Catholic Encyclopedia: Beelzebub

1. Old Testament

Beelzebub, or Baalzebub, the Philistine god of Accaron (Ekron), scarcely 25 miles west
of Jerusalem, whose oracle King Ochozias (Ahaziah) attempted to consult in his last
illness, IV (II) Kings, i, 2.  It is only as an oracle that the god is known to us; no other
mention of him occurs in the Old Testament.  The name is commonly translated "the
lord of the flies", and the god is supposed to be so called either because as a sun god he
brings the flies, though the Ba'al was probably not a sun god, or more likely because he
is invoked to drive away the flies from the sacrifice, like the Zeus Apomuios, who
drove them from Olympia, or the hero Myiagros in Arcadia.  Halevy and Winckler
interpret the name, according to the analogy of very many names compounded with
<baal>, as "the lord of Zebub", supposed to be a locality in Accaron; there is no proof,
however, for the existence of such a locality, and besides Beelzebub is called the god of
Accaron.  Cheyne thinks the original form of the name is Ba'al Zebul,  "the lord of the
mansion," or high house, which would refer to the god's temple or to the mountain on
which the gods dwelt, or rather, in his opinion, to both.  But the textual evidence, as
Lagrange objects, is entirely in favour of <Zebub>.  Cheyne, admitting this, holds that
the title "lord of the high house", which would suggest to the writer of Kings a
reference to Yahweh's temple or to His heavenly dwelling place, would be considered
offensive, and would induce him, in contempt, to change it to <Ba'al Zebub>, the lord
of flies.  The tradition of the true name, lingering on, accounts for its presence in the
Gospels (Zeboul).  This conjecture, which has a certain plausibility, leaves unexplained
why the contempt should lead to the particular form, <Baal Zebub>, a name without
parallel in Semitic religions. It seems more reasonable, then, to regard <Baalzebub> as
the original form and to interpret it as "lord of the Flies".

2. New Testament

In the New Testament, there is question of an evil spirit, Beelzeboul.  On account of the
great similarity of names, he is usually identified with Baalzebub, <beel> being the
Aramaic form of <baal>, and the change from the final   to <l> such as might easily
occur.  But there were numberless names for demons at that time, and this one may
have been newly invented, having no relation to the other; the fact that one element of
the compound is Aramaic and the other Hebrew would not disprove this.  The
meaning of the term is "lord of the mansion" or dwelling, and it would be supposed by
the Jews of this time to refer to the nether regions, and so be an appropriate name for
the prince of that realm.  Beelzeboul (Beelzebub) is used, then, merely as another name
for Satan (Matt., xii, 24-29; Luke, xi, 15-22) by whom the enemies of Our Lord accused
Him of being possessed and by whom they claimed He cast out demons.  Their charge
seems to have been that the good Our Lord did was wrought by the Evil One in order
to deceive, which Jesus showed to be absurd and a wilful blindness.  If the New
Testament name be considered a transformation of the old, the question arises as to
how the god of the little town of Accaron came to give a name to the Prince of
Darkness.  The mission on which Ochozias sent his followers seems to show that
Beelzebub already had a wide renown in Palestine.  The narrative (IV Kings, i) was a
very striking one, well known to the contemporaries of Our Lord (Luke, ix, 54); from it
might easily be derived the idea of Beelzebub as the special adversary of God, and the
change in the final letter of the name which took place (<ex hypothesi>) would lead the
Jews to regard it as designating the prince of the lower regions.  With him was
naturally connected the idea of demoniacal possession; and there is no need of
Cheyne's conjecture that Beelzebub's "name naturally rose to Jewish lips when
demoniacal possession was spoken of, because of the demoniacal origin assumed for
heathen oracles".  How can we account for the idea of Beelzebub exorcizing the
demons?  On the assumption that he is to be identified with the Philistine god,
Lagrange thinks the idea is derived from the special prerogative of Beelzebub as fly-
chaser (<chasse-mouche>).  In the Babylonian epic of the deluge, "the gods gather over
the sacrificer like flies" (see Driver, Genesis, 105).  It was easy for the heathen Semites,
according to Lagrange, to come to conceive of the flies troubling the sacrifice as images
of spirits hovering around with no right to be there; and so Beelzebub, the god who
drove away the flies, became the prince of demons in whose name the devils were
exorcised from the bodies of the possessed.  Others think the idea naturally arose that
the lord of the demons had power to command them to leave the possessed.  It seems
much more reasonable, however, to regard this faculty of Beelzebub not as a tradition,
but simply as a change invented by Our Lord's enemies to throw discredit on his
exorcisms.  His other miracles were probably accounted for by ascribing them to
Beelzebub and so these likewise.  Allen (Comm. on Matt., 107, 134) has endeavored to
simplify the problem by the use of higher criticism.  According to him, the role of
Beelzebub as arch-demon and exorcist was not a Palestinian belief; in Mark's Gospel,
Beelzebub is simply the demon said to possess Our Lord. Matthew and Luke by
mistake fuse together two independent clauses of Mark, iii, 22 and identify Beelzebub
and Satan, to whom the faculty of exorcism is ascribed.  The fusion, however, seems to
be justified by the next verse of Mark, which is more naturally interpreted in the sense
of Matthew and Luke, though Allen's interpretation may be admitted as possible.
Beelzebub does not appear in the Jewish literature of the period; there we usually find
Beliar (Belial) as an alternative name for Satan.

JOHN F. FENLON

Transcribed by Janet Grayson

Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).

This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an effort aimed at placing the
entire Catholic Encyclopedia on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to contribute to this
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