Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
The prince of the power of the air
Paul's title for the ruling evil power, with the air meaning contested territory overhead.
Ephesians 2:2, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul's title for the ruling hostile power. The air here is not weather. Ancient cosmology treated the space overhead as contested ground, occupied territory between earth and the higher heavens, and Paul is naming who holds it.
Archon of the authority of the air. The cosmology behind it treats the lower heavens as contested territory, and the air here is more than atmosphere. DDD's Aion article confirms this was standard ancient cosmology, citing Philo (De Gigantibus 6) and 2 Enoch 29:4 for the air as the dwelling of evil spirits alongside Ephesians 2:2 itself. The Devil article gives the fuller mechanism: the spirits believed to occupy the air were the disembodied spirits of the giants drowned in the Flood, offspring of the sons of God of Genesis 6:1-4, the tradition Eusebius later summarizes when he says Greek theologians assigned the atmosphere to demons (Praeparatio Evangelica 4.5.142).
- Ephesians 2:2
- Arnold, *Powers of Darkness*
- DDD s.v. "Aion," 14
- G. J. Riley, DDD s.v. "Devil," 244-248
