Maharetz Chajes(Introduction to Talmud 31) Concerning the subject of demons, the evil eye, and the evil ,spirits referred to in the Talmud, there can be no doubt that the Rabbis believed in their existence. and consequently we should take all ,reference to them in their literal sense, and we should nor attempt to offer other interpretations which will explain them in a sense remote from the literal.
The Rabbis talk of the existence, the natural characteristics, and the Behavior of these beings in a straightforward way. Thus, we read (Hag- 16,a): 'Six things arc said of the demons: in three things they are like ministering angels, and in the other three they are like human beings The Miishnah, Aboth (5, 6), says: 'The demons were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight'. The existence of demons was the general belief, indeed, of all the peoples of the Eastern and Western parts of the world a at the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim.
They also believed in witchcraft and incantations, and although Maimonidcs, in his Commentary on the Mishnah, A.Z. 4, 7, with refcrence to the qucstion" put to the elders' in Rome, and also in Yad, Ab. Kochabim 11, 16, is of a different opinion, yet the wording of the Baraithoth, and of the Talmud in several places must be taken literally and not in an allegorical or figurative sense. We do, however. observe a substantial difference in regard to this matter between the Babylonian and the Palestinian sages, although both believed in the existence of these beings and both tell us or conversations which they held with them, and the marvelous things which these demons sometimes perform- for example, we read in Jcr. Tcr. 8, fol. 47, how,, when the baths were heated by Diocletian's' orders, the demon Antigorus cooled them
