In the Old Testament (in such passages as Lev. xix. 31; xx. 27; Deut. xviii. 9, 12; Isa. viii. 19) reference is made to wizards, witches, and familiar spirits. Although the more ignorant and idol-affecting Israelites, and the Godforsaken Saul were attracted by such pretences, it does not appear that Moses or the prophets believed that they were real powers. Isaiah viii. 19 implies the contrary. Moses calls them the "abominations of those nations" whom the Lord was to drive out of Palestine from before the children of Israel. The gift they assumed was blasphemy against Jehovah, usurpation of the prerogative of him who "alone doeth wondrous things;" and this being so, they were to be cut off from among his people. But the possession of a familiar spirit with a gift of divination, or the power of witchcraft, or the evil spirit which put dissension between Abimelech and the Shechemites, or the evil spirit from the Lord manifested in Saul's jealousy of David, and occasionally succumbing to the charm of David's harp, or the lying spirit put by the Lord in the mouths of the prophets of Ahab, differ greatly from such evil spirits,--_personal, separate from their victims, entering in, and coming out of them_, as the "legion" mentioned above, or the demon-torn youth (Luke ix. 37, 42), or the devil that was dumb (Luke xi. 14).* * The Assyrians and Babylonians, however, among whom the captive Jews were afterwards placed, believed that the world teemed with malignant spirits, who were the authors of the various diseases to which mankind are subject. The Jews of the Talmud were imbued with the same idea. In the Apocryphal book of Tobit, also, the evil spirit Asmodeus, who killed the seven husbands of Raguel's daughter as they approached her, and who was at last driven forth by the smoke of the "ashes of the perfumes and of the heart and liver of a fish," so that he "fled into the utmost parts of Egypt, and the angel bound him," differs from the New Testament evil spirits in that he is represented rather as "attendant" on the maiden, than as "indwelling," but has this similarity to them that he is mentioned as a distinct person, exercising a malignant influence.