art thou frustrated?" And the demon replied: "By the great Brieus[1]."
51. And I praised the Lord God of heaven and earth, and bade another demon come forward to me; and there came before me one in the form of a lion roaring. And he stood and answered me, saying: "O king, in the form which I have, I am a spirit quite incapable of being perceived. Upon all men who lie prostrate with sickness I leap, coming stealthily along; and I render the man weak, so that his habit of body is enfeebled. But I have also another glory, O king. I cast out demons, and I have legions under my control. And I am capable of being received[2] in my dwelling-places, along with all the demons belonging to the legions under me." But I Solomon, on hearing this, asked him: "What is thy name?" But he answered: "Lion-bearer, Rath[3] in kind." And I said to him: "How art thou to be frustrated along with thy legions? What angel is it that frustrates thee?" And he answered: "If I tell thee my name, I bind not myself alone, but also the legion of demons under me."
52. So I said to him: "I adjure thee in the name of the God Sabaôth, to tell me by what name thou art frustrated along with thy host[4]." And the spirit answered me: "The 'great among men,' who is to suffer many things at the hands of men, whose name is the figure 644, which is Emmanuel; he it is who has bound us, and who will then come and plunge us from the steep[5] under water. He is noised abroad in the three letters which bring him down[6]."
53. And I Solomon, on hearing this, glorified God, and condemned his legion to carry wood from the thicket. And I condemned the- ↑ (
Greek characters). Briareus is suggested by Bornemann as the right reading, but with little probability, since Briareus would not have been turned into an angel.
- ↑ (Greek characters) seems here to bear this sense, as also in the fragment of a very old commentary on the Shepherd of Hermas in the Oxyrhynchus papyri. part i, by Grenfell and Hunt, 1898, p. 9: (Greek characters) (sc. (Greek characters)). The dwelling-places are the persons of whom the spirit, good or evil, takes possession. So in the Docetic Acta Iohannis (ed. M. R. James) the Christ says: "I have no dwelling, and I have dwellings; I have no place, and I have places; I have no temple, and I have temples. … Behold thyself in me who address thee."
- ↑ (Greek characters), "slender tapering" is suggested by Bornemann as the true reading, because a "staff" might be such.
- ↑ (Greek characters) is the word used, and which I render "host."
- ↑ (Greek characters). The allusion is to the swine of Gadara.
- ↑ (Greek characters). The three characters are apparently the numbers 644, (Greek characters).
