Keoni
Member
Everyone familiar with the Bible knows it talks about angels and demons. But most would be surprised to learn that there’s no verse in the Bible that explains where demons came from. Christians typically assume that demons are fallen angels, cast from heaven with Satan (the Devil) right before the temptation of Adam and Eve. But guess what? There’s no such story in the Bible. The only description of anything like that is in Revelation 12:9—but the occasion for that whole episode was the birth of the Messiah (Rev 12:4–6), an event long after Adam and Eve.
So if the Bible doesn’t record an ancient expulsion from heaven by hordes of angels who then became known as demons, where do demons come from?
There’s actually a straightforward answer to that question, but it’s likely one you’ve never heard of: In ancient Jewish texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, demons are the disembodied spirits of dead Nephilim giants who perished at the time of the great flood.
I'm not making this stuff up here is a link to a reputable source. Are the demons the disemboweled spirits of the Nephilim?
The first four verses of the Bible’s flood account read:
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Gen 6:1–4
So these sons of God were transgressors of the divinely-ordained boundary between heaven and earth by producing children with human women. Those children are referred to as Nephilim. The term “Nephilim” doesn’t mean “fallen ones”; it means “giants.”
The key to understanding how these giants were perceived as demons in the biblical narrative was an idea that got a lot of focus in Jewish writings produced after the Old Testament—is the term Rephaim. In the Old Testament, the Rephaim are described as giant warlords, but also as frightening, sinister disembodied spirits (“the shades”) in the Underworld, called Sheol in Hebrew. The disembodied spirits of these giants were therefore associated with the abode of the dead, something everyone feared, since everyone feared death.
A non-biblical psalm found among the Dead Sea Scrolls calls demons “offspring of man and the seed of the holy ones,” a clear reference to the disembodied spirits of the divine-human offspring from Genesis 6:1–4
And that's where demons come from. Michael Heiser's book on this topic describes it a lot better than I can.
So if the Bible doesn’t record an ancient expulsion from heaven by hordes of angels who then became known as demons, where do demons come from?
There’s actually a straightforward answer to that question, but it’s likely one you’ve never heard of: In ancient Jewish texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, demons are the disembodied spirits of dead Nephilim giants who perished at the time of the great flood.
I'm not making this stuff up here is a link to a reputable source. Are the demons the disemboweled spirits of the Nephilim?
The first four verses of the Bible’s flood account read:
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.’ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. Gen 6:1–4
So these sons of God were transgressors of the divinely-ordained boundary between heaven and earth by producing children with human women. Those children are referred to as Nephilim. The term “Nephilim” doesn’t mean “fallen ones”; it means “giants.”
The key to understanding how these giants were perceived as demons in the biblical narrative was an idea that got a lot of focus in Jewish writings produced after the Old Testament—is the term Rephaim. In the Old Testament, the Rephaim are described as giant warlords, but also as frightening, sinister disembodied spirits (“the shades”) in the Underworld, called Sheol in Hebrew. The disembodied spirits of these giants were therefore associated with the abode of the dead, something everyone feared, since everyone feared death.
A non-biblical psalm found among the Dead Sea Scrolls calls demons “offspring of man and the seed of the holy ones,” a clear reference to the disembodied spirits of the divine-human offspring from Genesis 6:1–4
And that's where demons come from. Michael Heiser's book on this topic describes it a lot better than I can.
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