fights with and conquers the dragon, as
Hercules the Python, Horus the monster Typhon, Krishna the serpent. The
Persians believed in devils as well as in angels, and they also had
their chief, Ahriman, the pattern of Satan. These devils--or dews, or
devs--struggled against the good, and in the end would be destroyed, and
Ahriman would be chained down in the abyss, as Satan in Rev. xx. Ahriman
flew down to earth from heaven as a great dragon (Rev. xii. 3 and 9),
the angels arming themselves against him (Ibid, verse 7). Strauss
remarks: "Had the belief in celestial beings, occupying a particular
station in the court of heaven, and distinguished by particular names,
originated from the revealed religion of the Hebrews--had such a belief
been established by Moses, or some later prophet--then, according to the
views of the supranaturalist, they might--nay, they must--be admitted to
be correct. But it is in the Maccabaean Daniel and in the apocryphal
Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in its more precise form, first
appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend
religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of
the Jews themselves that they brought the names of the angels with them
from Babylon" ("Life of Jesus," vol. i., p. 101).

Dr. Kalisch, after having remarked that "the notions [of the Jews]
concerning angels fluctuated and changed," says that "at an early
period, the belief in spirits was introduced into Palestine from eastern
Asia through the ordinary channels of political and commercial
interchange," and that to the Hebrew "notions heathen mythology offers
striking analogies;" "it would be unwarranted," the learned doctor goes
on, "to distinguish between the 'established belief of the Hebrews' and
'popular superstition;' we have no means of fixing the boundary line
between both; we must consider the one to coincide with the other, or we
should be obliged to renounce all historical inquiry. The belief in
spirits and demons was not a concession made by educated men to the
prejudices of the masses, but a concession which all--the educated as
well as the uneducated--made to Pagan Polytheism" ("Historical and
Critical Commentary on the Old Testament." Leviticus, part ii., pp.
284-287. Ed. 1872). "When the Jews, ever open to foreign influence in
matters of faith, lived under Persian rule, they imbibed, among many
other religious views of their masters, especially their doctrines of