Press and media
Material for interviews, reviews, and show notes. If you need something not listed here, including a different crop of the cover or a longer biography, write to me and I will send the file.
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Book details
- Title
- The Grammar of the Unseen: A Demonology Rooted in Text and Tradition
- Author
- JJ Johnson
- Publication
- November 13, 2026
- Pages
- 364
- Category
- Religion / Demonology
- Formats
- Paperback
- ISBN
- Available on request
Short biography
JJ Johnson holds a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, where he studied the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and Semitic philology. Since 2017 he has hosted the Southern Demonology podcast, and he is the author of The Grammar of the Unseen.
Book description for show notes
From Mesopotamian ritual texts and the restrained Hebrew Bible through the Book of Watchers, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospels, and the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition of the debtera, JJ Johnson traces how a sparse biblical vocabulary grew into an elaborate demonology that never granted evil a throne of its own.
Topics I can speak to
- How English words such as angel, demon, and possession acquired meanings their earliest sources would not recognize
- What incantation bowls, amulets, and other practical magical objects tell us about everyday religion, and what they do not tell us about official doctrine
- Why dating a tradition and dating a manuscript are two different problems
- Popular paranormal claims that cannot be found in ancient sources, and the stranger histories underneath them
- Reading the Book of Watchers, Jubilees, and the Qumran material without flattening them into one system
- Translation as interpretation, and what gets decided on a reader’s behalf
Contact
Interview requests, review copies, and asset requests: southerndemonology@gmail.com
Downloads
- Front coverPNG, 1009 by 1559
- Author photographJPG, 1024 by 1024
- Print cover wrap, 364 pagesOn request
- Short biography and book descriptionReproduced on this page
