Exactly what it says on the (dramatic) title.
We always hear about Biblically accurate angels: the burning wheels with tons of eyes, the strange looking creatures that sound like they come from the anime “Evangelion”, the cherubim with 4 faces, but I had a thought while watching The Exorcist: Believer (it was…not good for anyone wondering. At all. The disrespect Regan’s mom had towards Merrin and Karras after they died saving her daughter was baffling to listen to, especially…but i digress) a couple of days ago, specifically, if that’s how the demonically possessed are said to more or less act in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, or if they’re they completely different to what we see in movies and games. I’m guessing it’s more than likely the second one, right, but I’m curious about the details like the signs someone’s possessed, the demon’s endgoal, and what they look like, basically everything you can gimme to sate this curiosity or to send me on a rabbit hole, if you’d be so kind?
Most demon lore doesn’t come directly from “authoritative” scripture in the Abrahamic religions. It was demonology/occultism that was inspired by scripture. The Quran does cite Jinn (which predate Islam), and there is an adequate wiki article on them. It says that King Solomon was given power over them and they built things for him, but afaik it is pretty lacking in descriptions. The Torah had a few mentions. Both these mostly describe goat, dog, snake, or human forms in the rare case that they describe any shape. The New Testament mostly discusses possession and ailments resulting from it. The Torah also describes possession. The descriptions of the possessed are generally in line with symptoms from fever delirium, epilepsy, catalepsy, and similar. In Islam there is often a more subtle temptation element rather than the Judeo-Christian emphasis on ailment.
If you want to learn more about the exegetic, interpreted, allegorical, and/or occult view of demons then you’d went to look beyond core scripture. For example, one of the staples of popular demonology afaik is the Lesser Key of Solomon.
I know about the Lesser Key and some “Alternative Source”, i guess you can call em, texts describing Demons, but was more interested what the official canon had to say regarding demons/possessions. Based on the answers I’ve seen so far, it seems to be not as in depth as I thought, but what is there is very interesting IMO (i dig the animal shapes from the Torah that you brought up. From my very very limited recollection of my Catholic upbringing, they weren’t given a definite shape, tho i could be very wrong…i was a bad Catholic and it’s been years)
Yea, like alot of the concepts and mythos of hell and its inhabitants come from secondary works; i.e., almost all of it is made up. That said, you could probably get more “accurate” descriptions from ancient Sumarian, Mesopotamian, and Zorastrian texts from which the Abrahamic religions derive. Such as the other gods and creatures that exist within the mythos that are rarely mentioned by Christianity.