by I was in a conversation with a brother in Christ about this recently and it was an interesting conversation so I thought I’d do an OP on the subject. I have always thought that demons were the angels that fell from heaven with Satan. After some research I’m not sure, so here we go;
First article by Michael S. Heiser
“Everyone familiar with the Bible knows it talks about angels and demons. But most would be surprised to learn that there’s no verse in the Bible that explains where demons came from. Christians typically assume that demons are fallen angels, cast from heaven with Satan (the Devil) right before the temptation of Adam and Eve. But guess what? There’s no such story in the Bible. The idea of a primeval fall of angels actually comes from church tradition and the great English poet John Milton in his epic Paradise Lost.
So if the Bible doesn’t record an ancient expulsion from heaven by hordes of angels who then became known as demons, where do demons come from?
There’s actually a straightforward answer to that question, but it’s likely one you’ve never heard of: In ancient Jewish texts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, demons are the disembodied spirits of dead Nephilim giants who perished at the time of the great flood.
The “Anakim, who are counted as Rephaim” (Deut 2:11)
Genesis 6:1–4 was written by Israelites who wanted to make a statement: the apkallu before the flood were not good guys. What they did was wicked, and the giant offspring apkallu produced by their transgression were enemies of the true God of heaven. In fact, their own giant offspring were bent on annihilating Israel many years later.
The key to understanding how these giants were perceived as demons in the biblical material—an idea that got a lot of focus in Jewish writings produced after the Old Testament—is the term Rephaim. In the Old Testament, the Rephaim are described as giant warlords (Deut 2:8-11; 3:1-11; Josh 13:12), but also as frightening, sinister disembodied spirits (“the shades”) in the Underworld, called Sheol in Hebrew (Isa 14:9; 26:14; Job 26:5). The disembodied spirits of these giants were therefore associated with the abode of the dead, something everyone feared, since everyone feared death.
Tying the threads together
While this supernatural backdrop has eluded most Christian thinkers in the history of Christianity to the present day, it was well known to the generation of Jews who lived right after the Old Testament period—what scholars call the “Second Temple” period or, more popularly, the “Intertestamental” period. It was during this era that books like 1 Enoch were written, as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In the book of 1 Enoch the villainous sons of God of Genesis 6:1-4 are not only called angels—they are called Watchers. The link back to the Mesopotamian apkallu is transparent and unmistakable. 1 Enoch spells out how the Watchers and their offspring were the source of demons:
1 Enoch calls the giants “bastard spirits”—a phrase used of demons in several Dead Sea Scrolls.[1] A non-biblical psalm found among the Dead Sea Scrolls calls demons “offspring of man and the seed of the holy ones,” a clear reference to the disembodied spirits of the divine-human offspring from Genesis 6:1-4.[2]
Several threads of this explanation for demons surface in the New Testament, but I’ll mention only one. The excerpt from 1 Enoch notes that the Watchers whose transgression led to the origin of demons were to be bound “for 70 generations underneath the rocks of the ground.” This belief is found in 2 Peter 2:4-5, where Peter, speaking about the days of Noah says, “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.” Peter and the author of 1 Enoch were on the same wavelength—they both understood the original context for Genesis 6:1-4.
What’s the take-away from all this? The message to most Bible readers is that, when it comes to the supernatural worldview of the Bible, what you think you know may not be so. Don’t be satisfied with handed-down traditions about what’s in the Bible (and isn’t).
Copied only in part as this is a long article. Here is the link if you wish to read more