Demons
July 31, 2006
Dear Friends
Recently I had the opportunity to visit a man in a psychiatric ward who wanted to talk to someone about the Bible. He had been raised in a Christadelphian Sunday School but had left as a teen. He is now an old man and suffering from what appears to my untrained eye to be schizophrenia. Many thoughts came to me during my visit including how horrible and devastating mental illness is. One thought, which turned my attention again to this subject, was how in the first-century Jesus could with a touch of his hand cure this man from his prison. In that day, this man would be called a demoniac. He would more than likely be ostracized from society. There would be no medical treatment available. He would very literally be “having no hope, and without God in the world.†(Eph. 2:12)
Today, modern science rejects the notion that demons exist. For this simple fact, many Christians also reject the idea of literal demons too. Things that were inexplicable in the first century such as blindness with no outward defect or epilepsy were generally accepted to be the work of demons or “lesser gods.†As scientists discovered the root causes of these defects and diseases, the notion of demons gradually has come to be disregarded in most modern cultures.
We do not reject the literal interpretation of demons for the same reason that many Christians reject demons. Although we appreciate that the sciences support the reasoning we have had all along, that cannot and never will be the reason behind our assertion that demons are figurative and not literal. As we believe that God guided men to write the Bible, we certainly can’t write-off the use of the word to the scientific ignorance of the day, or even worse, the false religion of the day. We believe that there is a deep and abiding lesson contained in the usage of the Greek word, daimonion.
Just to be clear from the start, there is no connection between the word devil and demon. For example, the King James Version or Authorized Version uses the confusing term “devils” in place of “demons.” One might assume that “devils” is simply the plural of “devil” or in original Greek, diabolos. This is not true. In the original Greek, demon comes from the word, daimon or daimonion.
According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary, the word “signified, among pagan Greeks, an inferior deity, whether good or bad.†In Acts 17:18, its translation is made clear where “foreign gods” (NIV) is used instead of demons.
- “A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, ‘What is this babbler trying to say?’ Others remarked, ‘He seems to be advocating foreign gods.’ They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.â€
Secular historians such as Josephus will confirm the fact that people of the day, both Jew and Gentile, thought of demons as dispossessed souls of men. At the same time, however, they did not, as orthodox Christianity purports, think of them as fallen angels. The first century model for demons was that of a lesser god. You had Zeus, Apollo, Venus and so forth as sort of a top-tier level of gods and then demons as a second-tier level of gods. They also understood that these gods could be either good or bad. If they were bad, they would cause things such as diseases, insanity or other physical ailments.
As we see here, it is again the choice of the translators to choose “demons” in one instance and “foreign gods” in another. In all, the New International Version translates a form of the word daimon as “demon” ninety times in scripture while translating it “foreign gods” only once. We must ask us why modern translators chose to ignore, with one exception, the way that the Greek word was almost used exclusively for the idea of a foreign god. We also have to ask why they did translate it correctly in that one instance. The reason is that the context of the word absolutely forced them to translate it correctly. It makes no sense otherwise.
Biblically-speaking, a very important point to understand is that the word means a pagan deity, a false god or an IDOL. In our opinion, the most reliable way to way to understand how a word is supposed to be translated in the Bible is by taking the whole of scriptures into consideration. If we look at a few references to “foreign gods” in the Old Testament, the support for the “foreign god” or “idol” connection comes through very clearly.
- They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. (Deuteronomy 32:16- 17)
- And they served their idols: which were a snare unto them. Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood. (Psalms 106:36-38)
It is very plain from the context of the verses, there is no idea of souls of dead men or evils spirit, but they are clearly in reference to idols. More importantly, many other verses support the fact that there is only one God of which the most notable is Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” (See also Romans 3:29,30; I Corinthians 8:5,6; Ephesians 4:4,5; I Timothy 2:5) While the Bible recognizes the fact that people will believe in these beings, it also denies that they are real in any place but in the minds of men.
- “Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any. They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed.†(Is. 44:8,9)
We will pick up here in our discussion, next week.
Have a great week,
