Annette Yoshiko Reed
that they do so as part of God's plan. During the lifetime of Noah, demons
are diminished in number and subordinated to Mastema to help him in his
divinely appointed task of destroying and misleading the wicked (10:8-9).
Lest the reader imagine Mastema and his hosts as the dark side of a cosmic
dualism and/or as evil forces in active conflict with God, Jubilees stresses
that their existence on the earth is the result of God's acknowledgment of
humankind's chronic wickedness (10:8-9). Demons may cause suffering, but
the reader is assured that their actions are part of an unerringly fair system
of divine justice (cf. 5:13-14).
Moreover, demonic influence diminishes as the narrative progresses.
Demons have no control over Israel (15:32). And, just as Israel takes on the
functions of God's angels, so Gentiles come to replace demons as the main
enemy against whom Israel struggles. Even though foreign nations are ruled
by demons (15:31), they are not forces of independent evil any more than the
spirits they serve; Jubilees stresses, in fact, that all nations belong to God
(15:31). Consistent with Deuteronomistic principle and its expansion in bib
lical prophecy, Gentiles can overtake Israel only when God commands (1:13;
23:23). Just as the satan is an agent of divine justice, testing and accusing hu
mankind, so foreign nations have their place in the system of divine justice
as a means for punishing Israel's disobedience (e.g., 1:13; 23:23).
In one sense, then, Jubilees' demonology may be best understood as a
development of Deuteronomistic understandings of divine justice, ex
panded by means of the typological equation of Gentiles with demons.
Gentiles and demons share the same function in sacred history, namely, to
test Israel's faithfulness and to mediate God's punishment of their unfaith
fulness. Much like the nations in the Deuteronomistic history and biblical
prophecy, demons in Jubilees pose a threat to Israel only when members of
the chosen nation stray from God and his commandments.
3. Fallen Angels and the Temptations of Apostasy
What, then, of fallen angels? Jubilees' version of the angelic descent myth has
garnered so much scholarly attention that we might be tempted to take their
inclusion for granted. When we consider the rest of its angelology and de
monology, however, their presence stands in need of some explanation. As
we have seen, Jubilees' depiction of angels and demons serves to evoke an or
derly cosmos in which both good and bad spirits serve his will and in which
the earth is clearly divided between God-ruled Jews and demon-ruled