BELIAL, bî'li-al ("worthlessness"): A word which occurs once in the New Testament (II Cor. vi, 15; better reading Beliar) as the name of Satan, hardly as that of Antichrist; the Peshito has "Satan." In the Old Testament beliyya'al is not used as a designation of Satan, or of a bad angel; it is an appellation, "worthlessness" or "wickedness" in an ethical sense, and is almost always found in connection with a word denoting the person or thing whose worthlessness or wickedness is spoken of; as, "man of Belial," "son of Belial," "daughter of Belial," "thoughts of Belial," etc. In a few instances beliyya'al denotes physical destruction; so probably Ps. xviii, 4 (II Sam. xxii, 5), "floods of destruction" (A. V. "ungodly men"; R. V. "ungodliness"). To understand this passage to refer to the prince of hell is against Old Testament usage. Occasionally the adjunct is omitted, as in II Sam. xxiii, 6; Job xxxiv, 18; Nahum i, 15, where the word means the "bad," the "destroyer," the "wicked." Although thus originally not a proper name, but an appellation, in the later Jewish and Christian literature it passed over into a name for Satan, not as the "worthless," but as the "destroyer." It is so used in II Cor. vi, 15, where Paul asks: "What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?" "Belial' stands for "Satan" also in Jewish epigraphs and apocalyptic writings, such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Book of Jubilees, and the Jewish interpolations in the Sibylline Oracles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Hamburger, s.v., in Real-Encyklopödie für Bibel und Talmud, vol. i., Leipsic, 1891; W. Bousset, Der Antichrist, pp. 86-87, 99-101, Göttingen, 1895; T. K. Cheyne, in Expositor, 1895, pp. 435-439; F. Hommel, in Expository Times, viii, 472; EB, i, 525-527.

BELL, WILLIAM M'ILVIN: United Brethren; b. in Whitley Co., Ind., Nov. 12, 1860; entered the ministry 1879; elected bishop 1905.

BELLAMY, JOSEPH: Congregationalist; b. at New Cheshire, Conn., Feb. 20, 1719; d. at Bethlehem, Conn., Mar. 6, 1790. He was graduated at Yale, 1735, and was licensed to preach at the age of eighteen; was ordained pastor of the church at Bethlehem Apr. 2, 1740. During the Great Awakening he preached as an itinerating evangelist; later he established a divinity school in his house, where many prominent New England clergymen were trained. He was a disciple and personal friend of Jonathan Edwards, and the most gifted preacher among his followers, being thought by some to be equal to Whitefield. In his True Religion Delineated (Boston,

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1750) besets forth in spirited style the plan of salvation and of the Christian life after the Edwardean conception, and he explicitly advocates the doctrine of a general atonement. In the Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin (1758) he argues that, while sin is a terrible evil, God permits it as a necessary means of the best good, and the universe is "more holy and happy than if sin and misery had never entered." God could have prevented sin without violating free will. On the whole his work was more general than specific, modifying the prevalent conceptions in the direction of greater simplicity and reasonableness. He sometimes approaches quite near subsequent forms of expression. A collected edition of his works appeared at New York (3 vols., 1811), and another (and better) at Boston, with memoir by Tryon Edwards (2 vols., 1850).