Footnote

a With regard to Jews’ expelling demons, we read in Exorcism Through the Ages: “The chief characteristic of these Jewish exorcisms is their naming of names believed to be efficacious, i.e. names of good angels, which are used either alone or in combination with El (=God); indeed reliance on mere names had long before become a superstition with the Jews, and it was considered most important that the appropriate names, which varied for different times and occasions, should be used. It was this superstitious belief, no doubt, that prompted the sons of Sceva, who had witnessed St. Paul’s successful exorcisms in the name of Jesus, to try on their own account the formula, ‘I conjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth,’ with results disastrous to their credit (Acts, xix, 13). It was a popular Jewish belief, accepted even by a learned cosmopolitan like Josephus, that Solomon had received the power of expelling demons, and that he had composed and transmitted certain formulae that were efficacious for that purpose. The Jewish historian records how a certain Eleazar, in the presence of the Emperor Vespasian and his officers, succeeded, by means of a magical ring applied to the nose of a possessed person, in drawing out the demon through the nostrils​—the virtue of the ring being due to the fact that it enclosed a certain rare root indicated in the formulae of Solomon, and which it was exceedingly difficult to obtain.”​—See Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, Book 8, chap. 2, sec. 5 and The Jewish War, Book 7, chap. 6, sec. 3.