Acts 16:16

Acts 16:16. As we went to prayer. This should be rendered as in above verse, ‘to the place of prayer.'

A certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us. This was a female slave possessed, to translate the Greek literally, ‘with the spirit of a Pythoness.' Python was the spirit that traditionally guarded Delphi; it was slain by Apollo, and hence the god's name Pythias. To be possessed by the spirit of Pythoness was, in other words, to be possessed by a prophetic spirit or demon [δαιμόνιον μαντίκον]. The name was subsequently given to any supposed soothsaying demon. Hesychius states that the term came to be used for a soothsaying ventriloquist among the ancients; the power of ventriloquism was often misused for the purposes of magic. Augustine even calls this girl ‘ventriloqua femina.'

She was the slave of several joint-owners, who used her unhappy powers as a source of gain for themselves, and appear to have made large sums out of the exhibition of this grievously-afflicted soul.

Paul, when he met her, and had had several opportunities of observing her, recognised that she was one of those many unhappy beings who, in the first days of Christianity, were afflicted with grievous soul maladies. In the Gospels, these wretched ones, called demoniacs, now and again came in contact with Jesus, and at once recognising His power, the indwelling demons set free the soul they were tormenting. On the difficult question of what these demoniacs mentioned in the various books of the New Testament were, and whether they appeared only in that period when our Lord came in the flesh, see the weighty remarks of Archbishop Trench (Miracles, p. 162 , etc.), where the whole question of demoniacal possession is discussed at length.