Demons, Devils or so-called Evil Spirits were the fanciful creation of the pagan mind.1 They were supposed to be a kind of demi-god, inhabiting the air, and producing disease in human beings by taking possession of them. The following passages show that in the Bible, the word is not used to express this idea.

They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not. (Deuteronomy 32:17; Psalm 106:37).

And he ordained him priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for the calves which he had made. (2 Chronicles 11:15; Leviticus 17:7).

The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God (1 Corinthians 10:20).

Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him... And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour. (Matthew 17:15-18).

(From this, the identity of lunacy with supposed diabolical possession is apparent. The expulsion of the evil which deranged the child's faculties is the casting out of the demon).

Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil, blind, and dumb: and he healed him, insomuch that the blind and dumb both spake and saw. (Matthew 12:22).

One of the multitude answered and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; (Mark 9:17).

1 The word "devils" occurs but four times in the Old Testament; in two places the original word is sheedim, signifying breasts and teats. Parkhurst says "As a noun masculine plural, it was the name given by the Hebrews to the idols worshipped by the inhabitants of Cannan." The Egyptian Isis was one of these sheedim, and was called multimammia, or many-breasted, because clustered over with breasts. They worshipped the prolific principles in nature. Segeerim, twice out of fifty instances, is rendered devils. It represents something hairy; it came to signify a goat, a hairy one. The Egyptians, and all other nations at that day, worshipped it as an emblem of fecundity. Parkhurst says, "It is not, however, improbable that the Christians borrowed their goat-like pictures of the devil, with a tail, horns and cloven feet, from the heathenish representations of Pan the Terrible." - Hebrew Lexicon. In the New Testament, the word is of frequent occurrence. The translators, however, make little or no distinction between the Greek words diabolos and daimon, rendering both, frequently and incorrectly, "devils." Demon, devil-god, or evil genius, expressed to the Greek mind the idea of human departed spirits, raised to the rank of gods or deities. The Jews imbibed in a great measure the traditions of the Greeks and Latins, supposing that diseases and afflictions, whether mental or physical, were the result of having demons or possessions. This tradition had impressed itself on the general language of the time, without being committed to the theory in which that language had its origin; just as many exploded theories in our time have left their mark in such phrases as "bewitched," "moonstruck," "St. Vitus' dance," " St. Anthony's fire," etc. These phrases are freely used, without subjecting the person using them to the imputation of believing the original fiction. Christ's conformity to popular language did not commit him to popular delusions. In one case, he apparently recognizes the god of the Philistines; "Ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub, if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out? " (Matthew 12:27). Now, Beelzebub signifies god of flies, a god of the Philistines of Ekron (2 Kings 1:6). Parkhurst remarks "However strange the worship of such a deity may appear to us, yet a most reasonable instance of a similar idolatry is said to be in practice among the Hottentots, even to our day. The Jews in our Saviour's time had changed the name into Beelzebub, i.e., the lord of dung." He also says, "There is no reason to doubt but it was applied in the same sense by the Jews, with whom our Lord conversed." Lightfoot remarks, "And among the Jews it was almost reckoned a duty of religion to reproach idols and idolatry, and call them contemptuous names;" and Christ in using the name takes no pain to dwell on the fact that Beelzebub was a reality. This might, with as much reason, be taken as proof of his belief in Beelzebub, as his accommodation to popular speech on the subject of devils is taken to prove his belief in the popular idea.