Exactly what it says on the (dramatic) title.
We always hear about Biblically accurate angels: the burning wheels with tons of eyes, the strange looking creatures that sound like they come from the anime āEvangelionā, the cherubim with 4 faces, but I had a thought while watching The Exorcist: Believer (it wasā¦not good for anyone wondering. At all. The disrespect Reganās mom had towards Merrin and Karras after they died saving her daughter was baffling to listen to, especiallyā¦but i digress) a couple of days ago, specifically, if thatās how the demonically possessed are said to more or less act in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, or if theyāre they completely different to what we see in movies and games. Iām guessing itās more than likely the second one, right, but Iām curious about the details like the signs someoneās possessed, the demonās endgoal, and what they look like, basically everything you can gimme to sate this curiosity or to send me on a rabbit hole, if youād be so kind?
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There really isnāt any until the exorcisms of the NT, which is again missing much description.
Even the parts that some people think are describing demons often arenāt.
For example, the locusts of Revelations:
Look closely at a few of the details there:
So back in the day, there was no Greek word for a specific hornet, just a general term that applied to any wasps.
But in Judea the equivalent of the murder hornet was Vespa Orientalis.
This hornet, like many wasps, was active outside its nest for 5 months.
At the time, they thought a hive was ruled by a king, not a queen (thanks a lot Aristotle). And their nests are made underground (like the pit in the passage above).
Like most hornets, they had mandibles with large āteethā like a lion.
Unlike locusts, their faces were more human looking with the placement of the eyes centrally as opposed to on the edges of the head.
They were covered in fine hairs like a womanās body hair.
Covered in segmented āscalesā with stings painful like a scorpion.
They had a yellow stripe across the lower part like a saddle (this was actually used to effectively solar power the insect).
But the most striking similarity between the above passage and this specific insect native to the area was the gold crown marker on its head: https://www.biolib.cz/IMG/GAL/33881.jpg
So while people have had their imaginations running wild with Fabio looking scorpion/horse chimeras for years now, it may have simply been a poetic description of the local murder hornet equivalent being really active and stinging people - a nightmarish scenario for anyone who has been on the wrong end of a hornet before, but not quite the nightmarish people have been dreaming up since.
As a lover if insects and arachnids who spends significant time in nature and the garden, the fear I feel for wasps is indescribable.
The idea someone, two millennia ago, wrote wasps to be the most evil, feared, sadistic thing in their experience of the world resonates with me deeply.
So I recently listened to an episode of the Data over Dogma podcast specifically regarding angels and demons. Itās hosted by Dan Beecher (an atheist podcaster) and Dr. Dan McClellan (a Bible scholar), and they discuss how angels and demons are actually depicted/described in the Bible, compared to the extra-biblical descriptions of both that weāve gotten over the millennia. Itās about an hour but should serve as a nice little primer on the subject, with some recommendations for further study.
Surprisingly, a lot of the creepy media is fairly accurate, though extreme. Demons arenāt prominent, we know they are angels who rebelled with Lucifer, and were cast out, so that would be their appearance, but in reference to possession, we basically have those that Jesus encountered and a few his apostles drove out in his name later on.
And what we see are people behaving almost like animals, screaming, shouting, with an inhuman strength to break chains or whatever locals have tried to contain them with, and inflicting a lot of self harm. Thereās a woman who would throw herself into fires, a man who had 100 demons in him (where āI am legionā comes from") who would throw himself onto rocks and off cliffs and cut himself, etc.
The more manufactured elements are the head twisting, anything to do with pentagrams, and honestly a lot of the hostility to others. People usually steered clear, but demon possessed individuals generally did more self harm than harming others, with cases where Jesus would meet them within cities, and they werenāt surrounded by dead people or a panicking mob or anything. They also donāt āhauntā or hunt people like they do in movies, but are usually extremely obvious.
Anyway, thatās my experience purely from biblical account, off the top of my head, Iām sure others can add more detail or examples.