The origin of Demons

 

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary on Eph 6:

Rulers of the darkness of this world or Against the world rulers of this (present) darkness (Eph 2:2; 5:8; Lu 22:53; Col 1:13). On Satan and his demons being world rulers, compare Joh 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; Lu 4:6; 2Co 4:4; 1Jo 5:19, Greek, lieth in the wicked one. Two cases prove Satan not to be a mere subjective fancy: Christ's temptation; the entrance of demons into the swine (for these are incapable of such fancies). Satan tries to parody, or imitate in a perverted way, God's working (2Co 11:13, 14).

 

Unger, Biblical Demonology

“It’s to be noted carefully that Hebrew possesses no precise equivalent for the Hellenistic Greek terms daimon or daimonion.

[Furthermore] the rabbis divided demons into 2 classes: purely spiritual beings and half-spirits [halbgesiter].”

 

Emerson, The Serpent’s Seed, p. 71.

“Unlike today, in ages past a common belief was that evil spirits were the ghosts of dead Nephilim/Rephaim.”

 

1 Enoch 15.8 [aka Book of the Watchers], c. 300BC.

The giants [Heb. nephilim] who are produced from [the cohabitation of] spirits [in prison, 1Pet 3.19] and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling; because they are born from men, and from the holy watchers [aka angels, Dan 4.13, 17, 23LXX] is their beginning and primal origin.”

 

1 Enoch 19:1-2

Here shall stand the angels who have connected themselves with women, and their spirits [children?] assuming many different forms are defiling mankind and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods, (here shall they stand,) till the day of the great judgement in which they shall be judged till they are made an end of.

 

Athenagorus (A.D. 137-175)

Some angels “fell into impure love of virgins, and were subjugated by the flesh. [Of these] were begotten those who are called giants. [And] the souls of the giants, which are the demons who wander about the world, perform actions similar [to fallen angels. They] haunt the air and the earth, and are no longer able to rise to heavenly things…”

 

Justin Martyr, 2nd Apology 5 (c. 200s AD)

Angels “transgressed the divine ordering, and by sinful intercourse with women produced offspring who are demons [cp. evil spirits in Enoch, Peter].”

 

Commodianus (A.D. 240)

The Almighty did not allow [the giants] to be brought back from death after they died, because they were of an evil seed. As a result they now wander and fight for control of people's bodies.

 

Origen, (A.D. 248)

Wicked demons [of the race of Titans or giants] haunt the denser parts of the bodies. They also frequent unclean places on the earth. Since they are without bodies of earthly material….They also secretly enter the bodies of the more predatory, savage, and wicked of animals….