[Avodah] The Talmud’s Many Demons

[Zev Sero]

On 14/08/2012 4:37 PM, Rafi Hecht wrote:
> Chanoch (Enos) was taken away relatively early (he died at 205

You mean 365.

> when everyone was living beyond 900 years of age). One of the reasons was because he inadvertently introduced idolatry/witchcraft by teaching that if one worships an agent of Gd (such as the sun, a tree, etc.) with the intent on focusing on the objects' creator than it's as if one worships Gd. People soon forgot the "intent" bit and worshipped the objects as entities in and of their own.

Chanoch is not Enosh!   It was Enosh in whose days they started worshipping
AZ; the chumash makes no connection between Chanoch and AZ.


As for stories of demons in the Talmud, my favourite is Yosef Shida, whose
existence proves that demons are not some sort of evil creature, though many
of them may do bad.  There is such a thing as Shedin Yehuda'in, "Jewish"
demons, who do good.  In Yosef's case, he transmitted Torah that was said
in one yeshivah to another the same day, filling a niche that would one day
be taken over by the telephone and then by the internet.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon