People all over the world—in all periods of human history—have dealt with spirits. Some of these spirits have been bad and have harmed the living in various ways. When this happens, people naturally want to drive away such spirits, and so various rites of exorcism are found in cultures around the world.
1. The Case of Saul. In the biblical context, we see what may be an early exorcism involving the first king of the Israelites—King Saul. In 1 Samuel, we read:
Now the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, “Behold now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command your servants, who are before you, to seek out a man who is skillful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well.” . . .
And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him (16:14-17, 23).
Some have interpreted the “evil spirit from the Lord” in this passage as simply a bad mood or some kind of psychological disorder, and this is not impossible. However, we should not too quickly psychologize references like this because the ancient Israelites had a firm belief in spirits.
Furthermore, music was understood to produce spiritual effects. In 2 Kings 3:15, the prophet Elisha calls for a harpist to play for him so that he may hear the word of the Lord and prophesy.
Demons are notoriously averse to the holy, and so it could be that David’s playing of songs that praised God helped drive off the evil spirit plaguing Saul. If so, this would serve as an early example of Israelite exorcism.
2. The Case of Sarah. A clearer example is found in the book of Tobit. Here the demon Asmodeus has fallen in love with a woman named Sarah and is killing everyone who marries her (6:14).
Tobiah is to marry Sarah, and on the way to her, he and the disguised angel Raphael catch a fish. Raphael instructs him to keep the heart and liver of the fish and explains,
If a demon or evil spirit gives trouble to anyone, you make a smoke from these before the man or woman, and that person will never be troubled again.
When you enter the bridal chamber, you shall take live ashes of incense and lay upon them some of the heart and liver of the fish so as to make a smoke. Then the demon will smell it and flee away and will never again return (vv. 7, 16-17).
Tobiah does this, and the demon flees to Egypt, where Raphael binds him (8:3). In this example, we see the action of a human combined with the action of an angel in exorcising a demon.
3. Later Jewish Exorcisms. By the first century A.D., there was a robust practice of exorcism within Judaism. This was often connected with great figures of the past. The book of Jubilees, written about 150 B.C., refers to a now-lost book attributed to Noah that dealt with demons and the illnesses they cause (10:12-13).
The historian Josephus traces the practice of exorcism back to Solomon, who, in his wisdom, figured out how to drive away demons (Antiquities 8:2:5[45]). He also reports being an eyewitness of exorcisms performed in the Solomonic tradition:
[Eleazar the exorcist] put a ring that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which [Solomon] composed.
And when Eleazar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man; and when this was done, the skill and wisdom of Solomon was shown very manifestly (47-48).
In this case, a demon was removed using a smell, which has similarities to the way Asmodeus was removed in Tobit.
The Dead Sea Scrolls contain a number of psalms that are exorcistic in nature (11Q11), similar to how David used music to drive off an evil spirit.
One of these is the biblical Psalm 91, which invokes the protection of the Lord on his faithful, so that “you will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday (5-6). This psalm is still found in the current Catholic rite of exorcism.
4. The Exorcisms of Jesus. Jesus performed exorcisms as part of his public ministry, though there are fewer than one might think. The Gospels record only six instances of exorcism, though there are allusions to Jesus performing others.
Jesus’ usual procedure differed from that of other exorcists. He simply spoke short commands telling the demons to leave, without using complex spoken formulas or invoking figures from the past or even God. This indicated the fullness of divine power Jesus possessed.
At one point, he was accused of exorcising by the power of the devil, but he responded, “If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges” (Matt. 12:27). In saying this, Jesus acknowledged the legitimacy of Jewish exorcisms that were being performed, saying that the Jewish exorcists shall be the judges of those who claimed he was using demonic power to drive out demons.
5. Early Christian Exorcisms. The Gospels record that Jesus “called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity” (Matt. 10:1). He also cited demons being cast out in his name as one of the signs that would follow his disciples (Mark 16:17).
We see this beginning to happen in Acts. Apart from some brief mentions of exorcism, the book records only two detailed accounts.
One is when Paul exorcises a slave girl who has “a spirit of Python”—that is, a spirit for foretelling the future. (Python was a monster from Greek mythology that guarded the temple of Apollo at Delphi, where the oracle Pythia predicted the future.) When he did this, Paul is reported to have used only a short command, but one augmented with the name of Jesus: “I charge you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (Acts 16:18).
The other account also uses the name of Jesus but is less successful. Luke reports,
Some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists [at Ephesus] undertook to pronounce the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, mastered all of them, and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded (Acts 19:13-16).
Apparently, using the name of Jesus by itself—without actual faith in Jesus—was not enough to guarantee the safety of those using it.
These cases illustrate the problem of evil spirits in the ancient world and the ways people dealt with them. They would serve as foundational incidents in the later history of exorcism in Christian circles—a topic that we will turn to soon.