page_title: Unclean spirit
section_title: In Christianity
hierarchical_section_title: Unclean spirit / In Christianity
caption_attribution_description: Judean hills
context_page_description: In English translations of the Bible, unclean spirit is a common rendering of Greek pneuma akatharton, which in its single occurrence in the Septuagint translates Hebrew ruaḥ tum'ah.
  The Greek term appears 21 times in the New Testament in the context of demonic possession. It is also translated into English as spirit of impurity or more loosely as "evil spirit." The Latin equivalent is spiritus immundus.
  The association of physical and spiritual cleanliness is, if not universal, widespread and continues into the 21st century: "To be virtuous is to be physically clean and free from the impurity that is sin," notes an article in Scientific American published 10 March 2009. Some scholarship seeks to differentiate between "unclean spirit" and "evil spirit" or "demon".
context_section_description: The exorcism of demons and unclean spirits is one of the major categories of miracles attributed to Jesus. In the Greek New Testament, 20 occurrences of pneuma akatharton (singular and plural) are found in the Synoptic Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation. The phrase may be used instead of daimonion (50 occurrences) or a verbal form of daimonizesthai, "to be possessed by a demon" or "to be or act as a demoniac," as indicated by usage in parallel versions of the same story. Throughout The Gospel of Mark, the terms pneuma (with a pejorative modifier) and daimonion seem to be equivalent.
  In the narratives pertaining to the ministry of Jesus, temptation to sin is not the primary role played by demons, but rather the causing of disease, disability, mental illness, and antisocial behavior; they defile and compel their human hosts to suffer both physically and spiritually. Although healing and exorcism are distinguished, they often appear in close association, and some afflictions are caused by demonic possession: the inability to speak at Matthew 9:32, blindess at Matthew 12:22, deafness at Mark 9:17–29, epilepsy at Matthew 17:18, and fever and other diseases at Luke 4:39 and Luke 8:2. Mental illness, however, was the most common result.
  The exorcism of an unclean spirit was the first act of Jesus's public ministry:
  ²¹They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. ²²The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. ²³Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an unclean spirit cried out, ²⁴"What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God!" ²⁵"Be quiet!" said Jesus sternly. "Come out of him!" ²⁶The unclean spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. ²⁷The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, "What is this? A new teaching — and with authority! He even gives orders to unclean spirits and they obey him." ²⁸News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee.
  Jesus is said to have directly granted his 12 disciples the power to cast out unclean spirits and to heal. At Luke 9:49–50, John the Apostle reports that he and his fellow disciples have asked a man to stop casting out demons in the name of Jesus "because he isn't one of us," but Jesus replies that the man should be allowed to continue, since "anyone who is not against you is for you." Elsewhere, Jesus appoints 72 missionaries who also have the power to cast out demons.
caption: Judean desert, a liminal space thought hospitable to unclean spirits (Matthew 12:43)
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