Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/153

Rh Wisdom, a product of Alexandrian-Jewiah thought in the 2d century before Christ, which speaks of the devil having &quot; through envy introduced evil into the world &quot; (ii. 24), is supposed to represent a stage in this development ; and the apocryphal books of Enoch and Esdras (IV.), the former of which is pre-Christian, indicate further .stages. Another stage is supposed to be marked by the recoguition of a &quot;devil,&quot; or evil spirit, under the name of Asmodeus, in the book of Tobit (150 B.C.) There is certainly a remarkable analogy betwixt parts of the eschatological teaching of the book of Enoch and other apocryphal books and that erf the gospels. But the development of Jewish theology as a whole, in the ages immediately antecedent to Christianity, is still involved in considerable obscurity ; and it is difficult to say how much of the. eschatology and demonology of the New Testament is to be regarded as original, and how much as derived or inherited from prior modes of thought. It must also be conceded that, even should we accept the modern critical theory of the rise of the New Testament conception of the devil and of demons, there is much in it that must be pronounced very different from the Zoroastrian or Iranian conception. The devil of the gospels is in some respects very unlike the Ahriman of Zoroastrianism. He is in no sense a twin-creator of man. He has no original share in him, and no right to his homage. In the Persian system the warfare of good or evil is a warfare of balanced forces. But the evil personality of the New Testament, powerful as he is, and always the enemy of the divine, is yet a subordinated and inferior being. He is the tempter of the Son of God and the enemy of man. He has power on earth, and even a certain power over the Son of man ; and yet the Son can restrain and bid him get behind Him. The subordinated forces of evil the demons are all subject to Christ. They hear His word and obey it. In short, the devil of the New Testa ment is, in comparison with the source of evil recognized by Zoroastrianism, a limited power. He is a subordinate although insurrectionary spirit, working by spiritual means upon the heart of man, and in no sense a native power having an original or creative hold of him. This sets the evangelical conception on a higher level than the Persian, and proves that the Jewish mind, supposing that it did borrow certain impulses from the Iranian dualism with which it came in contact in the period of exile, yet wrought out the conception in the depth of its own religious and moral consciousness within the sphere of revealed truth which was its great educational medium. The idea of an evil personality was therefore so far a native growth of the Jewish mind, working upon hints contained, although not developed, in the earlier Hebrew Scriptures. It is evident from various passages, both of the Pentateuch (Lev. xvii. 17 ; Deut. xxxii. 17) and of the prophetic Scriptures and the Psalms (Isa. xiii. 21, xxxiv. 14; Jer. xv. 36; Ps. cvi. 37), that the Hebrews were cognizant of evil beings supposed to dwell in darkness and waste places. The names applied to those beings in the passages referred to are various, sometimes seirim lit. goats (Lev. xvii. 7 ; Isa. xiii. 21), and sometimes shedim (Deut. xxxii. 17), probably a name for demigods, both phrases being translated &quot; devils &quot; in our authorized version of the Pentateuch. This translation suggests later associations ; but such expressions plainly denote a belief in evil beings, the survival, probably, in the Hebrew consciousness of fragments of an older native faith which deified the powers of evil as well as of good. Some have traced a similar survival in the name Azazel, translated in our version scape-goat (Levit. xvi. 8, 10, 26), and which has been supposed to represent an evil being haunting the desert, to which was devoted the goat sent away on the great day of atonement. This opinion is disputed by others on grounds both philological and theological. But it may be almost certainly assumed that, with all the jealous monotheism of the Jews, there was an undergrowth of darker conceptions, pointing to evil existences opposed to the divine, and that to some extent the later idea of the devil sprang out of this natural growth in the Hebrew mind of an evil side to nature and to life. This process of growth may have been greatly aided by contact with the Persian dualism, and especially the idea of a kingdom and hierarchy of evil powers seems to have been indebted to this source. But it was also largely original, and at the end, as at the beginning, the Jewish and Christian conceptions of the devil and his angels were very distinct from those of the Persian faith. They belong to a higher level of thought, and are the product of a more advanced stage of moral and spiritual feeling. The idea of the devil so clearly expressed in the New Testament passed as a dominant factor into the early Christian theology, acquiring for many centuries an always deeper hold on the popular religious imagination. In the writings of the fathers of the 2d and 3d centuries the devil plays an important part. The whole of the Roman imperial system, and all that opposed the progress of the gospel, was identified with his kingdom. Satan was the &quot; prince of this world,&quot; he was the rival and caricature of the divine. &quot; Satan,&quot; said Tertullian, &quot; is God s ape ;&quot; and the saying passed into a proverb. He fell by pride and arrogance and envy of the divine creation (Iren., Adv. Hcer., iv. 40). He was, according to Cyprian (De Unitate Eccl.), the author of all heresies and delusions ; he held man by reason of hia sin in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of Christ s blood. This ex traordinary idea of a payment or satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man s salvation is found both in Irenseus (Adv. Hcer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen, and may be said to have held its sway in the church for nearly a thousand years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon. In this as in other respects the early Alexandrian school showed a milder and broader type of thought than the prevailing theology of the church. Occasionally in later times the milder opinion was expressed, as by Gregory of Nyssa in the 4th century ; but gradually it vanished, and the devil was drawn by the theological pencil in darker and more terrible colours. Augustine greatly helped to strengthen and confirm the darker view, and to give in this as in other things a gloomier tinge to religious thought. During the Middle Ages the belief in the devil was absorbing saints conceived themselves and others to be in constant conflict with him. It is hardly possible for us now, as M. Reville says in his short treatise on the subject, &quot; to imagine to what a degree this belief controlled men s whole lives. It was the one fixed idea with every one, particularly from the 13th to the 15th century the period at which we may consider this superstition to have reached its climax.&quot; The superstition showed certainly but slight signs of yielding in the 15th, or even in the 16th or 17th centuries. Luther lived in a constant consciousness of contact and opposition with the evil one. At his study, in bed, or in his cell, the devil was incessantly interfering with his work or rest. As he was going to begin his studies he heard a noise which he immediately interpreted as proceeding from his enemy. &quot; As I found he was about to begin again, I gathered together my books and got into bed. Another time in the night I heard him above my cell walking in the cloister ; but as I knew it was the devil I paid no attention to him and went to sleep.&quot; Again he says : &quot; Early this morning, when I awoke the fiend came and began disputing with 