It is not until the post-biblical
period that Christians explicitly link the Evil Eye with an external demonic
force, namely the chief of demons, the devil, or Satan. . . . The Evil Eye
spoken of in the New Testament writings is a strictly human phenomenon and is
regarded as part and parcel of everyday human experience and conduct. (John H.
Elliott, Beware the Evil Eye: The Evil Eye in the Bible and the Ancient
World, 4 vols. [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2016], 3:113)
(1) In contrast to Mesopotamian,
Egyptian, and Greco-Roman sources, the biblical authors make no mention of
an Evil Eye demon, a baskanos daimôn, alias the “demon of envy” (phthoneros daimôn). This Evil Eye demon was associated
with Hades and, often in funerary inscriptions and tomb epitaphs, said to be
responsible for the deaths of those remembered in the epitaphs. In the Bible,
the Evil Eye is never presented as a demon attacking humans from without. It is
rather always depicted, lamented, and warned against as a human defect
arising within the human heart and communicated by an ocular glance. Only in
the post-biblical period was the Evil Eye associated by the Christian communities
with Satan/the Devil.
. . .
(2) The Evil Eye, furthermore, is
never attributed to God, but only to humans. Israelites and Christians
never attributed an Evil Eye or envy to Yahweh, in contrast to the Greeks who
ascribed both to the gods. The God of Israel rather is portrayed as rescuing
his favorites from the baneful effect of the Evil Eye in typically unexpected
or unpredictable ways, as the stories of Joseph and David make evident. (Ibid.,
279)
The
Martyrdom of Polycarp—The Evil Eye and the Devil
The Martyrdom of Polycarp
(c. 160-170 CE) is an account of the recent death of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna
in Asia Minor. The details of his death, which occurred c. 155-157 CE under the
Roman proconsulship of Statius Quadratus (21:1), are contained in a letter from
the church of the city of Smyrna to the church of Philomelium (Prescript).
Toward the end of the description of his execution and the events leading to it
(chs. 3-18), the letter emphasizes the role that the Devil played in the
treatment of Polycarp’s charred corpse. Martyrdom of Polycarp 17:1
reads:
The envious (antizêlos),
Evil-Eyeing (baskanos) and evil (ponêros) One [i.e. the Devil,
cf. 2:4], who resists the family of the righteous ([i.e. the Christian
community], however, when he saw the greatness of his [Polycarp’s] martyrdom,
and his life-long blameless career, and that he [Polycarp] was crowned with the
crown of immortality and had carried off the unutterable prize, he [the Devil]
saw it that not even his [Polycarp’s] poor body should be carried away by us,
though many desired to do this and to have a share in his holy flesh.
The Devil is not explicitly
mentioned but is clearly implied by the epithets and the context as the
transcendent agent directing the action here. An earlier passage of the letter
describing the modes of torture and death used against the Christians concludes,
“For the Devil used many wiles against them” (2:4). This same though of the
Devil manipulating human agents appears in 17:2: “Therefore he [the Devil] put
forward Niketas, the father of Herod, and the brother of Alce, to petition the
governor not to give his [Polycarp’s] body” [to the Christians]. “The envious,
Evil-Eyeing, and evil one,” the letter states, is the Devil working his malice through
human hands.
This is the first direct
Christian association of the Evil Eye with the Devil, Satan, the prince of
demons. It is the beginning of a tradition that continues in Christian circles
down to the present. IN this tradition, the Evil Eye, as well as envy (“through
the Devil’s envy death entered the world,” Wis 2:24) are attributed to the
Devil, Sata, who then infects humans and enlists them as his agents of the Evil
Eye and envy. This association of the Evil Eye with the Devil has been labeled
a “paradigm shift” that constitutes a distinctive Christian perspective
on the subject. While a significant development, it must be pointed out,
however, that this association of the Evil Eye and the Devil in particular
begins not with Jesus or the writings of the New Testament, but only in the
post-biblical period. Throughout the Bible, the Evil Eye is described as a human
characteristic and not as a demonic external power, as it is presented in
various Greek and Roman sources. This “shift” is later than the biblical writings
and the nascent Jesus movement. In actuality, it represents a turning or
return in the post-biblical period to the conceptuality of the pagan
world and the attribution of the Evil Eye to an Evil Eye demon (baskanos
daimôn).
This coupling of the Evil Eye and
the Devil, once established in the Chrisitan communities, had a lasting influence
on future generations. It set the stage for an association of the Evil Eye with
heretics as well as with witches (Hexen and Hexenaguen—withces and
witches’ eyes)—both classified as enemies of God and the church. Consequently
in the Middle Ages, casting an Evil Eye became equated with bewitching (verhexen)
as an action of the Devil and his minions operating through witches (Hexen)
as human agents, accompanied by the gradual disappearance of the Greek and
Latin terms baskainein and fascinare. Witchhunts included
searches for possessors and wielders of an Evil Eye, now deemed a telltale and
malignant feature of witches. Whereas the Greeks thought of the Evil-Eyeing
envy of the gods and imagined Evil-Eyeing demons, the Christian church,
demonizing the phenomenon of the Evil Eye, saw humans as under the sway of an
envious Evil Eyeing Devil and as pawns of Satanic Evil eyeing malice. In this
regard there was no separation of a pagan popular religiosity, on the one hand,
and on the other, an enlightened Christian theology tolerant toward the relics
of pagan culture. (John H. Elliott, Beware the Evil Eye: The Evil Eye in the
Bible and the Ancient World, 4 vols. [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2017],
4:52-54)
Address
to the Greeks
A further text of this early
post-biblical period, the Address to the Greeks (Cohortatio ad
gentiles), attributed to Justin Martyr, refers to its conclusion (ch. 38)
to the Sibyl’s prediction of the coming of
our savior Jesus Christ who . . .
restored to us the knowledge of the religious of our forefathers, which those
who lived after them abandoned through the teaching of the Evil-Eyeing demon
(didaskalia baskanou daimonos) and turned to the worship of those
who were not gods. (Address to the Greeks 38; PG 6.307-308B)
Here the Greek designation for
the Evil-Eyeing demon (baskanos daimôn) is used in reference to the Devil of Israelite and
Christian parlance, as in the Martyrdom of Polycarp 17:1.
A Christian inscription in the
Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Saleria, Rome, one of the largest and oldest
of the catacombs, illustrates this association of the Evil Eye and the Devil.
It names the Devil baskanos pikros (“spiteful fascinator/Evil-Eyer”).
The catacomb was used for Christian burials from the mid-second to fourth
centuries CE. (Ibid., 55)
