is repeatedly used for the two goats which were required for the annual Day of Atonement. There is no good reason why it should not have been translated as "goats" in the passages quoted above. These then become references to goat-like gods which the people of Israel worshipped. They may have been images of goats, similar to the "calf idols", or they may have been actual goats. Either way, of course, they had no power and it may be because of this that the Septuagint translators chose to use the word for "demons".
Satyrs
In passing, it is perhaps worth mentioning two other passages for the benefit of readers of the Authorised Version. Both are concerned with prophecies referring to the desolation of Babylon. Quoting from the AV:
Isaiah 13:21
"... owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there."
Isaiah 34:14
"The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there ..."
The English word "satyr" is Greek in origin (Greek saturos) and refers to a mythological creature, half man, half animal. Often they were represented as half man, half goat. Such creatures were worshipped by the Greeks, the mythical god Pan being a notable example, and also by people of earlier ancient nations. For example, several of the Egyptian gods are pictured with animals' heads. In later times, the Devil and his minions have been pictured with horns, hooves and tails. The Authorised Version's use of the word might appear to give credence to the existence of such fantasies.
However, in both references the Hebrew word is again sa'ir, "a hairy one", and the NKJV gives "wild goats" in both places. (The similarity between sa'ir and satyr seems to be accidental). So these verses can simply be understood as referring to goats, which, it was prophesied, would inhabit the deserted site of Babylon, alongside other animals. It is possible that Isaiah was, at the same time, mocking the gods of Babylon, because the Babylonians, in common with many of the peoples of those days, worshipped gods in the forms of animals.
The "screech owl" ("night creature" in the NKJV) is the Hebrew word lilith. Isa. 34:11 is its only occurrence in the Bible. Some commentators identify it with lilitu, the succuba in Babylonian mythology, who was sometimes represented as a wolf. The correspondence is not accepted by all commentators but, if there is anything in it, it fits in with Isaiah foretelling the time when only the ruins of the city would be left for the Babylonian "gods". Isaiah's mockery of the pagan gods as non-entities will be considered further in Chapter 10.
