Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism

by Annette Yoshiko Reed

What did ancient Jews believe about demons and angels? This question has long been puzzling, not least because the Hebrew Bible says relatively little about such transmundane powers. In the centuries after the conquests of Alexander the Great, however, we find an explosion of explicit and systematic interest in, and detailed discussions of, demons and angels. In this book, Annette Yoshiko Reed considers the third century BCE as a critical moment for the beginnings of Jewish angelology and demonology. Drawing on early 'pseudepigrapha' and Aramaic Dead Sea Scrolls, she reconstructs the scribal settings in which transmundane powers became a topic of concerted Jewish interest. Reed also situates this development in relation to shifting ideas about scribes and writing across the Hellenistic Near East. Her book opens a window onto a forgotten era of Jewish literary creativity that nevertheless deeply shaped the discussion of angels and demons in Judaism and Christianity.

Genres: Religion, Old Testament, History, Judaism

362 pages, Hardcover

Published February 27, 2020

About the author

Annette Yoshiko Reed joined the Penn faculty in 2007. She is also a member of the Jewish Studies Program and the Graduate Group in Ancient History, and serves as a Faculty Fellow in Stouffer College House. Prof. Reed’s research spans Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and Jewish/Christian relations in Late Antiquity. Publications include Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge 2005), Heavenly Realms and Earthly Realities in Late Antique Religions (ed. with Ra'anan Boustan; Cambridge 2004), and The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (ed. with Adam H. Becker; Mohr Siebeck 2003; Fortress 2007). She is currently working on two monographs: one on the origins of Jewish angelology and demonology, and the other on the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and the history of "Jewish-Christianity."

Reviews

[bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read of 2025 was a good one! I was entirely unfamiliar with the interplay between Jewish scribal cultures reimagining their role as mediators of divine knowledge and the developing systemization of intermediary spirits in the early Hellenistic era literature of Israel. Annette Yoshiko Reed convincingly illustrates this connection, though I will say I was hoping for a concluding section on how Daniel’s Angelology relates to the systematizations presented in Jubilees and the Enochic literature. Also, there are a few times where Reed is so thorough that my interest waned; still, being the scholarly work that it is, I think she is doing her due diligence by examining the minutiae of these developments.

[Andrew Oom · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Annette Yoshiko Reed’s Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism, we are taken back to a world where the earth and sky itself are characterized by the presence of spirits; what now is contextualized by the laws of science and physics, was then inhabited by angels and demons. Reed ventures to examine these angels and demons and to explore their origins and the origins of their categorization in angelologies and demonologies of Second Temple Judaism. We are introduced to this exploration with the context that the time period of Second Temple Judaism is characterized by what we do not know, described by its status as “intertestamental” and “post-exilic and pre-Maccabean”. And yet during this period noted as a “dark age” as far as our knowledge and understanding of it goes, discussion of angels and demons and vast and comprehensive angelologies and demonologies emerge. However, Reed notes, these are often discarded, or recontextualized to be exegetical texts of little import to our understanding of the Hebrew Bible or even the New Testament. In Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism, Annette Yoshiko Reed seeks to properly contextualize texts that have been “emptied of spirits” (13), examine pseudepigrapha within their own context outside of biblical canon, and “reverse the gaze” on these Second Temple Judaic texts, focusing the spotlight on the text itself and using biblical comparanda (36). In a book where I expected to learn solely about the role of demons and angels in Second Temple Judaic culture, I ended up having an understanding of how a dynamic and unique culture shaped collective understanding and archival impulse to categorize angels and demons by their relationship to humans.
Reed begins by deconstructing arguments for the emergence of vast and encompassing angelologies and demonologies as evidence of post-exilic theological decline or as footnotes to the origins of later biblical apocalyptic literature like Daniel. She notes that the lack of discourse about angels and demons in ancient Israel, in comparison with other cultures at the time, is anomalous (46), and is often explained away using the argument that Judaism is monotheistic and other cultures at the time were not; demons simply didn’t “fit” into monotheism. Reed rebukes this, explaining angels and demons as serving a similar function to other cultures’ divine councils with a sovereign at the head, executing the sovereign’s divine will (52). Reed fashions monotheism as a “re-casting” of Israel’s polytheistic past (64), embodying the “biblical dynamism” in exilic and post-exilic ancient Israel (77). Reed also emphasizes the importance of the distinction between reality and the rhetoric of what is written down; writings from ancient Israel we read as ultimate guides to ancient Israelite culture often reflect the choices made by the scribal and priestly elite about the structure of these texts (59). These deconstructions of arguments about the emergence of angelologies and demonologies serve the foundation of her next argument: the questions of “who is writing?” and “why?” are key to understanding pseudepigraphical collections of angels and demons.
Reed characterizes the scribe as the “agent of cultural change” (112), at the center of recorded Near East culture under Hellenistic rule. She supports this by examining pseudepigrapha like the Astronomical Book, the Book of the Watchers, and Jubilees, and notes the rise of the use of the first-person in Jewish literature (116). Reed examines how scribes in these books, exemplified by the character of Enoch, paragon of primeval scribalism, began to write themselves in Jewish literature. However, Reed builds upon this by considering that not only were scribes writing themselves in literature, but they were writing themselves as conveyors of knowledge. Books like the Astronomical Book take on a didactic theme as it embodies a greater concern with knowledge and epistemology. Additionally, in the Astronomical Book, knowledge is shown through a divine medium, the character of Uriel, who shows divine knowledge to Enoch. Reed interprets this both as an assertion of the origin of ancient Israelite knowledge but also as an elevation of scribes as the “students of angels” (184). Brilliantly, Reed contextualizes this using what little understanding we do have of the time-period: the rise of Greek paideia and the rise of competitive historiography under and post-Alexander.
Reed concludes that scribes began to write themselves into texts and to interpret themselves as students of angels and inheritors of divine knowledge in order to display to the burgeoning Hellenistic world that not only is Jewish knowledge divinely gifted and complete in nature, but it was also first, given Enoch’s status as an antediluvian scribe. Despite questionable origins of Astronomical Book ideas about astronomy as taken from earlier Mesopotamian ideas, the writings of astronomical theorems in Aramaic, the administrative language of the Near East, cements Aramaic as the language of scholarship and empires (126). Aramaic served as the unique language of Near Eastern scribalism to combat encroaching Greek paideia and Koine Greek, and was repurposed as the language of ancient Israelite “cultural memory” according to Reed (187).
Reed builds upon this by looking at the Book of the Watchers. Where the Astronomical Book begins to look at human relationship with angels and divine knowledge, the Book of the Watchers is an etiology of demonology and re-telling of Genesis 6:1-5. However, whereas the angelology of the Astronomical Book is associated with cosmology and is distant from humans, the Book of the Watchers, Reed asserts, is much more visceral. The demonology used here is related to magic and prayer books found from the same time in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and while it’s unclear which category, if either, directly influenced the other, Reed notes that the comprehensiveness of the understanding of demons as “everyday problems” lends an understanding of wide-spread demon-belief in the time-period and methods used to combat them (206). What then distinguishes the Book of the Watchers is that it can’t be reduced to a theological explanation for evil, but rather serves to “textualize…, narrativize…, [and] scribalize” (217) demon-belief in Second Temple Judaism. Demonology becomes a means to categorize and exert control over demons according to Reed, and the Book of the Watchers as a whole both centers local tradition and “radically globaliz[es] its significance” (243) to combat Greek paideia. Reed extends her argument to consider that meanwhile, there is a shifting of ideas about the role of the scribe and Jewish knowledge as a whole (245).
Finally, Reed looks to Jubilees, which takes on a different structure from the other pseudepigrapha studied in Demons, Angels, and Writing in Ancient Judaism. Jubilees, written in Hebrew, Reed argues, serves to consolidate Aramaic traditions of angelologies and demonologies (251). Jubilees is a re-telling of the pre-Sinaitic past and is focused on what is revealed to Moses by an angel. Interestingly, Reed explains how Jubilees re-frames the patriarchs as students of angels and scribes themselves, inheritors not only of pure lineage from the lines of Seth and Noah, but as inheritors of divine texts containing knowledge from angels (257). Here the role of angels is much like the role of angels in the Astronomical Book, serving as the revealer of the Law and other divine information, but also as recorders of this information, studying human activity (273), taking on a scribal role (once again serving to exalt ancient Israelite scribes), but angels in Jubilees also take on another role. The speaker in Jubilees, the revelatory angel speaking to Moses, describes themselves to be of the highest echelon of angels whose purpose is to praise God (273). These angels were created for the purpose of witnessing God’s divinity, and to share in the rituals of humans, observing the Sabbath, Shavuot, and other traditionally Jewish festivals and traditions (274, 275). Angels become inherently associated with Israel, and later, Reed finds, demons and other malicious spirits intending to mislead the ancient Israelites, become associated with Gentiles and people of other nations (282). This contrast between the angelic nature of the ancient Israelites and the association of demons with Gentiles serves Jubilees’ unique claim regarding the position of Israel in global culture: building off of the claims of Near East scribal superiority from the Astronomical Book and the Book of the Watchers, Jubilees places the Israelites above angels given their capacity to choose God as the patriarchs did; perceived distance from God is not a result of God separating himself from man, but rather the elevation of man as independent from needing divine guidance to fulfill divine objectives (301).
Annette Yoshiko Reed, in studying various pseudepigrapha from Second Temple Judaism, illustrates that by examining these books within their own context, we are able to glean information about the origins of angelology and demonology as they emerged. Angelology and demonology serve not as emblems of divine distance and precursors to apocalyptic literature but rather as documentation of assertion of ancient Israelite superiority and the shifting cultural importance of Near Eastern scribalism in preserving and expressing ancient Israelite knowledge, paving the way for future synchronic studies of Second Temple Judaism and ancient Israel.

[Charles Meadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal! This may be the most learned book I've ever read. Reed looks at the Aramaic writings from Ptolemaic period and asks what we can learn about Jewish scribal culture from them. She goes through Enoch's "Book of the Watchers" (ch 1-36) and "The Astronomical book" examining how these works adumbrate "angelology" and "demonology". By piecing together biblical references and "local traditions" about these supernatural entities third century scribes produced a body of knowledge about how the world works, and cemented their authority along the way. The final product was a "totalizing" narrative on par with Hellenistic schemes. There is strong emphasis on the significance of writing. What changes when oral tradition is put to parchment? What changes when different works are synthesized by scribes into a treatise? Such great discussions here.

One of the biggest strengths of this work is its interaction with so much relevant scholarship. Reed shows why her view of these writings makes better sense than others, and along the way paints a big picture more coherent than any I've seen yet. If you're interested in the Pseudepigrapha, the book of Daniel, or Hellenistic Judaism you NEED this book.

[Fred Kohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I checked out this book because i was curious about the contents of the writings about demons in what is typically called the intertestamental period, particularly as it may have influenced the N.T. attitudes about Satan and demons. However this book was not primarily about *what* Jews believed during this period but *why* they came to those beliefs and *how* they expressed them in their writings. So the first two chapters had little to say about the specifics of Jewish beliefs about angels and demons but rather was about how Jewish scribes came to be interested in transmundane beings and how they expressed those interests, and particularly how they came to write in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.

The last three chapters were more about the specifics of Jewish beliefs about angels and demons. They took in order the Astronomical Book of 1 Enoch, the Book of the Watchers (also from 1 Enoch), and Jubilees. Yoshiko Reed mentions a number of other books mentioning angels and demons written in Aramaic, including the Aramaic Levi Document, the Admonitions of Qahat, the Visions of Amram, Tobit, and the Genesis Apocryphon. I wish that she had given more details about the contents of these documents. From what i can tell Tobit is the only document she gave any specifics on the contents and then only briefly.

This book has whetted my appetite to learn more about 1 Enoch and especially Jubilees. I read John J. Collins’s two volume commentary on 1 Enoch years ago from the Hermeneia series and need to reread it. I have reserved James C. VanderKam‘s first volume of his commentary on Jubilees and i am looking forward to reading it. I don’t have much experience with Jubilees other than reading it once through years ago and looking up a passage of interest occasionally.

[Alaric Barca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended if this subject is of interest to you. It is a textbook. It is scholarly and cites a lot of relevant sources.