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Whatever may be said of this theory of the
Rabbis, that the air is full of demons, and that men are in
danger of receiving them into their systems it may certainly be
said that in the days of the early Christians the air was
dangerously full of demonologies, and that men were in peculiar
peril of adopting erroneous doctrines on this matter.
It must be remembered, on the one hand, that many of the Gospel
miracles, and particularly the casting out of devils, must in any
case have given the faithful a vivid sense of the existence and
power of the evil spirits. At the same time, as we have seen,
Scripture itself did not furnish any full and clear information
in regard to the origin and the nature of these powerful enemies;
on the other hand, it may be observed that the first Christian
converts and the first Christian teachers were for the most part
either Jews or Greeks, and many of them were living in the midst
of those who professed some or other of the old Oriental
religions. Thus, while they naturally wished to know something
about these matters, they had but little definite knowledge of
the truth, and on the other hand their ears were daily filled
with false and misleading information. In these circumstances it
is scarcely surprising to find that some of the earliest
ecclesiastical writers, as St. Justin, Origen, and Tertullian,
are not very happy in their treatment of this topic.
There was, moreover, one fruitful source of error which is rather
apt to be forgotten. Now that common consent of Catholic
commentators has furnished a better interpretation of Genesis,
vi, 2, and conciliar definitions and theological arguments have
established the fact that the angels are purely spiritual beings,
it may seem strange that some early Christian teachers should
have supposed that the phrase, sons of God, could possibly mean
the angels or that these pure spirits could have taken unto
themselves wives of the daughters of men. But it must be borne in
mind that the old commentators, who read the Septuagint or some
derivative version, did not put this interpretation on the
passage; the word itself was in the text before them, that is to
say, the old Greek Bible expressly said that "the Angels of
God took wives of the daughters of men". This unfortunate
reading was certainly enough to give a wrong direction to much of
the demonology of early Christian writers and those who went
astray in other matters also naturally adopted peculiar ideas on
this subject.
In some ways one of the most remarkable examples of this mistaken
demonology is that to be found in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies
(Hom. viii, ix). The writer gives a very full account of the
mysterious episode of Genesis, vi, 2, which, in common with so
many others, he takes to be the origin of the demons who were in
his view, the offspring of the supposed union of the angels of
God and the daughters of men. But on one point, at any rate, he
improves the story and does something to lighten our initial
difficulty.
The first objection to the legend was, that the angels as pure
spirits, were plainly incapable of feeling sensual passions; and
it was possibly a keen sense of this difficulty that led some who
had adopted the story to deny the spirituality of the angelic
nature. But the moralist evades it in a more ingenious manner.
According to his account, the angels were not overpowered with
the passion of sensual love while they were as yet in their
purely spiritual state; but when they looked down and witnessed
the wickedness and ingratitude of men whose sins were defiling
the fair creation of God, they asked of their Creator that they
might be endowed with bodies like those of men, so that coming
down to earth, they might set things right and lead a righteous
life in the visible creation.
Their wish was granted, they were clothed in bodies and came down
to dwell on earth. But now they found that with their raiment of
mortal flesh they had acquired also the weakness and passions
which had wrought such havoc in men, and they too, like the sons
of men, became enamoured of the beauty of women and, forgetting
the noble purpose of their descent to earth, gave themselves up
to the gratification of their lust, and so rushed headlong to
their ruin. The offspring of their union with the daughters of
men were the giants -- the mighty men of superhuman build and
superhuman powers, as became the sons of incarnate angels, yet at
the same time mortal, like their mortal mothers. And when these
giants perished in the Flood their disembodied souls wandered
through the world as the race of demons.
Assyrian and Akkadian Demonology