Have you ever noticed how quickly people blame the devil? A flat tyre, a quarrel at home, a terrible Monday at work – and someone says, “That’s the enemy!” Some of us say it without a second thought.

But here is a question I rarely hear: where did our ideas about demons actually come from? Did they fall from heaven, fully formed? Or did they come from somewhere else?

Stay with me. The answer begins about 2,600 years ago, in a place called Babylon.

One Event That Changed Everything

In 586 BCE, the Jewish people were taken away from their land and deported to Babylon. We call it the Babylonian Exile. It was painful, of course. But it also did something quieter and, honestly, far more surprising: it changed the way the Jews thought about the unseen world.

Before the deportation, the Israelites believed in one God, Yahweh, and every being, earthly or spiritual being was completely under His authority. After the deportation, living among the Persians and Babylonians, their thinking was shaped by foreign cultures. A tidy, organised world of personified, evil demons appeared.

So let’s take it in two parts: before and after.

Before the Exile: A World Without a Devil Army

Picture the Hebrew Bible as it was written before the exile, or in the early days of it. Now go looking for a “Devil” ruling a cosmic kingdom of evil. Or for demons running around as individual characters with their own personalities.

You won’t find them. Independent, personified demons and a cosmic Devil are largely absent.

“But wait,” you might say, “doesn’t the text mention demons sometimes?” Fair point. The Hebrew does occasionally mention beings called shedim and se’irim – wilderness satyrs, or demons. But look at how they were understood. They were mostly seen as the powerless, lifeless idols of foreign nations. They were not members of a well-organised kingdom of evil.

So what was everyone worried about? Something quite different: keeping a strict boundary. The neighbouring Canaanite and Egyptian cultures had polytheistic rituals that were heavy with demons, and the Israelites were determined not to be pulled into them.

The Jews believed that a good relationship with God, and a happy life on earth, depended on two things: staying faithful to their covenant with Him, and avoiding idolatry. That was the whole formula.

And when things went wrong? When calamities, plagues or hardships struck, nobody pointed at a rogue evil being. They were seen as direct expressions of divine justice.

Hold on to that picture. It is about to change.

After the Exile: Enter the Demons

Fast forward. The exile is over, and we move into the Persian and Hellenistic eras and the Second Temple period. Jewish thought about the supernatural expanded dramatically. Why?

A new neighbour: Zoroastrianism

Under the Persian Empire, Jewish thinkers came across Zoroastrianism. This religion was built around a cosmic battle: a supreme god of light on one side, and an independent force of darkness on the other. Do you see how that might have stirred up some new ideas?

Evil gets names

Writing outside the Bible, from the Second Temple period, started to feature named, personified leaders of evil forces. Names like Mastema, Asmodeus, Belial and Satan. Evil now had a cast of characters.

Evil gets a backstory

People love to ask where things come from, and the Jews were no different. So they built an elaborate mythology. The most famous piece is the story of the “Watchers”: fallen angels who mated with human women. Their children were the Nephilim, and when the Nephilim died, their disembodied spirits became the demons wandering the earth.

From symbols to real threats

Here is the real shift. Demons used to be symbols of foreign idolatry. Now they had become active, malicious forces living in ruins and deserts. They caused physical diseases, mental illness and spiritual temptation.

The spiritual world also got organised, like a filing cabinet. The Jews sorted spirits into classes: shedim (demons), mazzikim (damagers) and ruach ra (evil spirits).

And then, the defences

If you believe invisible enemies are all around you, what do you do? You defend yourself. So the Jews began to use magic amulets, specific prayers and formal exorcisms.

Demons in the Talmud: Everywhere, and Invisible

Let’s take a quick look at the Babylonian Talmud. (A quick aside: the Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is the main source of Jewish religious law, theology, ethics and folklore. It is also a massive compendium of rabbinic commentary, debate, and legal analysis that interprets and expands upon the Torah’s laws.)

In the Talmud, demons are described as everywhere and dangerous, living invisibly all around human beings. Imagine that. Invisible danger on every side.

Because the belief in evil forces was so strong, Jewish law and custom began to include ways of keeping them away:

• Avoiding even numbers. For example, not drinking two cups of wine.
• Not travelling alone at night.
• Washing the hands first thing in the morning (negel vasser), to remove the “evil spirit” that was believed to rest on the hands.

It all makes sense once you see the belief behind it. Which brings us to the next question.

What About the Time of the Lord?

When our Lord came to earth, this was the belief He found among the Jews, the one they had adopted after the deportation.

Now, what did He do with it? Interestingly, He did not teach much about demons. He spoke mainly about why He came to earth and what the Kingdom of God means. He called diseases evil things but never said that the diseases were fallen angels. He never said that fallen angels have the power to deform human bodies. He never said that viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites that cause diseases were fallen angels.

But He did say one very important thing about Satan, and how to identify him. Satan is simply the spirit of lies. He presented Satan as anything that opposes God’s Purpose.

Remember that. We will come back to it.

So What Do Christians Believe Today?

This is where it gets uncomfortable, so let me say it gently but plainly.

Current Christian views about demons come mainly from what the Jews believed after the deportation. Christians took over the Jewish understanding without asking where those beliefs came from. To be precise, today’s Christian views are largely rooted in Second Temple Jewish demonology (the stretch of Jewish history after the Babylonian exile and leading up to the 1st century CE). They don’t differ sharply from it.

And as we have seen, the Jewish understanding of Satan and demons has its roots in the pagan beliefs of the countries where they were deported. Most of those beliefs were false. Those pagan nations simply did not have a proper understanding of Satan and demons.

Yet the church today has taken over those beliefs. It preaches a fight against demons and a Satan according to pagan ideas. In other words, the Christian church has also presented a false understanding of Satan and demons.

Do Satan and Demons Exist? What Power Do They Really Have?

Let me be clear. Satan and fallen angels do exist. I am not saying otherwise.

But they do not have the power that the Christian church, and the Jewish beliefs after the deportation, give them. They have only one power: the power of creating lies.

Why is that so serious? Because humans live by words. If Satan and fallen angels can give us words that are not true, and we believe them, then we begin to live according to a lie. And a life built on a lie produces destructive actions. Many of the diseases on earth currently are caused because we are living a life full of lies.

For example, we are told to sleep less and work harder. This might look true but it’s a lies. When we don’t sleep enough, we weaken our immune system and will fall sick.

We are also told that our countries need to keep on digging for minerals so we can always be prosperous. This is also a lie. The more we dig for minerals, the more we destroy our countries and pollute our rivers and environment.

There are many example that we can give in order to show how our current lifestyle and world system is just a lie but we will show it in other studies.

The Lord said that Satan is a liar and the father of lies. He did not say that Satan has the powers the church presents today.

Something to Take Home

Next time something goes wrong, before you blame an invisible army, ask a simpler question: is there a lie here that I have believed?

If you cannot recognise the true nature of Satan, you will never recognise his actions. But once you see that he is a liar, you can spot him anywhere: in politics, at work, in your marriage, in your family, in yourself, in your community, in your country, in your continent, in your political parties, in your school, and beyond.

The enemy is not hiding in the dark corners of old ruins. He works through words that are not true. So listen carefully to what you believe, and test every word against the truth.

Stay blessed.