The Serpent in the Paradise story is more completely a demon, although the legend intends rather to account for man’s morality, his distinction between good and evil. Satan was then identified with the serpent, who was called by the rabbis _Nahash ha Kadmoni_, “the primeval Serpent,” after the analogy of the serpent-like form of Ahriman. Thus Satan in the person of the serpent became the embodiment of evil, the prime cause of sin and death.(577) Possibly a part in this process was played by the Babylonian figure of _Tihamat_, the dragon of _chaos_ (_Tehom_ in the Hebrew), with whom the god Marduk wrestled for dominion over the world, and who has parallels in the Biblical Rahab and similar mythological figures. We must not overlook such rabbinical legends as the one about how the poisonous breath of the serpent infected the whole human race, except Israel who has been saved by the law at Sinai.(578) Occasionally we hear that the Evil Spirit (_Yezer ha Ra_) will be slain by God(579) or by the Messiah.(580) These Haggadic sayings, however, were never accepted as normative for religious belief. On the contrary, they were always in dispute, and many a Talmudic teacher minimized the fiendish character of Satan, who became a stimulus to moral betterment through the trials he imposes.(581) Philo, allegorizing the legends, turns the evil angels of the Bible into wicked men.(582) 5. As to demons in general, the Talmudists never doubted their existence, but endeavored to minimize their importance. They changed the demon _Azazel_ into a geographical term by transposing the letters.(583) They explained “the sons of God who came to the daughters of men to give birth to the giants of old” as aristocratic Sethites who intermarried with low-class families of the Cainites.(584) As to the rest, the entire belief in demons and ghosts was too deeply rooted in the folk mind to be counteracted by the rabbis. Even lucid thinkers of the Middle Ages were caught by these baneful superstitions, including Jehuda ha Levi, Crescas, and Nahmanides, the mystic.(585) Only a small group fought against this offshoot of fear and superstition, among them Saadia, Maimonides and his school, Ibn Ezra, Gersonides, and Juda Ibn Balag. To Maimonides the demons mentioned in Mishnah and Talmud are only figurative expressions for physical plagues. He considers the belief in demons equivalent to a belief in pagan deities. “Many pious Israelites,” he says,(586) “believe in the reality of demons and witches, thinking that they should not be made the object of worship and regard, for the reason that the Torah has prohibited it. But they fail to see that the Law commands us to banish all these things from sight, because they are but falsehood and deceit, as is the whole idolatry with which they are intrinsically connected.”