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42 • • • Fallen Angels angel of death, and to the guardian angel of Rome.8 No single conception is identified with the name. Malchira means "king (or angel) of evil." Matanbuchus is a riddle still unsolved. In this story Beliar, Satan, and Samael are most likely not separate beings , but only different names for the Devil. It is a distinctively Christian usage to call the Devil "the ruler of this world." 9 Our survey of this literature would be incomplete if we did not record that many of the "outside books" are completely silent on our theme. The pre-Maccabean Book of Tobit speaks of Asmodeus ; but he is a commonplace demon who can be put to flight by foul-smelling smoke. He has no cosmic significance. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, also early, never mentions demons; and the single reference to angels declares that God has appointed rulers over the heathen, but reserved Israel as His own portion.10 The Books of the Maccabees, Judith, and the Testament of Abraham contain nothing for our purpose.11 More surprising, the strongly Pharisaic Psalms of Solomon do not once mention either angels or evil spirits. In short, the dualistic concepts we have been studying, and the myths in which these concepts were embodied, were never accepted by all the Jewish teachers. And many important thinkers had discarded them before the rise of Christianity .12 CHAPTER TEN Esdras, Baruch, Pseudo-Philo. fall of the Jewish state, the destruction of Jerusalem , and the burning of the Temple were an overwhelming tragedy for all Jewry, and especially for the Jews of Palestine. More than ever were they conscious of the reality and pervasiveness of evil. Shortly after the debacle, two great apocalypses were written which struggle with the problem of divine justice as passionately and poignantly as does the Book of Job. One is the Apocalypse of Ezra (IV Esdras), which has come down to us in Latin; the other is the Apocalypse of Baruch, which survives in Syriac. They manifest a spiritual level higher than Esdras, Baruch, Pseudo-Philo. • • • 43 anything else in apocalyptic literature, and contain many parallels to the rabbinic aggada. In their effort to solve the problem of evil, these writings make no use of dualistic myths concerning fallen angels, evil spirits, or devils. The Ezra apocalypse does not even hint at the existence of such dark beings. It finds the source of evil in the sin of Adam, whose misdeed occasioned the downfall of all his posterity (7.116-118). The author here reveals a measure of spiritual kinship with his older contemporary, the apostle Paul. The Baruch apocalypse also traces the beginning of evil to Adam's sin, which brought untimely death, disease, grief and pain into the world. "Sheol kept demanding that it should be renewed in blood, and the begetting of children was brought about, and the passion of parents produced, and the greatness of humanity was humiliated, and goodness languished" (56.5, 6). And he adds: "the darkness of darkness was produced. For he (man) became a danger to his own soul: even to the angels he became a danger. For, moreover, at that time when he was created, they enjoyed liberty. And some of them descended and mingled with women. And then those who did so were tormented in chains. But the rest of the multitude of the angels, of which there is no number , refrained themselves. And those who dwelt on the earth perished together with them through the waters of the deluge (ibid., vv. 9-15). Here the story of the fallen angels recurs for a moment; but in how changed a setting! The tale is substantially the same. The author can summarize it as something familiar to his readers. But its meaning is completely reversed. The fall of the angels is not the source of evil or the cause of human sin; instead, it is the sinfulness of mankind that caused the fall of certain angels. The episode reveals the measure of human corruption, not its origin.1 But our seer will not go as far as the author of IV Esdras in making Adam the cause of human depravity. Sin indeed began with Adam and brought suffering and death into the world. But Adam's sin did not corrupt human nature at the root, as IV Esdras implies and as is taught explicitly in the Christian doctrine of original sin. For in a prayer of Baruch we read: "Though Adam first...

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