RT Article
T1 The Many Faces of the Noonday Demon
JF Journal of early Christian history
VO 8
IS 1
SP 22
OP 42
A1 Scott-Macnab, David
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis Group
YR 2018
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1663290377
AB The scriptural figure of the noonday demon (daemonium meridianum)-a unicum found only in Psalm 90 [91]-exercised the minds of many of the most influential thinkers from early Christian times to the end of the Middle Ages. Perhaps partly because of his mysterious and evocative moniker, but also because of his sudden appearance as the apotheosis of a sequence of violent images in the structure of the Psalm, the demon was regarded with fascinated awe before being relegated to the dustbin of outmoded ideas by the new scholarship of the Reformation. This article reviews the origins of the noonday demon, the conflicting interpretations of Jerome and Augustine, and how these were developed by several influential thinkers of the early Middle Ages. As I shall show, the Psalmist's allusion to the noonday demon provoked an array of readings that is both complex and more diverse than is frequently acknowledged by modern scholars.
K1 Augustine
K1 Bernard of Clairvaux
K1 Jerome
K1 Psalm 90
K1 Septuagint
K1 Vulgate
K1 noonday demon
DO 10.1080/2222582X.2017.1421864