THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

111

"The root

gives us his opinion as to what the demons were: Baaras, if applied to sick persons, quickly draws away those called demons, which are no other than the spirits of wicked men, that, entering living men, kill such as have no aid."

If you look back on these statements, you will more easily pronounce them puerile and fantastic than consistent one with another. Now their author uses language which seems to imply a race of wicked spirits, now intensely exciting influences acting on sensitive and epileptic individuals. The two views, not wholly incompatible, may find a point of union in a kingdom and a king of darkness, who, though mighty, is controllable by great names and powerful charms. The general tenor of this demonology, however, presents, at least in germ, superstitions which are found in fuller and more exact form, first, in the New Testament, and then in the Church of the middle and later ages.

It may seem strange to you that, if at the time Judæa was seething, as it was, with Magian falsities, Josephus, the professed historian of his country, should present traces of them so few and indistinct. Your surprise will be removed when I tell you that the Jewish historian was a sycophant. The tendency of the age was to paganize the institutions, usages and character of the Jewish people. For now nearly a century that anti-national, unpatriotic and irreligious tendency had been in active operation. At last, in the year 70 (A. D.), it had reached its height, and then the Jewish church and state sank under the battering-rams of Vespasian and Titus. To those Roman and idolatrous princes Josephus paid adulterous homage, and received his reward in court honours and fine estates in his conquered native land.

By the side of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, whether Palestinian or Alexandrine, and of the works of Philo and of Josephus, there is a certain number of writings bearing a very equivocal character, known under the title of "THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHS" (falsely named or supposititious) "of the Old Testament."

112

THE BOOK OF ENOCH THE PROPHET.

As yet we are acquainted with but one demon designated by his own name; it is Asmodeus of the book of Tobit. The Jewish pseudepigraphs, whose demonology is surprisingly rich, supply us with several others. First comes Beliar, the Syriac form of the Hebrew Belial, respecting whom Paul asks (2 Cor. vi. 15), "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" In the Sybilline books, Beliar is Antichrist, and consequently the prince of demons.* Then come the twenty chiefs of the demons, whose names are carefully registered in THE BOOK OF ENOCH (vii., comp. Jude 14), the author of which seems to have enriched his demonology with the superstitions of all the sects of his age.

As this book of Enocht is very rare in England, and as it supplies a fair sample of the tone of the literature with which I am dealing, I transcribe those names in the connection in which they stand the quotation is an expanded and distorted version of the words in Genesis (vi. 2): "The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose:"

"It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children. Then their leader, Samyaza, said to them, I fear that you may be indisposed to this enterprize, and that I alone shall suffer for so grievous a crime. But they answered him and said, We all swear, and bind ourselves by mutual execrations that we will execute our project. Then they swore all together and bound themselves by mutual execrations. Their whole number was two hundred, who

* Oracula Sybillina, edited by Alexander, II. 169, III. 63, 64.

The Book of Enoch the Prophet, an Apocryphal Production, now first translated by Richard Lawrence, D.D., Archbishop of Cashel. 3rd ed. revised. Oxford, 1838. With this should be read, Das Buch Henoch Uebersetzt und erklart von Dr. A. Dillman. Leipzig, 1853.

descended upon Ardis, which is upon the top of Mount Armon. These are the names of their chiefs: Samyaza, who was their leader; Urakabarameel, Akibeel, Tamiel, Ramuel, Danel, Azkeel, Sarakuyel, Asael, Armers, Batrael, Anane, Zavebe, Samsaveel, Ertael, Turel, Yomyael, Azazyel. Then they took wives, each choosing for himself; whom they began to approach, and with whom they cohabited; teaching them sorcery, incantations, and the dividing of roots and trees. And the women conceiving, brought forth giants, whose stature was each three hundred cubits. These devoured all which the labour of men produced, until it became impossible to feed them; when they turned themselves against men in order to devour them; and began to injure birds, beasts, reptiles and fishes, to eat their flesh one after another, and to drink their blood. Moreover, Azazyel taught men to make swords; Amazarak taught the sorcerers; Armers taught the solution of sorcery; Barkayel taught the observers of the stars; Akibeel taught signs; Tamiel taught astronomy; and Asaradel taught the motion of the moon. And men being destroyed cried out, and their voice reached heaven. Then Michael and Gabriel, Raphael, Suryel and Uriel, looked down from heaven and saw the quantity of blood which was shed on earth, and heard the cries. Then they said: "O ye holy ones of heaven, the souls of men complain, saying, Obtain justice for us with the Most High.' And the holy ones said: 'Lord of lords, King of kings, God of gods, thou hast seen what Azazyel has done, how he has taught every species of iniquity upon earth; and how Samyaza, to whom thou gavest' authority over his associates, has taught sorcery; how they have lain with the daughters of men and produced giants; and behold the souls of the dead cry out and complain even to the gate of heavenwhat then ought we to do to them?' Then the Most High spoke and sent Arsayalalgur to Lamech, saying: 'Say to him in my name, Conceal thyself; the waters of a deluge shall come over all the earth and destroy all things.' And the Lord said to Raphael: Bind Azazyel hand and foot, and cast him into

114

*

DEMONOLOGY OF THE BUCH OF ENOCH."

darkness; there shall he remain for ever, and in the great day of judgment let him be cast into fire.' To Michael likewise the Lord said: 'Go and announce his crime to Samyaza and to those who are with him. Take them away into the lowest. depths of the fire; in torments and in confinement shall they be shut up for ever.""

There you have the full picture of "the fall of the angels," involving the incarceration of Azazyel, their leader, and the everlasting punishment with which their crimes were repaid: the entire fiction of "the devil and his angels" you have there in an anonymous book anterior to Christ, and long anterior to the Gospels and the New Testament in general, including the Apocalypse, which still retains, as do the Gospels, some of the lurid imagery of Enoch the fanatic.

You now know where to look for my Shemitic cradle. I am that AZAZYEL. Born and bred during the agitations and excitement immediately antecedent to the advent of Jesus, I passed into the Jewish mind of the age in which he taught, and so, through his Jewish disciples and biographers, who reported, not his true image, but an image of him which in a measure bore deep hues from their own apocalyptic prepossessions, I make my appearance in the language of him whose whole life was love, tenderness and sympathy, as if he had adopted the ideas as well as the diction of the infernal regions.

Moreover, the book of Enoch has two different demonologies: one in the first part (vi.-xvi.), the other in the third (lvi.lxviii.). There the chief of the demons is Azazyel; here that honour belongs to Samyaza.

And here I might be excused were I to confess myself no little puzzled. I cannot be both Azazyel and Samyaza: which am I? Am I either? Am I not rather a figment begotten of human conceits, deceits and legends?

You object to the term legend. Yet there is not a word in the Old Testament history which in the slightest makes allusion to "the fall of the angels," and which can in any way encourage the fancy that the love of the sons of God for the

GROWTH OF ECCLESIASTICAL MYTHS.

115

daughters of men (which is only the Hebrew version of Livy's "Rape of the Sabines") was in itself a crime, big with tremendous destinies.

It would be curious to trace in detail the different phases by which the few words in Genesis have by little and little passed into the long and ill-told story of the book of Enoch. Only one step of the transition remains. In the Bible, the giants are not the progeny of angels and women, as the fabulous Enoch pretends. Already, before the illicit union, giants were on the earth, according to the Hebrew. The matter undergoes a radical change in the Greek version of the Seventy. There the giants are the offspring of that marriage. Was this false translation occasioned by the Greek fable of the Titans, sons of heaven (the male principle) and (earth the female)? Did the translator fancy that the Hebrew story was the source or the analogue of the pagan myth? It is possible: but this is certain, namely, that the Greek perversion of the Hebrew text creates a pregnant doubt as to the authenticity of the marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men. One step more, and it will be held that the angels defiled themselves by a wedlock unworthy of their sanctity. That step was set, and set probably by an ascetic party grouped around the temple of Leontopolis in Egypt. There, too, the book of Enoch was known, as well as the Jewish fragments of the Sibylline oracles and the FOURTH BOOK OF EZRA; all three works resembling each other greatly in ideas, tone and manner. Specially have they in common all the ideas which are connected with the apocalyptic beliefs of the period, such as the theocratic point of view, the opposition of the wicked spirits to the triumph of the Messiah, and the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh, which, as you have seen, was born in the bosom of Parsism.

During most of the time covered by this chapter, there grew up in the Jewish schools of Palestine a large body of oral tradition which, continued through centuries after Christ, was finally collected and published in what are called THE TAL