Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus

by Matthias Henze

Without such a comparative reading, we are not only bound to miss much in these texts. We run the risk of seriously misinterpreting the Gospel stories by relying exclusively on our own f...

The danger is that we impose onto the text what we think demons are. Our interpretation becomes ahistorical and arbitrary, a reading into the text as opposed to a learning from the text. A more responsible interpretation of Jesus’s exorcism accounts ackno...

Of the four Gospels in the New Testament, Mark takes a particular interest in demons and unclean spirits.

Mark has no fewer than four exorcism accounts (1:21–28; 5:1–20; 7:24–30; 9:14–29). Mark repeatedly refers to the demons in the summaries of Jesus’s activities (1:32–34, 39; 3:11–12, 22–30). Power over demons is also part of Jesus’s commission to his disciples (3:15; 6:7, 13; 9:38–39; but see 9:28–29). Demons and unclean spirits play a central role in Mark’s story of Jesus’s ministry.

This impression is further reinforced when we consider that the first healing story in Mark is an e...

The spirit, not the man, immediately recognizes Jesus and addresses him directly. It is obvious that the spirit is on the defensive and fears being destroyed (1:24). Jesus sternly admonishes him to be silent and to come out of the man (1:25). The spirit has no choice but to obey. He comes out without an argument or fight, all the while torturing the poor man (1:26). Mark concludes the story with a detailed description of the spectators’ amazement (1:27–28). The bystanders were already “astounded” at Jesus’s teaching at the beginning of the story (1:22). Their continuous amazement thus frames the passage.

Mark tells us nothing about the man who is possessed, about his name, origin, the nature of his ailment, whether he had asked Jesus for help, why he was in the synagogue in the first place, and what happened to him after he was healed. The man remains largely invisible because the story is not his.

The story is first and foremost a story about Jesus’s encounter with the demon, a clash of two realms of power.

Throughout his Gospel, Mark uses the terms “unclean spirit” (in Greek pneuma akatartos; 1:23, 26, 27) and “demon” (Greek daimon; 1:32, 34, 39) interchangeably and does not seem to distinguish between the two. The “unclean spirit” and “demon” are one and the same for Mark.

One detail in the description of the demon is noticeable. When the demon first speaks to Jesus, he refers to himself in the plural. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” (1:24). And when a little later the bystanders in the synagogue comment on Je...

In Mark 5, the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the second exorcism account in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus asks the demon about his name, possibly an exorcism technique, since to know the name gives power over the other. Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” (Mark 5:9) The Greek word “legion,” which is a Roman military term, is a Latin loanword, from legio (an army; a large body of troops). The demon...

Something similar could be implied in our story in Mark 1 as well: since demons rarely come alone, the man in the synagogue may also be pos...

But there is another way to interpret the plural. I suggested earlier that Jesus’s exorcisms depict a clash of two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of demons. When Mark has the demon respond to Jesus in the first person plural, Mark may want to tell his readers that what Jesus confronts in this p...

And yet, what makes the encounter between Jesus and the demon so extraordinary is not the demon. To Mark, the demon does not seem to be all that interesting, since he tells us little about him. The demon is quickly evicted, ...

The situation is a bit different in the story of the Gerasene demoniac. In one of the better-known scenes in the Gospel, the demons beg Jesus for permission to enter into a herd of pigs that are standing nearby. He grants them permission, and the pigs, possessed by the demons, all drown in the Sea of Galilee. 11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12 and the unclean spirits begged him, “Send us into the swine; let us enter them.” 13 So [Jesus] gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered ...

In neither story are we told what happens to the demons after they have been exorcized. In Mark 1 the demon disappears without a trace, and in Mark 5 the two thousand swine are drowned in the sea, much like Pharaoh’s army was drowned in the sea when God delivered Israel out of Egypt, but we are never told...

The most remarkable aspect about the demon in Mark 1 is that he knows who Jesus is as soon as he sees Jesus enter the synagogue. In fact, the demon is the first in the Gospel of Mark to recognize Jesus. He first calls him by his name, “Jesus of Nazareth.” And then he addresses Jesus a second time, now using a messianic title, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (1:24; this should be compared with John 6:69, w...

Jesus is “the Holy One of God,” because earlier in the same chapter, when Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove (Mark 1:10). In our story, the unclean, or “unholy,” spirit immediately recognizes Jesus, who is now fi...

While the bystanders are “astounded” (1:22) and “amazed” (1:27) at what they hear and see, they cannot fully comprehend who Jesus is, whereas the demon gets it right away. All of this happens at the very begin...

The last person in the Gospel of Mark to make a public confession is a Roman centurion, a Gentile who, having witnessed Jesus’s death on the cross, exclaims in amazement, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (15:39). These two christological statements about Jesus, one by the demon at the very beginning of the Gospel and the other by the centurion at the end, form a frame around the Gospel. Neither the demon or ...

It matters greatly to Mark to underscore how defenseless the demon is. As soon as the demon sees Jesus enter the synagogue, he realizes that he is in peril and cries out, “Have you come to destroy us?” (1:24). This is not an encounter among equals. No argument ensues; there is no struggle and no opposition. All the demon can do is acknowledge who Jesus is—“I know who you are” (1:24)—and to surrender unconditionally. Jesus is rather short in his reply, “Be silent and come out of him!” (1:25)—a mer...

In the third exorcism account in the Gospel in Mark 7:24–30, the story about the Syrophoenician woman whose little daughter is possessed by an unclean spirit, Jesus even evicts the spirit from afar, without ever going to visit the sick child. There is no need for Jesus to go and confront the demon face to face; Jesus’s word is sufficient. It is th...

One final aspect about our story has long caught the attention of Mark’s readers. When the demon blurts out who Jesus is (1:24), Jesus’s response is unexpected. Rather than embracing this public confession, Jesus does not want his true identity to be revealed and instead commands the demon to keep silent. “Be silent, and come out of him!” (1:25). The sentiment is again repeated a few verses later. That same evening, when Jesus casts out many demons, “he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him” (1:34).

Jesus admonishes those who know him to keep his identity concealed. This motif, which is especially prevalent in the Gospel of Mark, has long puzzled interpreters. Modern scholars, who refer to it as “the messianic secret,” have offered multiple interpretations as to why Jesus admonishes the demons to be quiet. The most plausible explanation may be to understand “the messianic secret” as a rhetorical device, a literary technique used by Mark and intended for the reader of his Gospel.

Jesus’s identity is revealed in the cross, and only in the cross; to understand that, the reader will have to read Mark’s story all the way to its conclusion.

Mark tells us nothing about the origin of demons; they are simply there. His exorcism accounts only provide the barest minimum of information about them. Demons are disembodied, supernatural beings who can dwell in humans and animals, even though originally they do not belong there. They are unclean and malevolent, and they can cause significant harm. Most importantly for Mark, the demons recognize Jesus immediately and address him with a curious mixture of utmost respect and dread, fearing for their lives. They realize that they are powerless, with no means to defend themselves. But Mark says nothing about where the demons come from.

There are no texts in the Old Testament either that explain who these demons are.

In fact, there are no demons in the Old Testament, at least not of the kind ...

There are evil spirits in the Old Testament, but they are different from the ...

A similar story about a malevolent spirit is found in 1 Kings 22, the story about the prophet Micaiah, son of Imlah. Ahab, king of Israel, is considering going to war with the Arameans in order to regain control over the city of Ramoth-Gilead east of the Jordan river. Before he launches his attack, he seeks a divine oracle and consults with no fewer than four hundred prophets. The prophets ensure him a favorable outcome. Pressed by his ally, King Jehoshaphat of Judah, whether there are any other prophets to consult, Ahab reluctantly mentions a certain Micaiah, son of Imlah, a prophet he dislikes because in the past Micaiah’s prophecies have always been unfavorable. When Ahab asks Micaiah about the outcome of the ensuing battle, the prophet predicts that Ahab will lose his life in the battle. So how can it be, the monarch wants to know, that all the other four hundred prophets, whose prophecies are favorable, are wrong? Micaiah answers with a story. He describes a vision of the heavenly throne room, in which he saw God sitting on the throne and the heavenly host standing beside God. 20 And the Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?” Then one said one thing, and another said another, 21 until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, “I will entice him.” 22 “How?” the Lord asked him. He replied, “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” Then the Lord said, “You are to entice him, and you ...

The rather audacious story of Micaiah, son of Imlah, provides a fascinating glimpse into the inner world of prophecy in ancient Israel. The other prophets are wrong, Micaiah claims, not because they chose to tell King Ahab what he wants to hear but because God deliberately led them astray by sending them “a lying spirit” in order to send the king to his certain death. King Ahab chooses to ignore Micaiah’s prophecy; he goes to battle, is mortally wounded, and dies, and Micaiah is vindicated. Like the spirit who tormented Saul, this lying spirit is sent by God. It does not oppose God, nor does it need to be exorcised.

One of the oldest texts in the Old Testament is Deuteronomy 32, a song that Moses sings for the assembly of Israel. In it Moses recalls how, when the Israelites wandered through the wilderness during the exodus from Egypt, they committed idolatry and worshipped foreign gods. 16 They made [God] jealous with strange gods, with abhorrent things they provoked him. 17 They sacrificed to demons [Greek daimon], not God, to deities they had never known, to new ones recently arrived, whom your ancestors had not feared. (Deuteronomy 32:16–17; see also Psalm 106:37) In this passage, Moses is looking back at the exodus and recalling how the Israelites became unfaithful to their God and started to bring sacrifices to other gods. The word “demons” in verse 17 is referring to the gods of the nations—newcomers, as the psalmist derides them—whom the Israelites worshipped when they should have worshipped the God of Israel, whom their ancestors had revered for generations. These demons are also called “strange gods,” for their main threat is that they lead the Israelites astray to commit idolatry. They are the gods of the nations that surrounded Israel at the time of the exodus, not the malevolent demons of the New Testament that possess individuals and cause grave bodily harm to the possessed.

To conclude, the Old Testament does not know the demons of the New Testament, and it says nothing about their origin.

The story of the demons begins in the book of Genesis, even though no demons are ever mentioned in it. It begins with a brief and somewhat puzzling episode in Genesis 6:1–4, a short notice that relates how a group of heavenly beings abandoned their exalted status and came to earth to mate with human women.

It is helpful to take a look at the Septuagint, because the Greek text of the same passage differs in some important aspects, particularly in verse 4. 4 Now the giants were on the earth in those days and afterward. When the sons of God used to go in to the daughters of humans, then they produced offspring for themselves. Those were the giants that were of old, humans of renown. (Genesis 6:4 LXX; my trans.) What the Septuagint has preserved is not simply a straight Greek translation of the Hebrew text as we have it in our modern Bibles; it is a slightly different version of the story about the fallen angels. The Nephilim are gone and have been replaced by giants (the Greek has the word gigantes). In this telling of the story, the connection between the giants and the fallen angels is now clear: the giants in verse 4 are the offspring that stem from the illicit intercourse between the fallen angels and the women. The Greek text also says that the giants were around for a while, and that they were “renowned.” In other words, the illicit liaison between the angels and the women produced the giants; their actions thus had far reaching consequences.

Surely their behavior was less than noble, as they transgressed several lines at once: they came from heaven to earth, that is, they violated the boundaries of creation by abandoning the place that God had assigned to them; they did so merely because they were attracted by the looks of the earthly women, that is, their only motivation was their lust; and they went on to have sexual relations with the human women, who bore them giants, thus creating a new hybrid race. And still, there is no condemnation in the Bible of any of this. The only hint we get that the biblical author was less than approving of their actions comes from the context of the passage in Genesis. Immediately following the episode of the fallen angels, we read that human wickedness abounded on earth, and that things became so bad that God had second thoughts about having created humanity in the first place.

The text remains silent about the origin of human wickedness, though given that the divine decision to undo the creation of humankind follows directly on the heels of the episode of the fallen angels, it may not be too far-fetched to assume that there is a connection. The sudden increase in human wickedness is linked to the angelic descent. The function of the fallen angel story in the Bible is to explain why the wickedness of humankind increased so exponentially that God felt compelled to undo God’s own creation. The fallen angels are responsible for the deteriorating conditions on earth right before the flood, even if this is never spelled out in the Bible. God responded swiftly by sending the great flood, a punishment of monumental proportions.

Whatever the case may be, later Jewish writers did not have the same qualms. They were quick to pick up the story of the fallen angels and to develop it further, filling in many of the gaps in the biblical account.

Beginning in the third century BCE, a number of Jewish authors told the story of the fallen angels anew, albeit in much greater detail. In what follows, we will look at three different texts, one from the third, one from the second, and one from the first century BCE. There is some evidence that these three texts build on each other, in the sense that the later authors were aware of the earlier texts and modified them to fit their own theological purposes. It is therefore of particular interest to observe not only how the story of the fallen angels changed over time but how, with each new rendition, the story acquired a new meaning.

But Jesus puts them in their place. He frees the possessed from their tyranny, cures the afflicted, and invites those who have been freed to receive once again the blessings of the kingdom of God. Jesus’s acts of exorcism thus anticipate the total victory over all demons at the end of time, even though the final and complete destruction of the evil spirits still lies in the future.

The story of the demons was particularly popular in Judaism of the third and second century BCE.

The next text is taken from Jubilees, a book written in the second century BCE—that is, a little over a hundred years after the Book of the Watchers and about t...

Jubilees is an imaginative, at times fanciful, retelling of Genesis and parts of Exodus. While it follows the story line of the Bible in broad terms, it also introduces some new elements, short stories, and brief interpretive vignettes we won’t find ...

It is familiar with and uses some of the ancient motifs found in the Book of the Watchers, including the story of the fallen angels, but i...

Like in the Book of the Watchers, the “evil spirits”—Jubilees calls them “demons” or “the polluted demons”—survived the flood and are now plaguing Noah, his children, and, in particular, his grandchildren. Jubilees relates how the children of Noah complain to Noah about the activities of the demons and ask Noah to turn to God and intercede on their behalf.

But just as the divine decree is about to be executed, a certain Mastema appears before God and halts the action. Jubilees identifies him as “the chief of the spirits.” Mastema, whose name in Hebrew means “adversary,” is well known from other early Jewish writings, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is the chief leader of the demons, the equivalent of Satan.

God heeds Mastema’s plea, and a compromise is reached: nine-tenths of the “evil spirits” are thrown “into the place of judgment,” a most dreadful place that is not further identified here, but of which the Book of the Watchers gives a vivid description, and God lets one-tenth of the spirits go free. These spirits are allowed to roam free, wreak havoc among humans, and continue to obey their master Mastema.

Jubilees gives the story of the spirits yet another, theological twist. In this telling of the story, the demons are the cause of evil as it is experienced in daily life. While the demons do not come directly from God, their existence and their actions are nonetheless tolerated by God. After all, God listened to Mastema and granted at least part of his wish. Mastema himself, the leader of the demons, is subservient to God and can only do what God allows him to do. This is why he appears before God’s throne in the first place and intervenes just as God is granting Noah’s wish. Evil did not originate with God, but it is tolerated by God. According to the Book of the Watchers, the “evil spirits” will be around for as long as this world exists, but they will be defeated at the end of time. The same is true for the book of Jubilees. Mastema’s days are numbered, and he knows it. This is the promise of Jubilees.