The Worship of the Devil

The Devil is a legacy of the widespread human tendency to attribute the origin of evil to non-human influences. In primitive societies evil and misfortune are usually thought to come from the gods. The powers which created the universe and rule it are the ultimate authors of all things and they are given the responsibility for the presence of evil as well as the credit for the existence of good. In matters which are too trivial to be the concern of the gods primitive people put harm and suffering down to the malice of evil spirits, which are less powerful than the gods but more numerous. 

The Jews in early times believed in various supernatural beings to whom evil could be ascribed. Jehovah was originally regarded by his followers as only one among many gods. The other gods belonged to the neighbours of the Jews and were regarded by Jehovah's prophets as evil powers, hostile to Jehovah and his people. In the same way the early Christians did not dismiss the pagan gods as fictions, but believed that they were real and were evil beings - demons.  

The early picture of jehovah as one god among many was replaced by the belief that he was the only God, the sole creator of the universe and all things in it, as described in Genesis. It logically followed that Jehovah himself must be the source of evil as well as good, as the prophet Amos said. 'shall there be evil in a city and the Lord hath not done it?' The same belief is stated in Isaiah - 'I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these things’ - and again in Ecclesiasticus - 'Good things and bad, life and death, poverty and wealth come from the Lord. This conviction that the origin of evil is in God, survived in the Cabala, in wich the evil powers are an offshoot or overflow from the sephiroth, wich are emanations from God. It accounts for the relative insignificance of the Devil in Jewish tradition, as compared with Christian, because a super-natural evil power is unnecessary unless God is believed to be entirely good.