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Demonic Origins and Magdalene

Introduction

In this session, we will explore the origins of demons in Jewish and early Christian traditions, focusing on how these beings were understood and their role in shaping spiritual beliefs. Starting with ancient Jewish texts, we will discuss the concept of demons as chaotic, malevolent forces that threaten human well-being. While demons were not always associated with femininity, certain traditions linked them to temptation and spiritual danger, sometimes reflecting cultural anxieties about women. As we move into the New Testament, we will analyze how the notion of demons evolved, particularly through Jesus’ encounters with these forces during his ministry. To conclude, we will focus on Mary Magdalene, one of the most prominent figures in Christian history associated with demonic possession. We’ll explore her healing from seven demons in the Gospels, unpacking her association with demons and its implications for her portrayal in Christian history.

Texts

Luke 8
Mark 16
1 Enoch 15

Transcript

Click here for a printable transcript (pdf file, opens in a new tab).

Shirley Paulson

Hi there everybody. Welcome. This is the October 2024 Bible and Beyond discussion. I’m your host, Shirley Paulson, and our guest scholar this evening is Dr. Tupá Guerra. Our conversation tonight is titled Demonic Origins and Magdalene.

I’m really excited to have Tupa back with us for a Bible and Beyond program because I knew her topic was quite interesting to just about everybody. I got to know Tupa when we were both working on our PhD degrees at the University of Birmingham in the UK, trying to finish up together, and we ended up walking across the graduation stage on the same day in December of 2017. And I’ve been an admirer of Tupá’s work ever since we met. So as I mentioned, Tupá lives in Brazil and has taught ancient and medieval history at the University of Brasilia.

Her research explores ancient magic, Hebrew texts ,and the intersections of religion and culture. She’s an active public scholar, regularly featured on academic podcasts, and we are super glad to have you back with us again.

Tupá Guerra

I’m the one delighted to be here and hopefully I can bring some new insights for you all.

Shirley Paulson

I think you will. I think this whole subject is quite intriguing and new. I think we’ll get started by getting at the meaning of what a demon is. It’s funny that it’s a word that everybody knows, but we’re really not sure what it is. So I’m wondering if maybe you could start us off with explaining the difference between a demon, a daemon, and a devil.

Tupá Guerra

Okay, right there. Okay. I like that. I’m a historian by training, so debating terminology is part of my passion, which sounds weird, but that’s what historians love to do. We love to debate terminology, we love to debate things and words and stuff. So let’s go to the three words that are usually connected to evil things. And so I would say the oldest one of those is daemon, or the Greek one, and it was used mostly to talk about a kind of known corporeal being. And it’s a bit difficult because our minds today and as we live in contemporary society, we separate things like body and soul, and the definitions we use today, were not used by ancient people. And I like to remind people that because sometimes when we think about the past, we think about ourselves with other clothing, and it feels like the past is just ourselves with other clothing and we need to remember that they were different in everything.

So the Greeks had this idea of this entity, this being, being is the best thing I can do for you. And it wasn’t a evil thing per se. It was evil and good at the same time. And it worked much more like an intermediary, like a messenger between humans and the gods, and not necessarily something that was evil all the time. That’s in the Greek, for the Greeks. But then when we get to the Christian world, they will translate … when they translate from the text from what we call today, ‘the Old Testament,’ when they translate the Old Testament to Greek, they will use the word demon with this idea of something that’s again, a being that doesn’t have a body like a physical body. But this time it’s an evil one. So from the first century, or second century of the common era, we already have people referencing demon as something evil.

And then this will be translated to Latin as diabolos. And that’s where you get the (???) from Portuguese, for instance. And the devil comes from another route. The devil comes from old English and it’s also used to represent the same kind of something, or I wouldn’t say someone because it’s not a human. That is evil, that can harm you, but that has no physical body, and that’s important. It’s not something you can properly see or has a physical form. It may change to have a physical form, but it depends on the country and the moment in history, how people think about them. The oldest versions, it doesn’t have a proper physical body. It’s just this being, and with the time, particularly during the Middle Ages, this idea of ‘evil thing,’ so the demons and the devils, and the … they became this structure, this entity of pure evil, like evil is part of them, but this is a Medieval thing. In the ancient world, we don’t have the same idea of evil as we have today. So they were doing bad things, and they were nice, but they are not like a personification of evil. I think it’s the best way I can explain this.

Shirley Paulson

Well, let me ask you then. So as far as I know, the King James version—17th century—calls them devils and everybody else calls them demons. Yes. Was that just like a bad translation at the time, or why did they turn into devils?

Tupá Guerra

I think it’s not a bad translation. I wouldn’t use the term bad translation. I would say it’s more like what was at the time considered more common for people in English speaking places so people would understand better if it was devil than if it was demon.

Shirley Paulson

Got it.

Tupá Guerra

In the 17th century,

Really, that’s why probably.

Shirley Paulson

Okay, that’s helpful. Alright, then keeping with definitions a little bit, maybe can we go to what is the difference between a Jewish demon and a Christian demon then? If you’re talking about differences, then what’s that difference?

Tupá Guerra

And that’s a kind of a hot topic, a difficult topic.

Shirley Paulson

Okay.

Tupá Guerra

Because if you talk to a lot of Jews, they would say there isn’t demons or evil things in ancient Judaism.

And a lot of other scholars, from Jews as well, they would say, actually there are demons in the ancient Judaism. So you have this debate and I like to remind people how scholars are like that. We just debate all the time. It’s fine. We are friends too, but we like to debate. We enjoy this part of debating. So for some, there would be this thing. But if we think back to ancient times, and I’m talking about 2,500 years ago or something like that, what we have in the Jewish text is something evil. But again, not this personification of evil. It’s some type of being that can act and cause harm, but it’s not something that’s evil per se. It’s much more something that will punish you than something that’s evil just because it wants to be evil. So in ancient Judaism, what we have is much more this idea of a type of beings that help God to punish humans. And because history, so we have loads of things, and history is never one straight answer. It is always a miscellaneous of things. So also in ancient Judaism you can have the idea of things that can, if you don’t follow the rules of God, the sons of darkness will take you and will have you, but not take you away. But they will take—it’s not possession per se again—but it’s like they will influence you.

Then with Christianity, we have a development of this idea and now we have properly this type of entities and the New Testament has a lot of references to it, this beings that can process people and they can cause harm to people. And of course during—as I said during the Middle Ages and how Christianity grows and develops, and then we have this idea that demons are a personification of evil and they’re not only working to punish you if you don’t follow the rules, but they are also there to tempt you. They are also there to bring you to the dark side and so on. And this is more a Christian view. Another thing that I think is particularly interesting is that in the oldest texts, we don’t have a physical description, so there is no description of a being with red skin and horns and claws and whatever.

It’s not there. This is, again, I am not trying to say and to blame medieval times, but medieval times … I mean, it’s a thousand years! It’s a lot of time. So it’s during the medieval times, and particularly by the end of the medieval period that we have this development and this more clear idea of how demons and devils and evil beings will look. And then we have this horn figure, and then you have this, it’s always, if you guys, I don’t know if you ever notice, I mean you know how we often look into demon pictures and us in life, right?

But it’s always this idea of a mixture of an animal and a human. And this is part of the idea that to show they are not natural things and they’re terrible things. Those two ideas are very important: not natural and terrible.

Shirley Paulson

Yeah. Okay. Okay, that’s helpful. So the best way we know about demons from the Bible probably I think is through when Jesus is casting out demons and it seems to be closely associated with the idea of healing. So I want to ask you, were these acts of casting out demons ever regarded as magic, or was there always a divine power that would send away demons?

Tupá Guerra

Then we have a difficult question of what is magic?

Shirley Paulson

Yeah, right.

Tupá Guerra

I would say I spent almost a chapter in my thesis just debating the idea of magic and how we can understand magic. Because usually we go to think about magic as something forbidden and something bad and other things are not magical because they are not forbidden or they’re not bad. But when we look at it from a scholar perspective and we think about from now, we can look at the best part and think actually this practice looks very magical to me. And there’s a lot of practices from ancient times and from contemporary practices that are kind of magical. So for many scholars, the definition of magic is the idea that you ask, “Is the human asking for divine power to help?” So in this sense, all the times you have in the Bible, with people being healed from demon possession, you have someone interceding and asking for a greater power to help and asking for God to help. So in this sense, it could be similar to magic from other places because if you think about magic from the Greeks and the Romans, and there is a lot of magic that’s only about people asking for the gods for their help. So that’s why magic’s a bit difficult.

Shirley Paulson

I was just going to say that I know that in our modern, the word magic sounds like the way we go to children’s magician shows, and it looks like somebody’s just doing a little trick. But magic and antiquity was a far more serious practice of serious healing and serious powers.

Tupá Guerra

And the whole idea of healing and medicine and magic, they were all intertwined in ancient times. There wasn’t like a doctor that, oh no, I’m very scientific and I don’t talk about gods and I don’t talk about, no, everything was mixed together. So when we talk about the healings, and this is a very important part of evil and demons, they would think that the main belief was that disease was caused by evil. So when we were sick, then it was because there was evil with you. So to cure this, you need the intervention from God and you might need something magical. And then we have, and when I say something magical, I mean something like, oh, you need to impose hands or you need to do some practical action. And that’s what I’m calling magic here, just not to confuse anyone. So you might need something practical, you might need some objects. And there are descriptions of the use of rings, especially from the first century actually. You have historians like Josephus, which is a Jewish historian, and he talks about people being healed from possession and demon possessions with the help of a ring.

We don’t know properly what it was. But we know that in antiquity, Jews were regarded as exorcists and as good healers. And of course we have to always take this with a grain of salt.

Because mostly with the exception of Josephus, mostly we have people who don’t like the Jews writing about them. So they might not be very favorable when they’re talking about them. And that’s when we have to think about this. But we know that there was this tradition for daily life, people would, if you had a problem with a possession, you might ask help from a Jewish priest or a Jewish knowledgeable person. And I want to put like that because it wouldn’t necessarily be in a synagogue. And with time, this will pass to the Christians and the Christians will do the healing.

Shirley Paulson

Yeah, okay. So how would you say that demons fit maybe in the whole scheme of the universe? Are they part of an overall plan or just some inexplicable bad creature like an insect or something?

Tupá Guerra

I love the idea that insects are a bad creature. They’re nice!

Shirley Paulson

Yeah. How do they fit in the scheme of things?

Tupá Guerra

Oh, that was a question that people had a lot in ancient times. They wanted to know. I mean, one of the main questions if we think about it, the idea is that, oh, if you do good things, good things happen to you. But then we live life and I think everyone can understand that even if you do good things, bad things happen to you. So to understand that, humans wanted to understand that, and the powers of the demonic was one of the explanations people would use to explain why bad things happen to very nice people and to great people. And people were trying to, because—and I think actually this is beautiful about the Bible—is the text allows for a lot of interpretation. And I do think that’s nice. And there are a lot of scholars who say that this is proper, this was made with intention. The text was prepared in a way that will allow for more than one interpretation. So people will look into the text in the Bible and they’ll say, okay, but where are the demons coming from? Where is the evil coming from? Are they part of the plan?

How is this happening? And you have a lot of answers, especially around the time in which Jesus had lived. You have a lot of answers and you have answers like, “Oh, actually the plan is to, we are living in a time in which evil is allowed in the world, and this time we’ll be over at some point and then evil won’t exist anymore.” But other explanations…and that’s why we have some apocryphal text that are very interesting, like First Enoch. So First Enoch is apocryphal. I say apocryphal for a lot of people, but it’s not for everyone. And it’s still used for, because what we call Bible has a lot of versions in different groups in today’s time. So it’s important to think about this. But anyway, in First Enoch 15, it talks about this: we have this from Genesis, that the angels saw the daughters of men and they fall in love, and they came down and they had children with them.

And those children ordered the giants, which is this terrible race. And when the giants die—because in Genesis, it’s a brief mention, they don’t explain a lot about it. And that’s why there are other texts that people wanted to understand what’s happening. So they would say, “Oh, actually the giants came and after the flood, the spirits of the giants used to be, they were chosen to be these evil things in the world. So the origin of them, they are the spirits of the offspring—this bastard offspring—and they are in the world to do evil things.” But the whole idea here in First Enoch, and then this will be expanded in another text called Jubilees, it’s that actually they are working for God.

And you have one angel in Jubilees, they talk about this angel that’s the angel of Mastema, and he is controlling the bad guys. But he’s also saying, because he talks to God and he asks God, “Can I have some of the spirits to me because to help me with this task because punishing humans that don’t follow God is a lot and there are a lot of humans, and they do a lot of terrible things. And I need help. And that’s why I need the demons to work with me.” And in this case, these are the spirits of the bastards. And that’s kind of where they come from. I mean, this is one of the origins and one of the stories that of course with time, there will be plenty of other ways to explain where they came from. But I think it’s fascinating how in the same period in which Jesus and all the New Testament was being written, is the time where people were thinking about, “Oh, actually they are part of the order. They’re part of this time, which is a terrible time. It’s not a nice time. The period we are living is terrible. And they’re here to punish the ones that go astray, the ones that don’t follow God. And that’s the idea they put on the texts.”

Shirley Paulson

You’re leading us right into a really serious question we have with Mary Magdalene. I mean, it sounds like she’s deserving of being punished because of the demons that she had. Tell us about Mary.

Tupá Guerra

That’s hard.

Yeah, tell us. Because here’s the thing, when we talk about Mary Magdalene, we are talking about someone we don’t know a lot about. We try to know a lot, but we don’t. And if we consider the text, and I’m talking only about the text that are considered the Bible today, and I say that because in ancient times there wasn’t a Bible, actually, there wasn’t the idea of a book. As we know today, we’re talking about scrolls, and I think this physicality changes a lot the way we perceive the text. So we don’t have enough information about her. And actually there is a lot of debate. Is she the same in all the moments she appears or not? And the mention we have, which is very, very specific, is in Luke. And it says “Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out.” And then, so if we think about it, that’s all the information, which is not much.

But if we put this together with this whole idea that demons were there to tempt people and they will take you in the case you weren’t following the rules, it might be an implication that she didn’t follow the rules. But then we have to look into other texts because, and then I will bring the Dead Sea Scrolls,  because the Dead Sea Scrolls are my thing—the thing I actually studied in my PhD is that in the Dead Sea Scrolls, they say that people who fall into one of the nets set by Belial, which will be the leader demon thingy guy, he’s the leader of the army of the—I love the term—it talks about the Sons of Darkness. So he is the leader of the Sons of Darkness, which almost sounds like a rock band and not necessarily some terrible things. But anyway, he is the leader.

And so the text talks about how he’s always casting nets and trying to trap people. And if you fall into one net, even if you escape, you’ll fall into another one. So the idea that someone is capable, a human is capable of never doing something wrong, doesn’t exist. So anyone would be liable to have demons over you, not because you are evil, but because you’re human, and humans are flawed and they would fall for things. So I’m not sure, I don’t agree that the idea that, “Oh, because it mentions that Magdalene had seven demons, that means she was bad,” or that means she did something wrong. Because I think it goes much more, if you look into other texts, it goes much more with the idea that people get possessed when they don’t follow God. But it’s not necessarily because they’re evil, but because humans are flawed, and we do wrong things. And then it doesn’t need to be something terrible for you to fall. So you don’t need to have something terrible and horrible. You don’t need to do something horrible for you to be punished. And once you’re punished once, there is this whole idea that you can be punished a lot of times, because they’re always there, trying to make you not follow God.

So when we look into her (Magdalene) and this idea that she had seven demons, if you look into the other people who are mentioned and  who are being possessed, you don’t have the idea that they’re evil. You have much more the idea that they’re suffering from something. So I don’t think this passage means that she’s evil or bad or terrible or doing something wrong. It’s hard. I’m not a Magdalene scholar, but I don’t think she conveys the idea of being just evil. I think it’s much more the idea that she’s also human and she was helped. And maybe this is saying why she’s there, and why she’s following Jesus, and why she’s so close to him—because he saved her and that’s why she will be there. And I think that’s a much more plausible consideration, but if anyone wants to disagree, it’s fine. We can debate.

Shirley Paulson

Yeah, no, I love that because I have one of my courses right now is on Mary Magdalene. We talk a lot about what these demons mean and the fact that she seems to be always the one, especially in the extracanonical writing, where she’s the one who understands Jesus more than anybody else. So it seems like it agrees with what you’re saying, that she has been…she’s an exemplary person because she’s been saved in such a way that she’s found the way that the demons can be removed from her rather than being governed by them all the time. So there seems to be a focus like that for her. Anyway, it’s a great question.

How do you think the Mary’s Association with demons impacted the evolution of Christian history? Or is that too big a question for you to go into?

Tupá Guerra

It is a huge question, but I can… because I think Christianity is so much intertwined with this idea of demons and how demons are present in the world, that when there is a mention with her (Magdalene) that, oh, she was possessed, she was possessed, and she has a connection to it. So I think it’s important to the development, but I don’t want to give a lengthy answer because I would definitely say something something wrong because it’s a huge question. It’s a difficult question.

Shirley Paulson

It is it, okay, how did the link between women and demonic forces reflect society anxieties? Does that have any connection or not?

Tupá Guerra

There is some connection. It’s not as clear as we would like to think. In the medieval times it will be way more clear because women will be seen as much more emotional, and it will be understood as someone who can be attacked because women have more feelings and more emotions, and that’s why they’re more susceptible for evil. But in ancient times, you still have the society, so you still have some patriarchal society. But what I see in what we have about possession, you have men and women being possessed. You don’t have evil and demons only related to women. So I think it does reflect the way in which societies think about women, in the sense that feels that women are more susceptible and women can be tempted more easily, but at the same time you do have men being possessed as well.

So it’s not something that belongs exclusively to women. And I think one connection really quickly that I didn’t mention, but it’s really, really quickly, is the idea that demons bring disease. And it’s a very physical disease. We know from texts and from other things that people are talking about headaches and child childbirth and children mortality, which it was a huge thing in ancient times. So people would say, “Oh, this was an attack from an evil force that made the child to die or the mother to die, and so on.” So the threat is really, really physical and it’s really… it’s real in a way that sometimes we forget, and they’re very much associated with disease, but I don’t like to think that, “Oh, it’s because they didn’t know what disease was, and that’s why they blamed it [on demons].” No, it was because science and medicine and cures were connected to spiritual healing, and they were together, so there wasn’t a separation between the two.

Shirley Paulson

Wow. Alright. Well I hope that Tupa has given everybody a lot to think about here. And I’m going to actually give you the microphone now. So we’re starting right off with Linda Bargmann, go ahead and ask your question, Linda.

Speaker 4

Hi. So when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s in Southern California, I got the impression that demons were like the two little guys sitting on your shoulders. And one of them was definitely bad. That was the one that looked like the devil, but the other one was not bad and really maybe sometimes even had a halo. And so it was more like the tension between “this is the way you should do it,” no, “this is the way you should do it.” And it almost felt like a consciousness kind of a thing, or argument, I guess is a better way to say it. So I like what you said, and I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit more, back sort of towards the beginning. I got the impression that it’s the old story about how the winners are the ones that have written this, and it’s the people who think demons are bad and don’t like demons who wrote or at least translated the ancient texts. And so can you expand on that a little bit more, or did I miss something?

Tupá Guerra

No, I don’t think I missed something. So you made me think about two things, two different things. One about this idea that, and also I didn’t grow up in the 60s, but I also had a lot of influence from people talking about this, about the angel and the demon on your shoulders. And it actually made me think about the fact that in ancient Jewish texts—and I’m going back a bit more. So in ancient Jewish texts, what we have, when we talk about evil things, there are a lot of different types of evil things. There isn’t one type and there isn’t a category like we use for ‘demon’. You have types of them. And a lot of them are bad angels. And angels meaning the idea of messengers.

So you do have bad ones and good ones, and they all work in the universe. And so it’s interesting when you say about this idea of the two, because in a way that’s kind of what some of the texts say. And returning to the Dead Sea Scrolls again, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is one text that talks about the two spirits and it says that everybody, all humans, have two spirits. Not in the sense like two separate spirits, but the idea that you have the influence of evil and good in your yourself, and you have to choose which one you will follow more. But that everyone, when you were born, you had the two. And then you had to choose which one you follow. So it’s kind of the same idea that you have something evil and something good in your heart—or in your stomach, as people in ancient times Jews will think much more about the stomach and not the heart—but anyway, that’s what would make you decide, and that’s what you will decide if you follow the Sons of Light or the Sons of Darkness.

And of course ideally you follow the Sons of Light, and that’s the great thing. But you could also follow the Sons of Darkness. But when I think about the translators, I’m not sure if they were the ones that actually think that demons were necessarily evil, but I think it’s much more the idea that this is where the things are developing in society. I think a lot of people in society believed there was more evil in the world than good. Because it’s interesting that from the first and second century, we don’t have the literature saying anymore about these daemons that could be evil and good at the same time. And we start to have only literature talking about them as evil. So there is a part that, “Oh, maybe because the majority of people who were writing, they were the winning side, and that’s why they were bringing this idea.” But also I think it reflects what society thinks, because if we have way more texts talking about one side, it means that the majority of people would likely consider that one, the most real one. But anyway, I like this because we are talking about 2000 years from the origin of this idea that demons are bad, to now, when we still have this idea that, “Okay, humans can be good or bad, and it’s part of our choice, and you were born with the same.” And part of this idea is that when the text talks about this being inside of you, they say there is no outside force, no evil being outside of you. It’s all inside of you, it’s all internal struggle. It’s all internal, and there are no devils or demons outside. And this is the biggest difference, which I think is fascinating.

Shirley Paulson

That’s fascinating. Thank you. You’ve raised some more questions for me too, but I’m going to go on to Maureen and see what her question is.

Maureen

I had one question and then two or three more popped up! My first question is really, I guess for Shirley and you, Tupá. My most recent delving into demons, which is not a familiar territory for me, was when I studied Shirley’s book, Illuminating the Secret Revelation of John. And in there it talks about 365 demons, and I wonder if there’s one for each day of the year and how there’s a whole chart about how your thumb has a demon, and every part of your body has a demon. Are those the same kinds of demons? Because they weren’t talking about doing evil, they were just… maybe they were?

Tupá Guerra

Yeah, they’re just there. And there is also connections to demons and times, and you have demons to each time of the day and they’re there to take you. And that’s where the acedia (which I don’t know how to pronounce it) is the one that contemporary scholars say, “Oh, it is actually depression.” I’m not sure if it’s depression, but it’s definitely something that attacks you after lunch and makes you question your things after lunch. And particularly if you’re a monk and you’re living in the desert, and that’s prime place for this demon to attack you after lunch, which I think it’s quite funny, but also interesting. So a lot of those ideas that demons are related to your body or if they are related to times of the day, those are the things that are being developed with Christianity already. And again, they’re trying to understand how these things work and how life works and why people get sick.

And is it because the demons are part of you and you need to make sure they’re happy? Or is it because they’re outside influences? And I think it’s fascinating how you have a lot of different versions because different people are thinking about different ways and they’re trying to understand this. And then eventually it comes to a more unified version of it. And I think it’s interesting because in the medieval times we also have the “Solomon Key”—I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about this text—the medieval text that talks about how King Solomon used demons to build the temple, and then there are ways in which you could control the demons. And then you have names of demons and things they do, and then they became very specialized and you have the demon to do this and the demon to do that, and you have demons for knowledge, demon for…. So it’s a whole thing.

Maureen

Wow. Okay. Just if I can squeeze in one more question. I was fascinated when you were saying that as the years went by, what was going on in the human experience affected how people were trying to find their answers for how things happened? Well, what flashed through my mind when we were talking about the people that either are writing the texts or translating them, they’re literate. And so wouldn’t they have a whole different maybe realm of experience than the whole bunch of people that can’t write the stuff? Maybe it’s poor versus rich, or oppressed versus not oppressed. So is it possible that, I don’t know, it just flashed to me that is that a whole unrepresented bunch of the people?

Tupá Guerra

It’s possible, but it’s also the fact that everything is possible. But history! a terrible thing! Historians are the worst. We like to answer things with more questions, that’s part of our job. But of course, it’s possible. But at the same time—and I think we can see that in our society—it’s impossible for one idea to be just from one part of society and not to bleed to other parts of society. So even though we are talking about people who are literate and who would be able to write those people, although they had a different experience, they also have contact with other things. And that’s why when historians look into those texts, we need to… I joke that we, first of all, historians are a very suspicious people. We don’t trust things, we don’t trust anything or any texts. We are always, mmm, mmm, I’m not sure! And because we want to extract from texts what the texts don’t want to tell us.

Because even the people who are in power, and even the people who have different experiences, sometimes they don’t want to tell us things, but they do and they talk about the people who are not there. And they talk about… I think with women, it’s a very good example that although we don’t have a lot of things written about women, we can still see women acting in history and we can still see. So that’s part of what we say to read the silences of the text. So of course there is this: it’s possible that there are a lot of things that are just lost to us. But at the same time, I think we can say kind of safely that we know quite a lot because those people couldn’t just take out what other people were thinking.

Maureen

Thank you so much.

Tupá Guerra

You’re welcome.

Shirley Paulson

Interesting. Okay, Toto, your turn.

Toto

Oh, quick comment and a question. Comment: I love that you point out that women are often demonized throughout history, which made me think of, I mean to the season now, the witches that were burned and accused of… women who were accused of witchcraft much greater than any men who were accused. So it seemed like it carried on and still carries on today with all kinds of stuff. But it got me thinking that, I wonder if there’s any kind of clear… it seems that things have flip flopped a bit, because all the accusations that we attribute to witchcraft were actually…we have in the early sarcophaguses of Jesus holding a wand, and we know the earliest samples of scriptural texts were actually from amulets that people bought kind of as magical pieces. It seems like magic and even magic was a part of Christianity early on, and then it became ‘demonized,’ for lack of a better word.

Tupá Guerra

And so with this part with women, I like to think about particularly the witchcraft hunting not only by the Inquisition in Catholic countries, but also by other forms in other countries. I was raised in a Catholic country, so the Inquisition is more familiar to me. I mean not properly familiar because I wasn’t part of it. But anyway, but I like to think of those practices. They used the excuse of witchcraft to persecute women, but it wasn’t the witchcraft that made them get persecuted. Women were already the targets. It was just one more way to persecute them. And so the whole idea of how magic and witchcraft was connected to something terrible—if we go back to ancient, ancient texts, societies always call what they don’t like magic and what they like something as part of religion. And that’s why I like to use the term magic more broadly because then I say, I would say that all religions have magical practices.

And I’m not saying, because a lot of times I say that people get very angry with me and they say, oh no, I’m a Catholic, I’m not practicing magic! I don’t do forbidden things. I say, I’m not saying you do forbidden things. What I’m saying is from a scholarly perspective, when you do some kind of actions, it looks magical for someone who is not part of your religion. And it’s the same from ancient times. So a lot of practices that were common for Christians would look very weird and magic-like to people who are not Christians. They would look to the Christians and think, “Oh, these people are kind of crazy,” and we can bring that to the medieval ages and to the Scandinavian populations getting to meet the Christians. And they were like, wait, you have to take a bath and that’s how God protects you?

It makes no sense with the baptism and so on. So those practices look terrible for people outside and sometimes they can be used as political weapons to persecute some groups. And that’s what I think had happened during the 1700s and 1600s, that it was much more political persecution than a properly magical one. So when we look into the Salem witch trials, we can see clearly that they go for the women who are marginalized and they go for the women who are not white. And they go for the women who are not part of what they considered correct in society. And it’s the same with when we look into the text from the Inquisition, a lot of people who are being accused of witchcraft are political enemies of other people and not necessarily people who actually did something bad.

So what is witchcraft and what is magic? It depends a lot from the eye of the people who are seeing the thing and much less from what people are doing. And I think it’s the same. And when we talk about Christianity and the beginning of Christianity, I’m pretty sure for Romans it looked like magic. And from other people in the world, they would look into the Christians and were like, what!? Wait, you guys say things, and these are magical words you say.  And they say, amen, amen, amen. And then things will happen?

That’s really magical. But of course this is a thing from someone watching from the outside, and that’s why magic is a very complex term. But I do feel that magic has been in history, used a lot to persecute politically other people and not necessarily, “Oh, because this practice is forbidden. Because when we look in the detail, there is practice. They’re forbidden, but they’re not that forbidden, depending on who is doing it, and so on.

Shirley Paulson

Oh my goodness, that’s really fascinating. And again, I have more questions, but it looks like Pat has his hand up too, so I’ll go with Pat.

Pat

Yeah, I wondered if any scholars had thought that in the modern age we are still dealing with a kind of demons in the form of computer software, some of which is good and some of which is bad. It’s all disembodied. They can get to us in lots of different ways. And I wonder if that’s not that far-fetched or not that far a distance from what the ancients thought about demons.

Tupá Guerra

It might. I never read anything about this, but I’m pretty sure it’s a very nice idea. I never thought about it. And because there’s this embodied version of it, and I know there are scholars that work with technology and the idea of technology and Christianity and demons, and I know there are scholars who work with this. I never read anything about it, but I tend to joke that in the contemporary world, it’s enough to live in it, and I don’t study it! Apart from the joke, though, I think the idea is very similar. It’s something that doesn’t have a body, and it can influence you, and this influence can make you sick or can make you… because we talk a lot about addiction of the screens and cell phones and so on and so forth. So I think there is a connection there.

Shirley Paulson

Very interesting as always. Alright, so I don’t see any hands up yet. So I want to get my question in now too. I was wondering if you might talk a little more about how maybe the first or second century followers of Jesus might’ve understood the way a demon would make you sick. I mean, if Jesus is casting them out by appealing to his God, right? Then what is it that makes someone sick with a demon? How does that work?

Tupá Guerra

So as far as we know, and this is not only for Christians; it’s a very common understanding in ancient times, that sickness is caused by evil things and any type of sickness. I’m talking about toothache. I’m talking about headaches. I’m talking about children dying from early age and all types of sickness. And we know that, from a period a little bit later, when we have this thing that I love to see these, the magic bowls. I don’t know if you guys ever heard about them, but they are like traditional bowls. And there’s some text written on them, and they are usually found upside down into the entrances of houses from the third and fourth century mostly. And they are usually written in Hebrew but with mixtures of other languages. And they mentioned Jesus and they mentioned God and sometimes they mentioned Jesus and God and other gods at the same time in the same thing, which is very interesting, which shows that people, at least for some time, they would mix things a lot.

But then the interesting part is how they talk about disease. So the majority of them, talking about demons, are talking about, “Oh, take away the demon who is causing this person to lose sight, take away the demon who is causing this person to have headaches.” And so it seems that the protection against disease and the protection against demons was very much intertwined. And I like to think about this, about how physical is the threat of demons. Because sometimes for us, we think about spiritual things and it might sound like something a bit far away. And in ancient times they’re talking about actual disease, and of course you need God’s help to protect you and to save you from disease and to cure you. But as I said, it’s medicine and religion and so on, it’s all mingled together. So it’s not like you all, you just pray and then you’re good. Usually they would have, “Oh, you have to pray and take this tea and also do this, and then God will help you.” And so you have all this variety of things that need to be done together. And when we’re talking about Jesus casting out demons, we’re talking about him helping people with diseases like physical diseases, but at the same time we’re talking about him. So those physical diseases, they’re only possible to be cured with the help of God because they’re not only a human thing.

Shirley Paulson

It’s interesting that you’re bringing up to me the connection between what we might call moral or sin versus sickness and that you don’t deserve the sickness, but you also have to be good enough that you don’t get punished. So it seems like there’s a interesting kind of combination between sin and sickness or morals and health.

Tupá Guerra

Yes, that’s the connection they used to make.

Shirley Paulson

Yeah. Okay. Honor has a hand up,

Honor

What I’m hearing kind of as a history through this discussion is that basically talking about demons or devils or daemons, or whatever is just the age old question of what is evil and how do you identify it and how do you get out of it? And when Toto was bringing that out about women, women were marginalized to a great degree because maybe nobody wanted to understand them. And so they pushed them off to the side and used them as the receptacle for what they didn’t like or didn’t understand or didn’t know. So then if you sweep that along through history and you come to the example of Jesus, he was so inclusive, he really didn’t marginalize anybody. And I think that inclusiveness indicated—what?— understanding or compassion. And so he was able to help the Magdalene with her problem and the guy in the tombs with his insanity.

And then you move on to Paul in the seventh chapter of Romans who says, “this is driving me nuts. I want to do something good, and do it, and I do something bad, and I don’t seem him to have control over it.” Well, he was really talking about a demon, wasn’t he? And then when you get into the canonical book of Revelation,l in the end it talks about the devil and his angels, and I think the devil’s angels must be demons. So to me it kind of looks like it’s just that fundamental question of what is evil and how or can you control it? And then looking at some examples of what has happened with it through the years. Am I being too simplistic?

Tupá Guerra

I don’t think so. I think as always it’s a lot of things, and that’s part of why I love studying histories—because you can pull a lot of threads, and then you can see things and the things that happen are very complex and you have a lot of different aspects to it. But what you bring is definitely one of the aspects. And also the idea that people are trying to live, and they’re trying to understand how life works, and they’re trying to understand how evil happens, and why some people do well and some others don’t. And those questions may seem very much just a thing for us. But they were also a thing in other times. And I have said to people, “Oh, it’s not just us with other clothing, but there are some things that we can see from the texts that people worried about.”

So they were worried about what is evil, how can we control it? And at the same time, they were trying to understand why is this person sick and why are children dying when they are supposed to be born? And I bring that because a lot of the texts and amulets and so on are for protection of women in childbirth, because we know this was the biggest cause of death for women. And it’s also part of why women were also considered this interesting thing because women were kind of controlling life and the way that women knew more of how life started and ended. And people were very confused by that sometimes. And as you said, sometimes they just don’t want to understand. But in any case, I think it’s a lot from people trying to understand evil in the world, but also a lot from people trying to understand why bad things happens and to trying to understand disease.

And when they say that devil, his angels, they’re very much relating to this idea of angels as messengers, and you have good ones and bad ones. And actually God would create angels just with the word. And then there is a whole debate over whether angels are like physical things or they’re more like the ideas of things that happen, because you have angels like the angel of thunder and the angel of rain and the angel of everything. So are they human-like figures, or are they more ideas? And then if they are more ideas and ways of controlling and creating the world, how do they work in society? So for sure what you said is that it’s one of the ways of thinking. I would just say it’s not the only way of thinking of it.

Shirley Paulson

That’s a great way to conclude, this is not the only way to think about this!

Tupá Guerra

Very historian!

Shirley Paulson

Yeah. Well Bill, I see you’ve got your hand up and we’ve really kind of run out of time. Can you ask it in about 10 seconds or what do you think?

Bill

My question is, are there tie-ins with the tricksters with demons, or was there a concept of human beings being involved as tricksters?

Tupá Guerra

The trickster part, it appears more in the texts like in the Greek texts, when they’re talking about the daemons that are those figures that can be tricksters and can help or not. And in ancient Christianity, not very much for or evil or good, and they’re more divided between the two. Then of course when Christianity is going and mixing with other religions that have a stronger sense of trickster gods and so on, then you get back a bit of the trickster part of the demons. And so particularly from the Middle Ages, in the late Middle Ages, where you have this connection again with tricksters. So the answer is, it depends on when—which is probably the answer I would give to most things. But yes, there is, and there isn’t the connection.

Shirley Paulson

Isn’t that interesting? And I love the way you have really helped us to think that there’s not black and white, that we really have to come to terms with the fact that the concepts of demons and the concepts of daemon were blending with other things going on in society and in people’s searching for answers. And then not everybody had the same answers. So this is very helpful, Tupá. I wish we could go on and on, because I’m sure you got so much more to say. Can you guide us anywhere to keep learning about this? Where do we go from here?

Tupá Guerra

Oh, I would love for you to go to my podcast. I don’t have a podcast in English, though, so no, I can’t guide you guys. I always say to people to go to Google Scholar because I think it’s one of the places where you can find the latest scholarship. Sometimes scholarship is really boring or terrible to read, and I know it. I read a lot of it. So I know historians sometimes are very, very bad at communicating.  I’m not discrediting theologians at all. Scholars who are theologians are also great, but I think being able and being open to read and to listen to a lot of different perspectives really helps to have this nuance with  Google Scholar.

Shirley Paulson

Gosh, this has just been fascinating at Tupá. Thank you so much for being with us tonight and I want to thank everybody for your participation tonight. So to close this out here, this was the October, 2024 Bible and Beyond Discussion, titled Demonic Origins and Magdalene, with our guest scholar, Dr. Tupá Guerra. Once a month, from 8:00 to 9:00 PM Eastern time on Monday nights, usually the fourth of the month, we provide a discussion of one or more of our early Christian texts. One of our knowledgeable scholars leads these sessions sharing a will framed overview of these early Christian texts and allowing participants time to ask questions and share their insights.

And one last thing, I won’t let you forget how much we appreciate your Patreon support. There’s a wonderful growing community involved with Patreon right now, and they’re donating anywhere from $5 a month to $50 a month, and that’s where our growth is coming from.

So please go to patreon.com/bibleandbeyond to select the level that’s just right for you.

And I want to thank Tupa so much for a very engaging and thought provoking discussion tonight. So great to have you with us again.

Tupá Guerra

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It was really fun and the questions always help me to think of new things. So really, really thank you guys.