on.

In Persian theology, the shadowy idea of the devil of western
Asia was wholly different from the grosser conception of
Christendom. Neither the evil principle of Magianism nor the
witch of Palestine has much in common with the Christian. 'No
contract of subjection to a diabolic power, no infernal stamp or
sign of such a fatal league, no revellings of Satan and his
hags,'[6] no such materialistic notions could be conformable to
the spirit of Judaism or at least of Magianism. It is not
difficult to find the cause of this essential dissimilarity. A
simple unity was severely inculcated by the religion and laws of
Moses, which permitted little exercise of the imagination: while
the Magi were equally severe against idolatrous forms. A
monstrous idea, like that of 'Satan and his hags,' was impossible
to them. Christianity, the religion of the West, has received
its _corporeal_ ideas of demonology from the divinities and
demons of heathenism. The Satyri and Fauni of Greece and Rome
have suggested in part the form, and perhaps some of the
characteristics, of the vulgar Christian devil. A knowledge of
the arts of magic among the Jews was probably derived from their
Egyptian life, while the Bedouins of Arabia and Syria (kindred
peoples) may have instilled the less scientific rites of
Fetishism. It is in the early accounts of that people that
sorcery, whatever its character and profession, with the allied
arts of divination, necromancy, incantations, &c., appears most
flourishing. The Mosaic penalty, 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live,' and the comprehensive injunction, 'There shall not be
found among you that maketh his son or his daughter to pass
through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of
times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter
with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer,' indicate
at once the extent and the horror of the practice. Balaam (that
equivocal prophet), on the border-land of Arabia and Palestine,
was courted and dreaded as a wizard who could perplex whole
armies by means of spells. His fame extended far and wide; he was
summoned from his home beyond the Euphrates in the mountains of
Mesopotamia by the Syrian tribes to repel the invading enemy.
This great magician was, it seems, universally regarded as 'the
rival and the possible conqueror of Moses.'[7]

[6] Sir W. Scott, _Letters on Demonology_.

[7] Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the Jewish Church_.