Were "gods" prior to Judaism actually demons?

[ReaderT]

Agreed. In the Catholic Bible it’s Psalm 96:5 “For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils: but the Lord made the heavens.” (Douay-Rheims translation)

 

[GodIsPerfection]

Saint Augustine regarded all of the gods of the Roman Pantheon to be demons.

What is a demon? It is a fallen angel, an incorporeal (without body) being of pure energy, but with attributes of knowledge and personality. They are eternal beings.

Saint Augustine noted that demons have REAL POWER that humans can trifle with, but demons are not trustworthy.

Foolish or ignorant people who did not know our Abrahamic God recognized the influence of “spirits” over life. They idolized them and sacrificed to them. Sometimes, they obtained positive rewards, and at other times they were betrayed. Still, demons were all they knew, so they built temples to them and continued to worship them.

A single demonic entity will have different names, but similar attributes cross-culturally. IT IS THE SAME INVISIBLE SPIRIT. Judaic SATAN = Greek ZEUS = Roman JUPITER = Nordic = THOR.

 

[EloyCraft]

I think the proclivity to worship the powers of nature was used by demons to deceive humans into service. I think some demons were capable of manipulating nature to demonstrate power of life and death and favor acts of ritual sacrifice. They could lull their worshippers into a sense of security which attached them to the god as a means of survival. They felt they couldn’t live without their god not because the god furnished life, as they believed but because guaranteed their survival.

 

[poche]

The idea of there being one God isn’t a discovery of Abraham. There are other tribes, peoples and cultures who also believed in the one God. What happened with Abraham was the revelation of God Himself for who He is to Abraham. This was in preparation for the coming of Jesus into the world to save us.

 

[White_Tree]

So here’s an interesting possibility to throw into the mix.

There is some recent archaeological evidence that suggests that the Biblical Moses might actually have been the historical Egyptian Senenmut:

Has the Biblical Moses Been Identified in Secular Egyptian Records? | Ancient Origins

He was a commoner adopted by the daughter of the Pharaoh, and treated like Egyptian royalty (which was completely unheard of at the time). He lived around the time Moses was expected to live. Although he had a tomb built, he was never buried in Egypt (ostensibly because he left with the Jews). And the Egyptians attempted to erase every trace of the memory of both him and his adopted mother as a punishment right around the time the Exodus would have taken place (which is how you would expect them to react if someone had just brought plagues upon their civilization).

That is relevant to this discussion because they have found statues of Senenmut making offerings to the Egyptian Gods. I don’t think someone as holy as Moses would worship a demon. So if he was making offerings to them, they must have been something else.

 

[AlbMagno]

Thank you vert much for bringing this theory, it sounds very interesting. However…

That is relevant to this discussion because they have found statues of Senenmut making offerings to the Egyptian Gods. I don’t think someone as holy as Moses would worship a demon

Moses in his life was a sinner just as us, and the Bible records other sins he did during his lifetime. Couple that with the fact that the God of Abraham (God) was somewhat forgotten by the time the Jews were in Egypt, and He only revealed Himself to Moses during the events of the Exodus.