te to assert that the Jewish
conception of Polytheism was purely atheistic, however much appearance it
may have of being so.

It was otherwise with Christian polemical writing. As early as St. Paul
the demon-theory appears distinctly, though side by side with utterances
of seemingly atheistic character. Other New Testament authors, too,
designate the gods as demons. The subsequent apologists, excepting the
earliest, Aristides, lay the main stress on demonology, but include for
the sake of completeness idolatry and the like, sometimes without caring
about or trying to conciliate the contradictions. In the long run
demonology is victorious; in St. Augustine, the foremost among Christian
apologists, there is hardly any other point of view that counts.

To trace the Christian demonology in detail and give an account of its
various aspects is outside the scope of this essay. Its origin is a
twofold one, partly the Jewish demonology, which just at the commencement
of our era had received a great impetus, partly the theory of the Greek
philosophers, which we have characterised above when speaking of
Xenocrates. The Christian doctrine regarding demons differs from the
latter, especially by the fact that it does not acknowledge good demons;
they were all evil. This was the indispensable basis for the interdict
against the worship of demons; in its further development the Christians,
following Jewish tradition, pointed to an origin in the fallen angels, and
thus effected a connexion with the Old Testament. While they at the same
time retained its angelology they had to distinguish good and evil beings
intermediate between god and man; but they carefully avoided designating
the angels as demons, and kept them distinct from the pagan gods, who were
all demons and evil.

The application of demonology to the pagan worship caused certain
difficulties in detail. To be sure, it was possible to identify a given
pagan god with a certain demon, and this was often done; but it was
impossible to identify the Pagans' conceptions of their gods with the
Christians' conceptions of demons. The Pagans, in fact, ascribed to their
gods not only demoniac (diabolical) but also divine qualities, which the
Christians absolutely denied them. Consequently they had to recognise that
pagan worship to a great extent rested on a delusion, on a misconception
of the essential character of the gods which were worshipped. This view
was corroborated by the dogma