There are extant writings from Jewish, pagan, and Christian traditions, and there is also much archaeological evidence of magical artifacts that provide a window into the popular spirituality of the time. There are papyri, gems, amulets, bits of metal, bowls, and other objects inscribed with spells for every realm of life from headaches and fevers to love to protection against evil demons. Most significantly, not only have these items been found in pagan traditions, but there are items distinctly Jewish and Christian as well. Spirits were everywhere in the ancient world, and people wanted to control them. There were also voices that wanted to subdue this magical trade, primarily Christian preachers and bishops. Christian ascetics, even as they too saw a world inhabited by spirits and demons who wanted to harm them at every moment, had an entirely different way of controlling the demons.
This was the lively spirituality John Chrysostom encountered as a fourth-century preacher in Antioch and then Constantinople.1 Such traditions constituted the ideological milieu in which Chrysostomâs congregation lived and in which Chrysostom spoke. Therefore, in order to understand Chrysostomâs demonology well, it is necessary to survey Chrysostomâs demonological context. This is particularly true because Chrysostomâs most elaborate articulation of his demonology is a forceful rejection of the ideas of the laity in his congregation.
JEWISH DEMONOLOGIES
Jewish demonology in the fourth century focused on the activities of demons against human beings more than on their origin or nature, and the spirits known as daimones, or demons, were evil.2 All activities of these spirits were for harm. The demonsâ maliciousness is explained in both primary narratives of demonic origins, both of which developed in intertestamental literature. The most prominent of these, and that which Chrysostom explicitly rejects, is in 1 Enoch 6â11, expanding on Genesis 6:2. The narrative, called the watchers myth, recounts that Semjaza, the chief angel, saw the daughters of men on earth and lusted after them. Semjaza convinced a large number of other angels to go down with him and to have intercourse with the women. The rogue angels joined Semjaza and went to earth to sin with women. The sin was not about the lust and intercourse alone, however. Semjaza, Azazel, and Ezeqeel, the three archangels who transgressed, also revealed knowledge of things like astrology and metallurgy to the humans. The author of 1 Enoch writes that the fallen angels ârevealed to them [humans] all kinds of sins. And the women have borne giants, and the whole earth has thereby been filled with blood and unrighteousnessâ (1 Enoch 9:9b-10).3 These events were a further corruption. Michael was charged with hunting down the fallen angels, binding them, and throwing them into a pit where they will be until the final judgment, when they will go into eternal fire.
The other prominent narrative comes from the Greek Life of Adam and Eve 12-17. Life claims the devilâs jealousy of Adam and Adamâs place in creation, and the devilâs attempt to make the angels worship him instead, as the reason for the resulting punishment of his fall. In this section of the Life, the devil (ho diabolos [ὠδΚΏβοΝοĎ]) tells the story:
And when Michael kept forcing me to worship, I said to him, âWhy do you compel me? I will not worship one inferior and subsequent to me. I am prior to him in creation; before he was made, I was already made. He ought to worship me.â When they heard this, other angels who were under me refused to worship him. . . . And the Lord God was angry with me and sent me with my angels out from our glory; and because of you [Adam], we were expelled into this world from our dwellings and have been cast onto the earth.4
The devilâs refusal to worship Adam caused his fall. Similar in theme to this story is a verse from the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon: âThrough the devilâs envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience itâ (Wisdom of Solomon 2:24).
These two origin narratives are the most common in Jewish literature and the two that most often appear in early Christian literature as an explanation for demonsâ existence. By the fourth century, Jewish literature assumes these narratives and does not speak much about them. Demons exist, and there are reasonable explanations for their existence, but fourth-century Jews were primarily concerned about the activities in which demons engaged, the things for which they were feared.
One account of the nature of demons will suffice to demonstrate the way demonsâ natures relate to their ability to induce fear. In the Babylonian Talmud Berakhot, the rabbis describe demons as innumerable, invisible, and responsible for difficulties:
If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could withstand the demons. Said Abaye, âThey are more numerous than we and stand around us like the ridge around a field.â Said R. Huna, âAt the left hand of each one of us is a thousand of them, and at the right hand, ten thousand.â Said Raba, . . . âThe fact that the clothing of rabbis wears out from rubbing comes on account of them, the bruising of the feet comes from them. If someone wants to know that they are there, take ashes and sprinkle them around the bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a cock.â5
Though these demons are invisible, they make footprints in ashes. Footprints imply bodies, as does ârubbing againstâ the scholarsâ clothes and wearing them out. Therefore the demons are not incorporeal, even as they are invisible and, according to other statements, spiritual. Note, too, the dark and foreboding tenor of this passage. âNo creature could endure seeing themâ likely because they were so awful to behold; the demons âsurround us,â implying an inability to escape the demons. There is a note of fear here, or at least a description of corporeal, though spiritual, demons and their physical harm that are both worth fearing, a theme repeated in this period.6
The primary feature of the Talmud and Midrash that differs from earlier Jewish sources is that increasingly more sins are attributed to the work of Satan, here a chief demon, than in previous sources.7 Babylonian Talmud Shabbat claims Satan was responsible for people worshiping the golden calf: âAt the end of forty days Satan came along and confounded the worldâ and convinced the Israelites that Moses was dead.8 Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin attributes Davidâs sin with Bathsheba to Satan: âBath Sheba [sic] was shampooing her hair behind a screen. Satan came to [David] and appeared to him in the form of a bird. He shot an arrow at [the screen] and broke it down, so that she stood out in the open, and he saw her.â9 In both cases, Satan makes sin possible, though in neither is Satan the cause of sin. He is responsible only indirectly, for example, for breaking the screen and exposing Bathsheba, but not for possessing David or forcing him to commit adultery. In fact, the rabbi says that David asked God to be tested as Abraham was tested, and God obliged, suggesting a sanctioned adversarial role for Satan not unlike the one in the story of Job. In the case of the golden calf, Satan works independently of God, inciting Aaron for his own purposes rather than for Godâs. Thus, in terms of agency, Satan tempts and deceives, but the human being commits the sin. The Talmud also records demonic temptations of rabbis, not only interpretations of scriptural narratives:
R. Meir would ridicule sinners. One day Satan appeared to him on the opposite side of a canal in the form of a woman. There being no ferry, he grabbed a rope and got across. As he had reached half way down the rope, Satan released him.10
Demons appear as instigators of sin, not at all unlike what we will see in Christian monastic literature.
Jews understood demons to be malicious spirits. One talmudic warning reads, âIt is forbidden to a man to greet another by night for fear that he is a demon.â11 Demons can also be the explanation for any kind of misfortune, from disease12 to robbery to death, and for this reason it was not uncommon for Jews in late antiquity to carry amulets or to use incantation bowls and other devices for repelling demons.13 Jews, no less than pagansâor Christiansâworried about what demons could do to a person, what (primarily physical) harm they could inflict, and took the necessary precautions. These amulets and talismans, found in graves, private homes, public spaces, and even in synagogues, demonstrate what precisely people feared demons were capable of doing.14 Many of the Jewish magical items were either for exorcising demons afflicting a patient or for preventing harm from demons in general, such as in this inscription on an incantation bowl:
This is the figure of the mbkltâ-demon who appears in dreams, and in images. Gabriel and Suriel appear to him. This bond is from this day and forever, amen, amen, selah. This strong seal and guarding and sealing of Solomon is for Panaâ-Hormiz bar Resanduk and for Bustai bat Givat . . . and for all of their household, their possessions, their food, and all their houses, that they might have favorable healing from heaven in the name of El Saddai.15
Other incantations are more specific: âTo heal . . . the body of Marian daughter of Sarah and of her fetus that is in her belly . . . Afflictions and enemies . . . That they may have power neither over Marian nor over her fetus.â16 Another reads, âExorcise the fever and the shiver, the female demons (and) the spirits from the body of Yaâitha the daughter of Marian.â17 And, âI adjure you evil spirit, whether flying or resting, that you should not touch Habibi son of Herta, and that you should not appear to him by any likeness by which you appear to people.â18 These imply that pregnancy complications, fevers, and appearing to people in various guises were common actions of demons.19 These are all offenses against individuals. Illness is the foremost affliction caused by demons, but there are amulets and bowls for protection of a personâs house and for protection against thieves as well, and even one accusing a demon of murder and asking protection against further killing.20 The magical objects do not refe...
