Updated list, titles in blue are books I've finished. Bold indicates books I liked/found helpful. There are tiny summaries in some cases and full-blown reviews that need to be written in some cases. Some of the books in the list are, predictably, downright awful others are fantastic.
Jesus the Exorcist: A Contribution to the Study of the Historical Jesus
Graham Twelftree
ISBN 13:978-1-61097-060-0 *
In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism among Early Christians
Graham H Twelftree
ISBN 978-1-4421-0599-5
The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature
Archie T. Wright
ISBN 978-1-4514-9032-9 *
ebook 978-1-4514-9654-3
Jesus, The Galliean Exorcist: His Exorcisms in Social and Political Context
Amanda Witmer
ISBN 978-0-567-57552-4 *
978-0-567-27545-5
The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts
Loren T Stuckenbruck
ISBN 978-0-8028-7315-6 *
God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos
Meredith G Kline
ISBN 1-59752-478-6
an outlier but the more I read on this set of topics the more eschatology turns out to be significant to these topics.
The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions
Angela Kim Harkins, Kelleey Coblentz Bautch, and John C Endres, S. J., Editors
ISBN 978-0-8006-9978-9
ebook ISBN 978-1-4514-6513-6
The Unseen Realm: Recovering the supernatural worldview of the Bible
Michael S Heiser
ISBN 978-1-57-799556-2
Reversing Hermon: Enoch, The Watchers & the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ
Michael S Heiser
ISBN 978-0-9981426-3-0
Demons: What the Bible Really Says about the Powers of Darkness
Michael S Heiser
ISBN 9781683592891
9781683562907
Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology: Reading the Biblical Text in Its Cultural and Literary Context
John H Walton and J Harvey Walton
ISBN 978-1-623564-825-9
ebook 978-1-7252-4951-6
I can't really recommend this book but I won't get into why in detail on the list itself. You're far better off reading the bolded titles elsewhere on the list and skip this one.
De-Demonizing the Old Testament: An Investigation of Azazel, Lilith, Deber, Qeteb and Resehf in the Hebrew Bible
Judit M Blair (2008) doctoral dissertation, University of Edinbeurgh
Published by Mohr Siebeck under ISBN 978-3-16-150131-9
Powers of Darkness: Principalities and Powers in Paul's Letters
Clinton E Arnold
ISBN 0-8308-1336-5
3 Crucial Questions about Spiritual Warfare (Three Crucial Questions)
Clinton Arnold
ISBN-10: 0801057841
ISBN-13: 978-0801057847
Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization, and Deliverance
Dr. Karl I Payne
ISBN 978-1-936488-33-9
updated 8-7-22 Mark Driscoll wrote an endorsement blurb for this one and I won't dig into how much the "demon trial" stuff drew upon Payne's work in his list.
The Christian in Complete Armour
William Gurnall
this one I might just not finish as the unabridged version is 1,600 some pages) Free versions available at archive.org and Digital Puritan are abridged versions and if you can find the unabridged version it's pretty big!
there are a lot of abridged versions. If the version you find is less than 1,500 pages it's abridged
The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought
Benjamin E Reynolds and Loren T Stuckenbruck, editors
ISBN 978-1-5064-2342-5
Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare Manual
John Eckhardt
ISBN 978-1-62136-625-6
978-1-62436-626-3
A Profound Ignorance: Modern Pneumatology and it's Anti-modern Redemption
Ephraim Radner (2020)
ISBN 981481310826 **
a real outlier in terms of the topic but a fantastic book.
Deliverance and Inner Healing
John Loren Sandford and Mark Sandford
ISBN 978-1-4412-0152-2
Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit: Biblical Realism in Africa and the West
Esther Acolatse (2018)
ISBN-10: 0802864058
ISBN-13: 978-0802864055 *
This is a good historical survey of the reception history of powers and principalities in Eph 6 interpretation. What I've admired about Acolatse's work is how she cross references mainline and evangelical traditions of theology, which is something that I've been finding other African pastors, theologians and biblical scholars do more often than their Western counterparts who tend to lockstep into either the mainline or evangelical/fundamentalist schools of thought.
For Freedom or Bondage? A Critique of African Pastoral Practices
Esther Acolatse (2014)
ISBN 978-0-8028-6989-0
The Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke's Writings
Susan R Garrett
ISBN-10: 0800624092
ISBN-13: 978-0800624095
The Temptations of Jesus in Mark's Gospel
Susan R Garrett
ISBN-10: 0802842593
ISBN-13: 978-0802842596
Exorcism and Deliverance Ministry in the Twentieth Century: An Analysis of the Practice and Theology of Exorcism in Modern Western Christianity
James M. Collins
ISBN-10: 1608991679
ISBN-13: 978-1608991679
If you want to have a roadmap to the last two centuries of evangelical and fundamentalist and Catholic approaches to spirit possession and exorcism/deliverance ministry this is a must-read. It's also pretty readable for an academic book. This is, I say again, one of the must-read books for exorcism and spiritual warfare. He's too brief on some writers as a matter of necessity and he was far more lenient toward Rebecca Brown M.D. than I would be but it is an academic historical survey.
What Demons Can Do to Christians
Merrill Unger
ISBN 978-0-8024-9418-4 (1977 early printing)
Biblical Demonology: A Study of Spiritual Forces at Work Today
Merrill Unger
ISBN 0-8254-3901-9 (previously published 1963, adaptation of doctoral dissertation from 1945)
[update 8-7-22, Unger is probably the single biggest figure in the fundamentalist wing of deliverance ministry and spiritual warfare and he made a 180 between Biblical Demonology and his later work wherein he affirmed that Christians can be demonized]
After Nevius this would be the next landmark in evangelical/fundamentalist writing on demons and demonization. It is, honestly, not quite as readable or as good a read and the dispensationalist futurism is annoying unavoidable. Still, it constitutes a must-read for historical purposes since few if any fundamentalist writers on demons and demonization added anything to Unger. Unger changed his mind between 1946 and 1970 on whether Christians can be demonized. See the other Unger title for that.
Defeating Dark Angels: Breaking Demonic Oppression in the Believer’s Life
Charles H Kraft
ISBN 978-1-4412-3040-9 (1992,2011, 2016)
The Battle is God’s: Reflecting on spiritual warfare for African believers
Keith Ferdinando (2012)
ISBN 98-978-905-2299-5
The Spiritual Warrior’s Guide to Defeating Water Spirits: Overcoming Demons that Twist, Suffocate, and Attack God’s Purposes For Your Life
Jennifer LeClaire (foreward by John Eckhardt)
ISBN 978-0-7684-4295-3
Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament
Walter Wink 1984
ISBN 0-8006-1786-X
Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence
Walter Wink 1988
ISBN 9781506453835
Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Dominationi
Walter Wink 1992
ISBN 0-0006-2646-X
This trilogy is important for understanding mainline Protestant thought about the powers and principalities. It's core thesis is: 1) the powers were created good; 2) the powers are fallen; 3) the powers can be redeemed. There's no actual serious exegetical basis for the claim and I think Clinton Arnold was right to fisk Wink for collapsing terminologies into a single undifferentiated soup of a concept. The paradox is that Wink's concept can be read in the 2020s as little more than American progressive blue-state Christian nationalism. It aspires to a motto that goes roughly like this
"let's put the pax in pax Americana."
Wink would not have anticipated even a first Trump term, let alone a second. It's actually not a bad trilogy for writing but the concepts, overall, are deeply unpersuasive.
Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christian: The Reception of the Enochic Literature
Annette Yoshiko Reed (2005)
ISBN-13 978-0-511-35181-5 mobipocket
ISBN-10 0-511-35181-X mobipocket
ISBN-13 978-0-521-85378-1 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-85378-8
Against Principalities and Powers: Spiritual Beings in Relation to Communal Identity and the Moral Discourse of Ephesians
Daniel K Darko (2020)
ISBNs 978-1-79368-767-1 Print 978-1-78368-8357 ePub 978-1-78368-836-4 Mobi 978-1-78368-837-1 PDF [finished as of 8-4-22] *
Practices of Power: Revisiting the Principalities and Powers in the Pauline Letters
Robert Ewusie Moses (2014)
ISBN 978-1-4514-7664-4
ISBN 978-1-4514-7993-5 **
I loved this one and Robert Ewusie Moses is going to be a scholar/pastor whose work I look forward to reading more of in the future.
Having the Spirit of Christ: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in Early Christ Groups
Giovanni B Bazzana (2020)
ISBN 978-0-300-24562-2
PASSING ORDERS: DEMONOLOGY AND SOVEREIGNTY IN AMERICAN SPIRITUAL WARFARE
S. Jonathon O'Donnell 2020
ISBN: 9780823289677
This one was a tedious slog and one of the worst books on the list. By fixating on post 9/11/2001 pop level books from the like of Charisma House O'Donnell misses how far back spiritual warfare and eschatological tropes go in Anglo-American evangelicalism. If you just wanted to read a compelling and competent thesis that End Times pulp books reflect the paranoia of white Anglo Saxon males Protestant or Catholic you'd be far better off reading Crawford Gribben's magnificent little book Writing the Rapture! For reception history approaches to Behemoth and Leviathan read Mark Sneed! By not going through the last 150 years of work on spiritual warfare or observing how it evolved in tandem with American colonial/imperial expansion and, far more pertinently, the eruption of spiritual warfare manuals in the Cold War era, O'Donnell shoots themselves in the feet with a pedestrian intra-scholastic work of agitprop that has a compelling seed of an idea, that pop level spiritual warfare manuals do tend to default to Americanist and even white supremacist ideas ... except that African American pastors railing against the Jezebel spirit sure do throw a big qualifier into that thesis! Spare yourself the tedium of reading this one.
Win Your War: Fight in the Realm You Don't See for Freedom in the One You Do
Mark and Grace Driscoll
Charisma House (2019)
ISBNs 9781629996257 and 9781629996264
It might go without saying that Wenatchee The Hatchet does not recommend this book, either. I'll say it anyway,
Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena in Biblical Literature
A dissertation presented by Reed Carlson (2019)
Satan Cast Out: A Study in Biblical Demonology
Frederick S Leahy
The Banner of Truth Trust
ISBN 0-85151-234-8 (1975)
Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology
Andrei A. Orlov
ISBN-10 : 1438439520
ISBN-13 : 978-1438439525
Demons of Change: Antagonism and Apotheosis in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism
Andrei A. Orlov
ISBN-13 : 978-1438480893
Divine Scapegoats: Demonic Mimesis in Early Jewish Mysticism
Andrei A. Orlov
ISBN-10 : 1438455828
ISBN-13 : 978-1438455822
Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices
free PDF of a Puritan on spiritual warfare accessible here
Demon possession and allied themes; being an inductive study of phenomena of our own times
John Livingston Nevius
Gloriously public domain and surprisingly readable considering it was published in the 1890s. Evangelical/fundamentalist views on spirit possession have hardly changed at all since Nevius' seminal work on the topic. He started out as a missionary who disbelieved in the reality or relevance of spirit possession states but while ministering in China people prevailed on him to help them cast out spirits and he began to revise his position. If he was typical of the American Presbyterians of his time and place he was possibly postmillennial and the question of millenarian views, eschatology and diabology and apocalyptic tend to be intertwined but I digress.
The Handbook of Spiritual Warfare (Revised and Updated)
Ed Murphy
Thomas Nelson Publishing
ISBN 0-7852-5026-3
Demonic Foes: My twenty-five years as a psychiatrist investigating possessions, diabolic attacks and the paranormal
Richard Gallagher, MD
ISBN 978-0-06-287647-8
(after having Rebecca Brown M.D. books foisted upon me in my Pentecostal youth I'm pretty iffy about this one but it's recent and looks like something to at least take note of, work in anthropology, sociology and psychology in the last forty years has made some strides in dealing with demonization as part of therapeutic methods)
Demonology Past and Present: Identifying and Overcoming Demonic Strongholds
Kurt E. Koch
ISBN 0-8254-3049-6
Spiritual Power and Missions: Raising the Issues
Evangelical Missiological Society Series Number 3
Edward Rommen, Editor
ISBN 978-0-87808-666-5
Thanks to Brad Futurist Guy for this recommendation! It can be read as a rebuttal to Charles Kraft's approach and mentions concerns about animistic concepts creeping into spiritual warfare teachings within Christian theology, which I have only picked up relatively recently.
So as of January 16, 2021 ...
[added as of 2-2021]
Principalities and Powers: A Study in Pauline Theology
G. B. Caird
ISBN 1-59244-421-0 ***
(I read about this one in Robert Ewusie Moses' Practices of Power and my gut told me that this little Caird book was a non-negotiable addition to my reading list and 1) it totally is and 2) it's super short and clearly written so lay readers can find it helpful)
This little book is magnificent and concise. More, perhaps, later.
Additions reflecting 5-27-2022
Christ and the Powers
Hendrik Berkhof
Herald Press, 1962 and 1977
ISBN 0-8361-1820-0
This little book is really good. There's a mildly catty forward from Berkhof about how he ran his thesis by Charlotte (let the Barth specialist understand) and she loved it but Karl Barth hated it and yet turned around and super-expanded Berkhof's thesis without exactly giving him credit. As Jim West put it when he learned of this, "Yeah, that sounds like Barth". More seriously, Berkhof's theory about the powers in Pauline literature set the course for mainline Protestant scholarship on the topic for generations and it's an elegantly readable and clear little book.
The Prince of this World:
Adam Kotsko
Stanford University Press, 2017
ISBN 9780804799683
Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital
Adam Kotsko
Oxford University Press, 2018
ISBN 9781503607125
Christus Victor
Gustaf Aulen
public domain 1931, published by SPCK
Short but a cogent defense of christus victor as the "classic" atonement theory predicated on Christ's defeat of forces of spiritual darkness. Treat it as a primer on the significance of christus victor and ransom theories of atonement rather than as a watertight scholarly work and it will serve you well.
The Glory of the Invisible God: Two Powers in Heaven Traditions and Early Christology
Andrei Orlov
T&T Clark, 2019
ISBN-13 : 978-0567692238
Theodicy of Love: Cosmic Conflict and the Problem of Evil
John C Peckham
Baker Academic, 2018
ISBN 978-1-4934-1576-2
The Colossian Syncretism: The Interface Betweeen Christianity and Folk Religion at Colossae
Clinton Arnold
Baker Books, 1996
ISBN 0-8010-2092-10
Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Ephesians
Clinton Arnold
Zondervan, 2010
ISBN 978-0-310-243731
Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine: Scientific and Theological Perspectives
Christopher C. H. Cook
Routledge, 2019
ISBN 978-1-4724-5398-3
The Devil Within: Possesion & Exorcism in the Christian West
Brian Levack
Yale University Press, 2013
ISBN 978-0-300-11472-0
Pentecostalism and Witchcraft: Spiritual Warfare in Africa and Melanesia
Edited by Knut Rio, Michelle MacCarthy, Ruy Blanes
Palgrave Macmillan 2017
ISBN 978-3-319-56067-0
The Final Quest Trilogy
Rick Joyner
Copyright 1996, 1999 and 2003
2016 for trilogy
ISBN 978-1-60708-672-7
I may eventually explain why this is on the list later. Inclusion in this list doesn't signal approval. :)
An Elizabethan Lawyer's Possession By the Devil: The Story of Robert Brigges
Kathleen R Sands
Praeger, (c) 2002
ISBN 0-275-97837-0
A strange tale of a Catholic possessed by the Devil before becoming a Protestant. This case study might serve as a nexus point for considering demonization in anthropological, sociological and political terms alongside Christian dogmatics.
Demon Possession in Elizabethan England
Kathleen R Sands
Praeger 2004
ISBN 0-275-98169-x
God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Conflict
Gregory A Boyd
Intervarsity Press, 1997
ISBN 0-8308-1885-5
Satan and the Problem of Evil: Constructing a Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy
Gregory A Boyd
Intervarsity Press, 2001
ISBN 978-0-8308-1550-0
The Old Enemy: Satan & the Combat Myth
Neil Forsyth
Princeton University Press, 1987
ISBN 0-691-06712-0
An Adversary in Heaven: satan in the Hebrew Bible
Peggy L. Day
Brill 1983
ISBN 1-55540-248-8
Unfamiliar Selves in the Hebrew Bible: Possession and Other Spirit Phenomena
Reed Carlson
DeGruyter, 2022
ISBN 978-3-11-066934-3 [adapted from item cited above]
Taming the Beast: A Reception History of Behemoth and Leviathan
DeGruyter, 2022
ISBN 978-3-11-057931-4
Both of these are magnificent scholarly works that you should rush to read in contrast to Passing Orders!
Demon Possession in Anglo-Saxon England
Peter Dendle
Medieval Institute Publications, 2014
ISBN 978-1-58044-169-8
The Disobedient Spirits and Christian Baptism: A Study of I Peter III. 19 and Its Context
Bo Reicke
Wipf & Stock, 2005 (originally published 1946)
ISBN 1-59752-099-3
Signs, Wonderrs & Gifts: Divination in the Letters of Paul
Jennifer Eyl
Oxford University Press, 2019
ISBN 978-0-19-092465-2
The Satan: How God's Executioner Became The Enemy
Ryan E. Stokes
Wm. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2019
ISBN 978-0-8028-7250-0
It recapitulates observations made earlier by Caird but it's one of the better contemporary surveys of the satan as adversarial role in the biblical literature.
Sources of Evil: Studies in Mesopotamian Exorcistic Lore
Edited by Greta Van Bulaere; Mikko Luukko; Daniel Schwemer; and Avigail Mertens_Wagschall
Brill, 2018
ISBN 978-90-04-36833-0
HT Jim West
West is right, this one is pretty hard-core and for specialist/scholarly readers.
It's Brill so if the topic doesn't scare you off the price tag might!
added 8-7-2022
The Pauline Concept of Supernatural Powers
Paternoster Biblical (2018)
ISBN-13 : 978-1842275320
original printing 2009
The Pauline Concept of Supernatural Powers: A Reading from the African Worldview
Kabiro wa Gatumu
ISBN-13 : 978-1606084724
also ... see the 2004 dissertation.
added late 2022
Demons in Early Judaism and Christianity: Characters and Characteristics
edited by Hector M Patmore and Josef Lossl
ISBN 978-90-04-51714-1
great big HT to Jim West for finding this one!
also HT to Jim West for this one ..
Johann Wier: Debating the Devil and Witches in Early Modern Europe
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
ISBN: 9789048541041
I gotta warn you, though, these two later 2022 titles are not the least bit cheap!
Demons, Angle, and Writing in Ancient Judaism
Annette Yoshiko Reed
Cambridge University Press 2020
ISBN 978-1-108-74609-0
added 2-8-2023
Okay, this one I admit I'm pretty excited about.
Adam, Satan, and the King of Tyre: The Interpretation of Ezekiel 28:11-19 in Late Antiquity
Hector M. Patmore
ISBN: 978-90-04-20880-3
ISBN: 978-90-04-20722-6
Publication date: 17 Feb 2012
added (date unknown)
Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons
Evagrius of Pontus
translated with an introduction by David Brakke
Cistercian Studies Series Number 229
A Cistercian Publications Title published by Liturgical Press
(c) 2009 by order of Saint Benedict
Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians
Clinton Arnold
Published: December 2001
ISBN 9781579108359
This one is pretty good and as I've gone through about two dozen of the books on the list so far this one gets name-checked by so many other authors it's in the "must read". James M Collins described Arnold's work as probably the end point of evangelical scholarship dealing with spiritual warfare because his proposal that the Artemis cult in Ephesus is the most probably background reason for why Ephesians was written has gained scholarly acceptance among specialists, and also because basically no evangelical or fundamentalist biblical scholars or theologians have done much of anything (in Collins' assessment) of furthering research in biblical studies on the matter than Clinton Arnold has.
April 30, 2023 update
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-29112-3
A History of Exorcism in Catholic Christianity (Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic)
Francis Young
Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2016 edition (April 27, 2016)
ISBN: 978-3-319-80491-0
ISBN: 978-3-319-29112-3
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/history-of-anglican-exorcism-9780567692931/
A History of Anglican Exorcism: Deliverance and Demonology in Church Ritual
Francis Young
Published Dec 26 2019
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 272
ISBN 9780567692931 (paper)
ISBN 9781788313476 (hardback)
ISBN 9781838607920 (epub mobi)
ISBN 9781838607937 (PDF)
The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West
Brian Levack
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Within-Brian-Levack-ebook/dp/B00BQZ1UI4/
ASIN : B00BQZ1UI4
Publisher : Yale University Press; Illustrated edition (April 22, 2013)
Publication date : April 22, 2013
https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Within-Possession-Exorcism-Christian/dp/0300114729/
ASIN : 0300114729
Publisher : Yale University Press; First Edition (April 23, 2013)
Language : English
Hardcover : 346 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780300114720
ISBN-13 : 978-0300114720
All three of these are quite good and reviewed here.
7-20-2024
God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible
Esther J. Hamori
PUBLISHER Broadleaf Books
FORMAT Hardcover
ISBN 9781506486321
EBOOK ISBN 9781506486338
DIMENSIONS 5.75 x 8.75
PAGES 296
PUBLICATION DATE October 31, 2023
Skip the Waltons entirely and go for this one instead, probably the best primer for a lay reader on monstrous figures in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
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