According to familiar Christian mythology, demons are or were fallen angels. Satan was an angel who rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. Other angels rebelled along with him and became his minions. These fallen angels became demons. The mythology also assumes that "demon" refers to the same being as "evil (or unclean or polluted) spirit." (1) Contrary to what may be common assumptions, this mythology was not shared by most ancient Jews, including those who wrote and translated the Hebrew Bible, most writers of ancient noncanonical Jewish texts, and Jews in general before the rise of Christianity. Moreover, that myth, in its complete form, is not found in the NT, though separate aspects of it may be discerned there. The Christian myth that equated fallen angels with demons arose in the second and third centuries C.E. It was an invention of late ancient Christian writers. From a historical point of view, therefore, we should not retroject the equation of demons with fallen angels back into the minds of NT writers. Angels became demons only beginning in the second century and only then at the hands of Christians. The term "demon" is often used to refer to any and all malevolent superhuman (or supernatural) beings. (2) Thus, all sorts of beings from the Hebrew Bible, ancient Judaism, and the ancient Near East--evil angels, various "disease demons," Lilith, impure "spirits," and many more--are lumped together as "demonic beings." For this article, I do not include every nonhuman, intelligent evil being from any culture or any language in my category "demon." I ask rather, When did what the ancient Jews called "angels" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) become identified with what the ancient Greeks called [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] or [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]? When later Christians asserted that the evil or fallen angels they inherited from Judaism were to be identified with [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], they were not choosing merely a generic word for evil beings. They were equating the fallen angels of contemporary Judaism with those beings the Greeks worshiped as gods or demigods. They were making a new identification between two species derived from two separate cultures. That identification should not be retrojected into the minds of the NT writers.
