Understanding Ancient Perspectives on Demons

We have a very Western perspective of angels and demons.

'Cause if you were to ask an ancient Hebrew or the writers of the Old Testament

what a demon was, they would have a very different answer

than us.

The Western perspective of demons is basically anything that is,

well, demonic, scary, or grotesque, or an angel that rebels.

We lump all of that together in this term demon.

In the ancient Hebrew cosmology, they were much more narrow in their defining of

the word demon. A demon was the disembodied spirit of

a giant, a giant that died in the antediluvian world before

the flood.

They're gonna be cursed when they die to wander the earth as

bodiless vagabonds. They're gonna be hungry.

They're gonna be thirsty.

Presumably, they're gonna have all the desires of the

flesh, but no bodies through

which to fulfill those desires. That was a curse that was placed on them by

God.

This and only this is the origin of a demon and

is what a demon is.