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296 — Ahriman

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Ahrweiler

might give ollense tn Jewish concpptions of that to assume a part that in Genesis was assigned to God Himself. At the same time he is

of Sosio.sh, so

is the Messiah, according to the Jewto destroy the devil and his kingdom. Just as. again, Ahriman, in the Persian belief, was to do mankind terrible injury .shortly before his end, so too, in the .lewish view, great tribulations were to precede the Messiah's coming. The Jews would seem to have cxjiected an evil Messiah, an Anlichrisl conse(|uently. the teai hing of Antichrist the Testament in this direction

—

later time

ish

given an everinoreasing army of evil spints to serve him: the ancient popular belief in liarmful not exactly evil spirits becomes Irausformed into a belief in a dominion of evil uider the sway of its head,

—

—

296

the devil.

faith,



Xew

Consequently Satan (or theilevil)obtain(d for Jewish ideas almost the sjinie sigiiilicance as Ahriman for Persian. Indeed, in certain respects he developed greater power than his Persian counteriiart, inasmuch as he succeeded in corrupting the immediate followers of Gml, whereas Ahriman, in his contest with

the Incarnation of Satan. himself.

does not imply anything new. This Antichrist is, moreover, to be, on the Iiypulheses of sevend writers, nothing else than an incarnation of the devil In consequence of the hat red of the Jews to-

ward Rome, even

after

it

had

acce|)te(l C'liristianily,

this Antichrist was also called Akmii.is. a Jewish rendering of Konudus; thus, in I'seudo-.Methodius, "Romulus (jui est Arniilus" (compare W. Bousset, "Antichrist," pp. 33, G7). niRi.TOCRArHV E. Stave. KiiifluM d. Pnntifimua auf ilan Jhi/(il(lim. IS'.IS; W. Bousset, JJrr >4ll(lr;irW, ISiB; Slelten,

Antichrii't. (n A. Ilimek's autii<i-iir rt

Itrakni-iikliii'iiilir fllr Prnto'tTliaAtiiiif u. Kirrhe; J. Diiniiesteter. (trmuzd Purls. 1S77: Jueksen. Ininlhin^ in (Jelyer and

Ahrimon^

Kuhne. (initnlrU'*

tli

Iranisrhm

r

I'liiltilotjic, ji. ti:ilHWl.

E. S.

In Rabbinical Literature

Ahriman (Angromainyush)is mentioned in Sanhedrui. 3'J: Amemar, on being told by one if the Mngi. "The tipper half of

<

thy boily belongs to Ormu/.d [t'0^1^1. the good princijile; the lower to Ahriiuaii H'DlinN). the evil |)rinciple." rejilies siitirically. " Wliy, llicn, does Ahriman permit Ornuizd to carry the water (the excreta) through his province?" The whole conception of Ahriman as the antagonist of the divine princijile of goodness permeated Judaism in many ways. Just as Ahriman appeare in the guise of a serpent and casts poison into man with the aid of Jeh, the persouitication of menstrual impurity (" Bundahish," iii.: in West, "Sacred Books of the East," vi. 6; 'Windischniann, '"Zoroastrische Stndien," p. 61), so does Sanuiel. the falli'U angel-prince, select the Serlieut as the seducer of Adam (I'irke K. El. xiii.), and the poison of inijiuritv in Eve is his work znJuimo kIkI n<ihiiiih—{%ih. UCki; Yeb. 103«; 'Ab. Zarah, "In the future the Holy One— bles.se(l be His 22«). name shall bring the Evil Spirit and slay him in the presence of the righteous and the wicked ones: the righteous will shed tears of joy at their victory over

—

weep at their power as he will then

the gigantic foe, ami the wicked will inability to defeat so small a ajipear to them " (Suk. h'lti).

This end of the archliend goes back to an older form than is jiresented in "Bundahish." xxx. 30-

The Abriman Dragon. (From FerguBson, " Hintory

33, according to which Ahuramazda at Defeat of the last day with his seven archanthe Arch- gels goes to war with Ahriman and

of Arthiteclure.")

Ahuramazda. did not achieve such success. The Jews tried to preserve the monism that was their original view by explaining the rise of dualism as due to a fall among the originally good spirits. The author of the Book of Enoch (chaps, vi. ct scr/.) attributed the question of the origin of evil to the conception of a fall of the angels who seduced the daughters of men (compare Gen. vi.), becoming thus the authors of all earthly sins, and especially of the demons, who, according to the same author, are descended from the giants which the daughters of men bore to the fallen angels. In accordance with another doctrine, the devil was said to have been actively present in the Serpent in the Garden of Eden (see above); while still another maintains that the principles of good and evil were opposed to each other from the very beginning. Just as the dominion of the evil spirits was, in the P'arsee theory, to come to an end with the advent

the seven archfiends each archangel crushing the arclitieiid opposed to him, until tinally only Ahriman and the Serpent remain. Against these Ahuramazda rises as liigli priest with the magic girdle in his hand, and. assisted b}' Sraosha, brings final defeat upon theni; so that the Serpent is burned in the molten metal of the nether world, into which Aliiiinan. too. casts himself to be consumed along with the whole infernal region, which is then purified and added to the regenerated fiend.



world of Ahuramazda. The older view of the defeat of Ahriman may be learned from the .sculptural presentations of Darius and Xerxes, in which there is the image of Aliuramaz<la stabbing a monstrous animal called, as a rule, the Alirimanian beast, but which is. in point of fact, Ahriman himself. This is a repetition of the old Babylonian myth of Bel Marduk and the Tiamat (see illustrations from the