priest of eminent piety, Ardai Virasp, or Virâf. He, after the requisite formalities, a part of which consisted in emptying three times the wine-cup of Vistaspa, fell asleep. His soul departed from his body for seven days, during which the assembled Magi recited the ritual. The Ized Serosh accompanied the seer on a tour through the seven heavens and explained the various visions seen on the way, some of which were to be understood literally, while others were highly metaphorical. On the eighth day Ardai Virâf awoke and, in conformity with a command received in heaven from Ormazd, related all that had been communicated to him, which was written down from his lips, and became one of the chief text books of the restored Magism. This story of the origin of the book is, of course, in great part a fiction in imitation of the account of the pseudo-Isaiah; yet so much is clear, that the Revelation of Ardai Virâf is one of the most important authorities for the later Parsism, that it is in its plan an obvious copy of the Ascension of Isaiah, and that it was professedly written long after its Christian prototype. Of the two remaining works of this class the Book of Revelation is familiar to every one, and the fourth Book of Ezra so closely resembles it in form and purport as to necessitate the conviction that either the one served as a model for the other, or that both were the common product of the same circle of ideas. These two books, however, although highly important, each for the elucidation of the other, and both as records of opinions and expectations prevalent in the latter part of the first century, do not immediately concern our inquiry, and so may be passed without further examination.

We shall now be able to understand why there are so many points of coincidence between our Scriptures and the later Parsee books. Many of these we have already adverted to in our analysis of the Magian system, and a full enumeration of them is not necessary. Yet for the sake of placing the subject in a clearer light, we may recapitulate a few of the more prominent coincidences. We may notice the creation of the world in six successive periods, with almost the same distribution of work as in the first chapter of Genesis, the resting of the Deity from his labors, and the institution of religious festivals commemorative of that rest. There is next the entrance of the Evil One into the world

in the disguise of a serpent, and his temptation of the first pair by the offer of fruit; and the clothing of skins which they made themselves. It may well be questioned whether the frequent recurrence of the number seven, and even the doctrine of the seven Amshaspands, and the corresponding seven chief devils, be not a derivative of the same source. Certain it is that in the Vendidad and Yasna, which alone have any title to be considered ancient, there are not seven archangels, but six, and no stress is laid on the particular number. It is after the Christian era that Serosh is added to make the number seven. Now the doctrine of seven archangels, or angels of ministration, is old among the Jews. The angel says to Tobit (xii. 15,) "I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints, and enter in before the glory of the Holy One." So also the Pirke Eliezer,-" A veil is extended before the throne of God, and the seven angels who were first created, minister before the veil."3 And in relation to the seven arch-fiends, the Book of Enoch makes the leaders of the fallen angels seven in number, bearing the double character at once of seven spirits and seven stars. The Ulema-i-Islam takes this idea and amplifies it after the usual manner of a later paraphrast. "The dwellers in Paradise bound Ahriman in hell, and the seven deevs in heaven. These are called Sireh, Nireh, Naenkish, Tarmad, Heshem, Sibih, and Batsir. mazd formed out of each of these seven an orb of light, and gave them divine names; thus were formed the seven planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon." Here, too, we have the idea of a war in heaven between the celestial host on the one hand and the Devil and his angels on the other, and the expulsion and binding of the latter, all of which had been already announced in the Revelation of John. We may also include here the sevenfold distribution of offices in the church, common to both the Parsees and the Christians of the East, and a number of peculiar usages.5 The expectation of a great prophet near the end of the world, to be born of a virgin, to be preceded by two special forerunners, and great moral and physical commotions, and who shall ultimately raise the dead; and the belief in a final judgment are also JewChristian ideas transplanted into a foreign and fertile soil.

3 Gfrörer's Urchristenthum i. 361, Rev. i. 4, iii. 1, iv. 5. 4 Rev. xii. 7, xx. 1.

Or

5 Spiegel's Avesta 11, Einleit. 120.

These and other points common to the Jews or Christians and the Parsees indicate a unity of origin for many things; and after what has been said it can hardly be doubted to which people the original belongs. The Judæo-Christian and Zoroastrian scriptures are, to a considerable extent, parallel, but by no means conterminous, lines. Even conceding that many parts of our scriptures are much less ancient than has generally been believed, still the series reaches vastly farther into the remote past than does the Avesta. So almost, if not quite everything common to, and distinctive of, both systems may be traced to a higher antiquity in the Jewish line than in the Persian. The Parsee, then, has followed the Jew. Some ideas and influences may indeed have passed in the opposite direction, but this is mere conjecture; and if such there be they will be likely to be found in the Talmudic writers, or possibly even in the New Testament, and by no means in the Old. The Persian doctrines concerning evil spirits may have had some effect on the superstitions of the Jews. This was the side most open to innovation, and if such an influence could be proved, there would be no difficulty in believing that it might have helped to give shape to the ideas prevalent in the time of Christ concerning demons and demoniacal possession. But of this, as we have said, we have thus far failed to find any distinct evidence.

In examining the connection between the religions of Jehovah and of Örmazd, three points seem worthy of more particular consideration,-the doctrine of the Devil, the doctrine of the Resurrection, and the Manichean heresy.

According to the current Jewish belief, in the century preceding the appearance of Christ, as evidenced by the Book of Enoch, the heavenly watchers, to the number of two hundred, became enamored of the beautiful daughters of Cain and descended to the earth. They thus forfeited their rank and their holy estate. They were arrested and confined in chains and darkness to the judgment of the great day.6 These heavenly watchers, moreover, were stars conformably to Job xxxviii. 7. The principal ones were seven in number. The chief of all had many names, as Samiaza, Samael, Satan, Berial, &c. Thus the Pseudo

6 Compare 2 Peter ii. 4 and Jude vi.

Enoch relates, "I perceived a place which had neither the firmament of heaven over it, nor the solid land beneath it, nor water over it, nor anything around it, but the place was desolate. And there I saw seven stars, like great shining mountains, and like spirits beseeching me. Then said the angel, This place is to be the prison of the stars of the host of heaven until the end of heaven and earth. They are those who transgressed the command of God before their time was come; for they came not at the right time. Therefore his anger burned against them and he bound them until the end of their time of punishment in the hidden year.'

A somewhat different doctrine is known to have prevailed about the same time, according to which these great spirits of evil reside in the higher regions of the atmosphere. So, in the Ascensio Isaiæ, Christ in descending to become incarnate passed under an incognito through the territory of the spirits of the air. This idea of the fiends having their dominion in the atmosphere, and there exercising great power is one that often recurs in the New Testament.8 There were also various other opinions which it would be a waste of time to try to harmonize.

The incarcerated or banished angels, however, left behind them on earth a remembrance in their half human, half angelic progeny, the nephilim, or giants-the Pseudo-Enoch reckons the nephilim the children of the giants. The descendants of these again were the gibborim, or mighty ones. When these had perished by war and by the waters of Noah, their souls, inheriting the malignity and peculiar vitality of their fathers, became the wandering Shedim, Daimones, or Devils, which have figured so largely in the superstitions of the East. A Talmudic writer says of them: "Six things are said of the Shedim, in three of which they agree with the angels of ministration, and in three resemble men. The three particulars in which they are like the angels of ministration are, that they have wings like the angels, that they' fly from one end of the world to the other like the angels, and lastly that they know what is to happen in the future. What! do you mean that they know the future? Not so; but they hear it behind the veil, like the angels. The three things in which they resemble men are these, that they 8 Ephes. ii. 2, vi. 12. Col. i. 13. John xii. 31,

7 Cap. x. 29. xiv. 30, xvi. 11.

In

eat and drink like men, that they are fruitful and multiply like men, and that they die like men.' Their number was supposed to be enormous. "Rabbi Afai said: they are more numerous than we, and they surround us continually as the upturned earth the holes in the vineyard in which the vines stand. Raf Huna conjectures, each human being has 10,000 such spirits on his right hand and 1000 on his left." 10 These demons cause all conceivable mischief, including many kinds of sickness and infirmity. They de light in old ruins, burial places, and depositories of filth and offal. They have the power of entering into and maintaining possession of houses, persons, and even animals. This possession in the case of persons is evidenced by lunacy, dumbness, deafness, epilepsy, curvature of the spine, carditis, or some other peculiar and distressing malady. animals, hydrophobia was the most decisive symptom. How widely spread and deeply rooted this belief in demons was, and still is, must be familiar to every one at all acquainted with eastern opinion. In most particulars the character here given of the demons agrees with what has already been said of the deers and drukhs, or daroudjis. The similarity between the Jewish and Persian notions is so great that we are compelled to suppose some connection, for which we know there was ample opportunity, yet it is not easy to determine which people had the priority. Most probably the influence was mutual. The doctrine of demoniacal possession, the most common form of demoniac manifestation believed in by the Jews of Palestine in the time of Christ, does not occur in a distinct form in the Vendidad, compiled say two hundred years earlier; nor do we know anything to prove that the Persians held the doctrine at or before that time.

We come, then, to the question, How old is the belief in evil spirits among the Jews?. And here it is well to distinguish between demons, or devils, in the plural, and the Devil, or Satan, in the singular. The former are a very promiscuous multitude, while the latter is a single, distinct personage of high, unholy eminence.

Perhaps there never was a people, especially in the olden time, without a belief in supersensuous intelligences of a 10 Tract Berachot Baby

9 Tract Chagigah Babylon, fol. 16, a. lon, fol. 6, a.