which they drive away demons so that they
never return.'[9] The story of Daniel is well known. In the
captivity of the two tribes carried away into an honourable
servitude he soon rose into the highest favour, because, as we
are informed, he excelled in a divination that surpassed all the
art of the Chaldeans, themselves so famous for it. The inspired
Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians,
and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,'
and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the
disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers
on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus
Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history
of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat
grass as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding it as plainly
declaring that he was corporeally metamorphosed into an ox, just
as the companions of Ulysses were transformed into swine by the
Circean sorceries.

[9] _Antiquities_, book viii. 2. Whiston's transl.

The Jewish ideas of good or at least evil spirits or angels were
acquired during their forced residence in Babylon, whether under
Assyrian or Persian government. At least 'Satan' is first
discovered unmistakably in a personal form in the poem of Job, a
work pronounced by critics to have been composed after the
restoration. In the Mosaic cosmogony and legislation, the writer
introduces not, expressly or impliedly, the existence of an evil
principle, unless the serpent of the Paradisaic account, which
has been rather arbitrarily so metamorphosed, represents it;[10]
while the expressions in books vulgarly reputed before the
conquest are at least doubtful. From this time forward (from the
fifth century B.C.), says a German demonologist, as the Jews
lived among the admirers of Zoroaster, and thus became acquainted
with their doctrines, are found, partly in contradiction to the
earlier views of their religion, many tenets prevailing amongst
them the origin of which it is impossible to explain except by
the operation of the doctrines of Zoroaster: to these belongs the
general acceptance of the theory of Satan, as well as of good and
bad angels.[11] Under Roman government or vassalage, sorceric
practices, as they appear in the Christian scriptures, were much
in vogue. Devils or demons, and the 'prince of the devils,'
frequently appear; and the _demoniacs_ may represent the victims
of witchc