Beelzebub

• 1. Introduction

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  Ba'al Zabub, Ba'al Zvuv, Beelzebul, Belzebuth. Beelzebub has been spelled in many ways, and one nickname has outlasted every spelling: the Lord of the Flies. The name began as the title of a god worshipped by the Philistines. Later, some Abrahamic religions adopted it for a major demon. The name is also tied to the Canaanite god Baal. How does a foreign god's name end up inside the vocabulary of Hell? Why would anyone call a deity lord of flies? And was the name ever meant as praise, or was it an insult from the start? The answers lead from an injured king in ancient Israel to Gospel debates, Renaissance demonologists, and the courtrooms of the witch hunts.

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• 2. An Injured King

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  King Ahaziah of the Northern Kingdom of Israel fell through the lattice of his upper chamber at Samaria and was badly hurt. The Books of Kings, in 2 Kings chapter 1, record what he did next. He sent messengers to ask Baal-zebub, the god of the Philistine city of Ekron, whether he would recover. An angel of God told Elijah the Tishbite to intercept those messengers. The question Elijah was to put to them has the force of a rebuke: "Is there no God in Israel that you go to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Ekron?" The angel's message went further. Ahaziah would not rise from the bed he was lying on, and he would die. Elijah condemned the king because he had sought counsel from this god instead of from God. This passage is the source of the name Beelzebub. Later Jewish writers would read the god's title as a deliberate jab.

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• 3. Lord of the Flies

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  Rabbinical literature treats the Baʿal-zəvuv of Ekron as the lord of the fly. In those texts the name is a mockery of Baal worship, which the ancient Hebrews counted as idol worship. Some Jewish scholars went further and read the title as a way of calling Baʿal a pile of excrement, with his followers as the flies. The word Baal itself is plainer. In ancient Ugaritic and Canaanite languages it means Lord, and it served as a title for various local gods, often placed before a descriptive name. Opinions differ on what the rest of the name means. One long-standing suggestion links the Philistine god to fly cults, seen as pests that feast on excrement. Greek religion offers a parallel in Zeus Apomyios, or Myiagros, meaning fly-averting Zeus, who was thought to protect people from pest insects. A Ugaritic text goes further, showing Ba'al expelling flies that cause a person's sickness. Francesco Saracino judged the evidence inconclusive in 1982. He noted, however, that the name's linguistic structure resembles other divine names of the wider Mediterranean world. That supports the idea of a genuine local god, perhaps one associated with healing.

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• 4. A Fallen Star

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  In the Testament of Solomon, the demon is called Beelzebul, not Beelzebub, and he is the prince of the demons. He says he was once a leading angel of heaven, associated with the star Hesperus. Hesperus is the normal Greek name for the planet Venus as the evening star. Here Beelzebul seems to be synonymous with Lucifer. His boasts are a catalogue of harm. He says he causes destruction through tyrants and gets demons worshipped among people. He also says he excites priests to lust, stirs up jealousies and murders in cities, and brings about war. The Testament of Solomon is an Old Testament pseudepigraphical work, purportedly written by King Solomon. Its author mostly describes particular demons whom Solomon enslaved to help build his Temple. The text carries substantial Christian interpolations. The Gospels give the name its most famous setting, where it is hurled at Jesus as an accusation.

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• 5. The Gospel Accusation

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  In Mark 3:22, scribes accuse Jesus Christ of driving out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. The charge appears again in an expanded form in Matthew 12:24 and 12:27, and in Luke 11:15 and 11:18-19. Matthew 10:25 uses the name as well. In Luke 11:14-26 it is the Pharisees who disparagingly claim that Jesus used Beelzebub's powers to heal people. Jesus answers by turning the charge into an argument about division. According to Matthew 12:25-28, he said: "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Through this exchange the New Testament identifies Beelzebub with the Devil, the prince of demons. The biblical scholar Thomas Kelly Cheyne wondered about the translation. He suggested the name might be a derogatory corruption of Ba'al-zəbûl, meaning Lord of the High Place, or High Lord.

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• 6. Which Spelling Is Right

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  Symmachus the Ebionite identified the Gospel name with the older one, and it is unknown whether he was correct. The ending of the Gospel form, Zeboul, might come from a slurred pronunciation of zebûb. It might come from zebel, a word meaning dung in the Targums. It might also come from the Hebrew zebûl in 1 Kings 8:13, where bêt-zebûl means lofty house. The Septuagint rendered the name as Baalzebub and as Baal muian, meaning Baal of flies. Symmachus may have preserved a tradition of the god's offensive ancient name when he wrote Beelzeboul. Yet the form Beelzebub replaced Beelzeboul in the Syriac translation and in the Latin Vulgate of the gospels. The King James Version repeated the substitution. As a result, Beelzeboul stayed mostly unknown in Western European cultures until more recent translations restored it. There is another possibility. The deity's actual name may have been Baʿal zəvul, lord of the heavenly dwelling, and Baʿal zəvuv may have been a derogatory pun by the Israelites. Arabic translations render the name as Baʿl-zabūl.

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• 7. Hell's Hierarchy

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  In the sixteenth century, the occultist Johann Weyer told stories in which Beelzebub led a successful revolt against the Devil. Beelzebub is commonly described as placed high in Hell's hierarchy. In his Admirable History of 1612, the exorcist Sébastien Michaëlis named him among the three most prominent fallen angels, alongside Lucifer and Leviathan. John Milton, in Paradise Lost, first published in 1667, imagined an unholy trinity of Beelzebub, Lucifer, and Astaroth. Milton ranked Beelzebub second among the fallen angels, writing that none higher sat, "than whom, Satan except, none higher sat." John Bunyan also gave him a role in The Pilgrim's Progress, first published in 1678. Demonologists could not agree on which sin he ruled. The Lanterne of Light, an anonymous English Lollard tract from 1409-1410, associated him with envy. Peter Binsfeld, in his 1589 Treatise on Confessions by Evildoers and Witches, made him the demon of gluttony. Michaëlis chose pride, and Francis Barrett called him prince of idolatry. The Dictionnaire Infernal adds a stranger portrait of a being able to fly, styled Lord of the Flyers or Lord of the Flying Demons. Demonology counts him as one of the seven princes of Hell, and his name soon turned up in accounts of possession.

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• 8. Possession and Echoes

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  In 1611 at Aix-en-Provence, Sister Madeleine de Demandolx de la Palud was held to be possessed, and Beelzebub was blamed. Her relationship with Father Jean-Baptiste Gaufridi brought countless traumatic events at the hands of her inquisitors. It also led to the torture and execution of Gaufridi, branded a bewitcher of young nuns. Beelzebub was imagined to be sowing his influence in Salem, Massachusetts, too. His name came up repeatedly during the Salem witch trials, the last large-scale public expression of witch hysteria in either North America or Europe. Afterwards the Rev. Cotton Mather wrote a pamphlet titled Of Beelzebub and his Plot. The name has also lived on in stranger corners. Texts of the Gospel of Nicodemus vary, and Beelzebul and Beelzebub are used interchangeably. Hades uses the name as a secondary name for the Devil, though some versions separate Beelzebub from the Devil. In the teachings of the Modern Gnostic Movement of Samael Aun Weor, Beelzebub was a prince of demons who rebelled against the Black Lodge during World War II. Aun Weor converted him to the White Lodge. William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies borrows the old title because of its ties to hell and the themes of the book.

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