It is one of the quietest puzzles in all of Scripture. By the time we reach the Gospels, demons are everywhere — Jesus casts them out in town after town. Yet if you search the Bible for a verse that explains where demons came from, you will not find a clear one. Genesis never says. The question is simply left open.
The Book of Enoch does not leave it open. And its answer is unlike anything most of us were taught. Enoch has just told the story of the Watchers and their monstrous children, the Nephilim — the giants. Then it asks: what happened when those giants died? The answer is chilling.
"And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling." — 1 Enoch 15
Here is the logic, laid out plainly. The giants were a mixture — born from the union of heavenly angels and earthly women. So when they died, Enoch says, their spirits had nowhere to go. They were not pure angels, so heaven was closed to them. They were not fully human, so the grave did not hold them. Their flesh perished in the flood, but their spirits remained, homeless and restless, roaming the earth "to afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction." Those wandering spirits, Enoch says, are the demons.
This is not a modern theory. It was the standard explanation in the Jewish world of Jesus' day, and many of the earliest Christian teachers — writers like Justin Martyr — held it too. It is why, when the New Testament speaks of unclean spirits that have no body and seek one, it is speaking a language this book had already written down centuries before.
Because it fills in a silence with something coherent and ancient — and because it shows how deeply the world of the Gospels was shaped by the world of Enoch. You do not have to receive it as settled doctrine to see that it answers a real question your Bible leaves hanging, in words the first Christians already knew.
Where Did Demons Actually Come From? — read aloud
The full voiced Broadcast traces the line from the fallen angels to the giants to the wandering spirits — and asks, gently, what it means for the way the Gospels talk. In a real voice.
Hear the full Broadcast →