Demons vs. Fallen Angels — What Does the Text Say?

I. The Conflation, and the Question

In popular theology one story carries the freight: Lucifer fell from heaven, dragged a third of the angels with him, and those fallen angels are the demons that Jesus drove out of people in the Gospels. It is a tidy narrative. It is not the canon's narrative.

The biblical text uses four distinct vocabulary streams for the powers of darkness. Demons are δαιμόνιον (G1140) — 63 NT occurrences across 55 verses. Angels, holy and otherwise, are ἄγγελος (G32) — a much larger NT lemma. The slanderer / Satan is named twice over: διάβολος (G1228) and Σατανᾶς (G4567). The dragon-serpent is named twice as well: δράκων (G1404) and ὄφις (G3789).

These streams converge in only two NT verses — Revelation 12:9 and 20:2 — and even at the convergence point, δαιμόνιον is absent. Part 1 of this series documented the OT's spare demonology (eleven verses); Part 2 traced the LXX-and-Second-Temple expansion that the NT inherited. Part 3 asks the lexical question that decides whether the popular conflation has any textual basis: do demons and fallen angels share a vocabulary? They do not. The text refuses to weld them. The careful reader must therefore keep them apart.

II. The Categorical Non-Overlap — Three Witnesses

The hardest empirical fact this series produces is not interpretive. It is countable.

Three independent witnesses. The first looks at every angel-verse and every demon-verse in the NT and asks how many overlap: zero. The second relaxes the constraint to the pericope level (the ancient paragraph division), so a vocabulary in v.3 may pair with a vocabulary in v.7: still zero. The third takes the embedding-space neighborhoods that semantic similarity produces — what other words cluster near each lemma — and asks for the intersection: empty. δαιμόνιον clusters with daimōn (δαίμων, G1142; cosine 0.865), demonized (G1139; 0.720), and shed (שֵׁד, H7700; 0.645). ἄγγελος clusters with malʼak (מַלְאָךְ, H4397; 0.682), angelia (G31; 0.674), archangelos (G743; 0.634), and euangelion (G2098; 0.618). Different worlds.

The objection is obvious: maybe NT Greek just keeps lemmas apart by accident. A control table answers it.

Read the table backwards. δαιμόνιον does co-occur with πνεῦμα (8 verses), and ἄγγελος co-occurs with πνεῦμα (9 verses) — and Hebrews 1:7 cites Psalm 104:4 LXX to say that God "makes his angels πνεύματα." The NT is happy to identify angels as spirits, demons as spirits, and Satan with both his title-stack (διάβολος / Σατανᾶς) and his angels. The one bridge it never builds is between demons and angels. The non-overlap is not a corpus accident; it is a vocabulary discipline.

III. Chained vs. Roaming — Two Populations, Two Grammars

The non-overlap is not only lexical. It is grammatical. Consider the two populations the NT texts describe most explicitly: the bound-angels of 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6, and the roaming demons of the Synoptic exorcisms.

Εἰ γὰρ ὁ θεὸς ἀγγέλων ἁμαρτησάντων οὐκ ἐφείσατο, ἀλλὰ σειραῖς ζόφου ταρταρώσας παρέδωκεν εἰς κρίσιν τηρουμένους — "If God did not spare angels having sinned, but having cast them into Tartarus in chains of gloom, handed them over, kept for judgment" — 2 Peter 2:4 (TAGNT)

ἀγγέλους τε τοὺς μὴ τηρήσαντας τὴν ἑαυτῶν ἀρχὴν ἀλλ᾽ ἀπολιπόντας τὸ ἴδιον οἰκητήριον, εἰς κρίσιν μεγάλης ἡμέρας δεσμοῖς ἀϊδίοις ὑπὸ ζόφον τετήρηκεν — "and angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling — for the judgment of the great day, in eternal chains under gloom, he has kept" — Jude 1:6 (TAGNT)

The verbs do work. Tartarōsas (ταρταρώσας, G5020, aor act ptcp) is a NT hapax; seira (σειρά, G4577, "chain") is also a hapax. Tetērēken (τετήρηκεν, G5083, perf act ind, "to guard, to keep") locks the action into completed-with-ongoing-results state. Sinned (aorist), thrown (aorist), kept (perfect): a one-way trip ending in custody.

The empirical knockout is the bottom row. The same lemma — desmos (δεσμός, "chain") — appears for both populations, with opposite states. In Jude 6 the angels are kept in eternal chains. In Luke 8:29 the demoniac, driven by the demon, is bursting the chains: kai diarrhēssōn ta desma (καὶ διαρρήσσων τὰ δεσμὰ ἠλαύνετο ὑπὸ τοῦ δαιμονίου, "and breaking the chains he was driven by the demon"). One word, two grammars, two populations. A reading that fuses bound-angels with roaming-demons must explain how the same beings are simultaneously kept-in and breaking-out.

The geography is equally distinct. The text names three custodial places, and they too do not overlap.

Tartarus holds bound angels. The abyss holds (or threatens) demons and eventually Satan, briefly. The lake of fire is the eschatological end-state of the dragon and the beast. πῦρ αἰώνιον is prepared for "the devil and his angels" (τῷ διαβόλῳ καὶ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις αὐτοῦ, Mat 25:41) — angels again, never demons. No NT verse fuses two of these. The text is more careful than the popular conflation.

IV. Helel and the Literary Frame of Isaiah 14

If "fallen angel" has a textual address, it is supposed to be Isaiah 14:12. The verse contains a Hebrew word — helel (הֵילֵל, H1966) — that the Latin Vulgate rendered lucifer. From there it became a name. The text offers no warrant.

The word is a hapax legomenon. H1966 occurs once in the Hebrew Bible, here only. The context anchors its referent without ambiguity.

אֵיךְ נָפַלְתָּ מִשָּׁמַיִם הֵילֵל בֶּן־שָׁחַר — "How you have fallen from heaven, helel ben-shachar" — Isaiah 14:12 (MT)

Eight verses earlier the prophet announces what kind of speech-form this passage is and over whom: u-nasata ha-mashal ha-zeh ʿal melek bavel (וְנָשָׂאתָ הַמָּשָׁל הַזֶּה עַל־מֶלֶךְ בָּבֶל) — "You shall take up this taunt-song against the king of Babylon" (Isa 14:4, MT). A mashal (מָשָׁל, H4912) covers proverb, parable, byword, similitude, and poetic discourse — in Isa 14 the genre is taunt-song against a king. The genre is set, the addressee is named. Four verses after the helel-line, the text confirms the same referent in unmistakable terms: ha-zeh ha-ʼish margiz ha-aretz? (הֲזֶה הָאִישׁ מַרְגִּיז הָאָרֶץ) — "Is this the man who shook the earth?" (Isa 14:16, MT). The word is ʼish (אִישׁ, H376), "man." A mortal Babylonian king. The frame is closed on both sides of v.12.

The LXX, translating roughly two centuries before the NT, did not read helel as a proper name and did not render it with διάβολος. It chose heōsphoros (ἑωσφόρος, "light-bearer," "morning star," Venus): πῶς ἐξέπεσεν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ὁ ἑωσφόρος ὁ πρωὶ ἀνατέλλων — "How the morning-star, rising in the morning, has fallen from heaven" (LXX Isa 14:12). The Vulgate's lucifer is the Latin word for ἑωσφόρος. Not a name. A noun for the planet Venus when it appears at dawn.

The embedding-space neighborhood of helel (H1966) answers the question from a third angle. The top-25 nearest neighbors of H1966 in the canon's embedding space:

Three witnesses: the literary frame says human king; the LXX says Venus; the embedding space says dawn-cluster. None of the three says "Satan." That conclusion is theological inference made on top of a Latin translation choice — not exegesis of the Hebrew.

A wider note: the pride-and-fall pattern Isa 14 performs is a recognized prophetic genre, performed elsewhere over Edom (Oba 1:3-4), Tyre (Ezk 28:1-19), and Pharaoh (Ezk 32). Pattern-comparison of Isa 14:4-21 with Ezk 28:1-19 yields ~22% shared vocabulary — melek (H4428, "king"), yarad (H3381, "be brought down"), lev (H3824, "heart"), el (H410, "God"), avnei (H68, "stones"), har (H2022, "mountain"), shalakh (H7993, "be cast out"). The qinah-mashal genre is performed over mortal political entities. Reading Isa 14 as primarily a Satan-fall narrative requires reading against the genre, the literary frame, and the LXX's lexical choice.

V. Ezekiel 28 — A Cherub-Figure, but a Mortal King

Ezekiel 28 holds the second cluster of verses popularly read as a Satan-fall narrative. The chapter contains two oracles, not one, and the text identifies the addressee in both.

The first oracle (28:1-10) is addressed to negid Tzor (נְגִיד צֹר, H5057+H6865) — "prince of Tyre." The accusation: gavah libekha va-tomer ʼel ʼani (גָּבַהּ לִבְּךָ וַתֹּאמֶר אֵל אָנִי) — "Your heart is exalted and you said: I am God" (Ezk 28:2, MT). Within seven verses the answer comes without metaphor: ve-ʼatah ʼadam ve-loʼ ʼel (וְאַתָּה אָדָם וְלֹא־אֵל) — "And you are a man, and not God" (Ezk 28:9, MT). The word is ʼadam (H120), the same word for the human race in Genesis 2-3.

The second oracle (28:11-19) is a qinah (קִינָה, H7015, "lament") over melek Tzor (מֶלֶךְ צֹר, H4428+H6865) — "king of Tyre" (Ezk 28:12). It is the second oracle that supplies the Edenic vocabulary read as cosmic in some traditions — wisdom and beauty, the garden of God, precious stones, a covering cherub. A pattern-comparison of Ezk 28:12-19 with Gen 2:4-3:24 reveals 31 shared Hebrew terms (37% coverage of the Ezekiel passage), including ʼelohim (H430), ʼadam (H120), gan (גַּן, H1588, "garden"), ʿeden (עֵדֶן, H5731), kerub (כְּרוּב, H3742, "cherub"), hithallekta (הִתְהַלָּכְתָּ, "you walked about," H1980 hithpael — the same verb used of God walking in the garden, Gen 3:8), and several precious-stone names that re-appear in the priestly breastpiece (Exo 28:17-20). The cluster places the king of Tyre in a cosmic-priestly literary register, not a fallen-archangel narrative.

The MT and LXX of v.14 diverge in a way that further undercuts the angelic reading.

אַתְּ־כְּרוּב מִמְשַׁח הַסּוֹכֵךְ — "You are the anointed cherub who covers" — Ezekiel 28:14 (MT)

μετὰ τοῦ χερουβ ἔθηκά σε ἐν ὄρει ἁγίῳ θεοῦ — "With the cherub I placed you on the holy mountain of God" — Ezekiel 28:14 (LXX)

The MT identifies the king as the cherub-figure; the LXX places him beside one. Both readings address a mortal Tyrian king. The MT/LXX divergence does not collapse — it widens. Whichever reading is preferred, the addressee is the human king named in 28:12 and rebuked as ʼadam in 28:9.

The text performs a pride-and-fall qinah using cosmic-priestly imagery to indict a mortal political ruler. That is what Ezekiel does over Pharaoh in chapter 32 (cosmic-tree imagery in Ezk 31) and what Habakkuk does over Babylon in 2:6. The pattern is genuine, but its referents are kings. To extract a primordial Satan-fall narrative from Ezk 28 one must lift the imagery out of its frame and assign it a different speaker. The text does not invite that move.

VI. Luke 10:18 and Revelation 12 — When and Who?

Two NT passages remain. Both are sometimes read as confirming a primordial fall.

εἶπεν δὲ αὐτοῖς· ἐθεώρουν τὸν σατανᾶν ὡς ἀστραπὴν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πεσόντα — "And he said to them: I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning" — Luke 10:18 (TAGNT)

The verb is etheōroun (ἐθεώρουν, G2334, Luk 10:18, imperfect active indicative, 1st person singular) — "I was watching, I kept watching." Imperfect aspect: ongoing past action, not a single primordial moment. The context decides what Jesus is watching. Luke 10:17 has the seventy-two returning with the report that kai ta daimonia hupotassetai hēmin (καὶ τὰ δαιμόνια ὑποτάσσεται ἡμῖν) — "the demons submit to us in your name." Luke 10:19 has Jesus granting authority over ophea (G3789, "serpents") and scorpions. Luke 10:20 anchors the moment in heaven: "your names are written in heaven." Jesus is reading the demonic submission of v.17 as a real-time view of Satan's collapse — kingdom-inauguration language, not a flashback to Genesis. The verse is dated by its frame to the present mission of the seventy-two, not to a moment before Eden.

Revelation 12 is the largest scene of the Satan-figure's fall in the canon, and the text dates it by hymnal acclamation.

καὶ ἐβλήθη ὁ δράκων ὁ μέγας, ὁ ὄφις ὁ ἀρχαῖος, ὁ καλούμενος διάβολος καὶ ὁ Σατανᾶς ὁ πλανῶν τὴν οἰκουμένην ὅλην, ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν γῆν, καὶ οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐβλήθησαν — "And the great dragon was thrown — the ancient serpent, the one called the slanderer and the Satan, the one deceiving the whole world — was thrown to the earth, and his angels were thrown with him" — Revelation 12:9 (TAGNT)

Two verses later: arti egeneto hē sōtēria (ἄρτι ἐγένετο ἡ σωτηρία) — "Now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ" (Rev 12:10). The casting-down is dated by arti — "now". The chapter places the woman's male child as caught up to the throne (12:5) and the saints as conquering "by the blood of the Lamb" (12:11) — first-coming, not pre-Genesis. The dragon's angeloi (οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ, "his angels") fall with him — the ἄγγελος vocabulary tracks the Satan-figure consistently, never the demon-figure. Revelation 12 is a Christological-enthronement narrative cast in the imagery of cosmic conflict; it is not a memoir of pre-creation rebellion.

VII. Four Titles, One Being

Where the Satan-figure does receive multiple titles, the text fuses them in only two verses.

In Rev 12:9 the four titles are stacked in one apposition: ho drakōn ho megas, ho ophis ho archaios, ho kaloumenos diabolos kai ho Satanas — "the great dragon, the ancient serpent, the one called slanderer and Satan." The kaloumenos clause names the dragon-serpent as the same being who is called diabolos and Satanas elsewhere. One referent, four titles. The same convergence repeats verbatim at Rev 20:2.

Note the column that is missing. δαιμόνιον (G1140) is not in the convergence. It does not appear in Rev 12:9, does not appear in Rev 20:2, and does not co-occur with διάβολος anywhere in the NT (0 verses). The popular fusion welds five categories into one being; the text welds four into one and keeps δαιμόνιον on a different vocabulary track entirely.

VIII. The OT → LXX → NT Trajectory

The Satan-figure has a textual history. Tracing it explains how the popular conflation arose without justifying it.

The Hebrew satan (שָׂטָן, H7854) is a common noun: "adversary," "accuser." It occurs 27 times across 23 OT verses. In 17 of those occurrences (14× across Job 1-2; 3× across Zec 3) it carries the definite article: ha-satan — "the adversary." In Job 1:6 the figure is one among the bene ha-elohim, the divine council:

וַיָּבֹאוּ בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים לְהִתְיַצֵּב עַל־יְהוָה וַיָּבוֹא גַם־הַשָּׂטָן בְּתוֹכָם — "And the sons of God came to present themselves before YHWH, and the adversary also came among them" — Job 1:6 (MT)

The phrase bene ha-elohim / bene elohim (בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים, H1121+H430, "sons of God") occurs in five canonical verses — four article-bearing (Gen 6:2, 4; Job 1:6; Job 2:1) and one anarthrous (bene elohim without the article in Job 38:7). Job 38:7 names them as singing at creation. The grammatical preposition be-tokham (בְּתוֹכָם, "among them") locates ha-satan inside the council, not outside it. He is a council-internal prosecutorial figure.

The LXX reframes him in two strokes. The bene ha-elohim become hoi angeloi tou theou — "the angels of God" (LXX Job 1:6). And ha-satan becomes ho diabolos — "the slanderer" (LXX Job 1:6). The article-bearing common noun has begun its drift toward a proper name. By the NT, Σατανᾶς is treated as a proper name (the article is grammatically required for indeclinable proper names but no longer functions as a common-noun marker), and the figure is exclusively council-external. He has his "own angels" (Mat 25:41; Rev 12:7-9). He is no longer one prosecutor among many in the divine council; he is the singular adversary of the cosmos.

The Job heavenly-council scene is Part 1 territory; this study only flags the trajectory. What matters here is that the trajectory is textually traceable and that none of its stages requires fusing Satan with demons. Even at the council-external NT stage, the angels Satan brings with him are called his angels (οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ) — never his demons. The vocabulary discipline is preserved across the trajectory.

IX. What 1 Enoch Added — and What the Canon Withheld

The popular conflation has an ancestor, and it is not the Bible. It is 1 Enoch.

1 Enoch is a pseudepigraphal work, regarded as Scripture only by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The Watchers narrative (1 Enoch 6-16) supplies a richly imagined backstory for Genesis 6:1-4: 200 angels descend on Mount Hermon under the leader Semjaza, swear an oath, take human wives, teach forbidden arts (Azazel teaches metallurgy and warfare), and beget the giants. When the giants die, their disembodied spirits become demons (1 Enoch 15:8-9): "And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth." Here, in pseudepigraphal text — not in the canon — is the demons-as-Nephilim-spirits doctrine that the popular conflation often imports back into Scripture as if it were biblical.

The canon resists. Genesis 6 names the bene ha-elohim taking human wives (6:2, 4) and the nephilim (נְפִלִים, H5303) being on the earth in those days (Gen 6:4 — 3 occurrences across 2 verses, here and Num 13:33). It does not name the angels, does not give a count, does not specify a mountain, does not narrate the post-flood demonization of giant-spirits. The text reports what happened and what the consequences were (Gen 6:5-7). The mythology is added by the Second Temple authors.

That said, two NT passages presuppose the early Jewish reading of Genesis 6 as an angelic transgression. 2 Peter 2:4-5 speaks of the angels who sinned in immediate sequence with Noah and the flood. Jude 6 describes angels who did not keep their own ʼarchē (G746, "domain, proper place") and abandoned their proper oikētērion (G3613, "dwelling"). The vocabulary echoes the Watchers tradition. Codex Alexandrinus at Gen 6:2 even reads ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ for bene ha-elohim, attesting that early Greek-speaking Jews read those figures as angelic. The bound-angels tradition is therefore canonical and resonates with the Watchers tradition — the canon affirms the angelic-rebellion category 2 Pe 2:4 and Jud 6 describe, even as it withholds the further leap to demons-as-Nephilim-spirits.

Jude does quote 1 Enoch — but quotes 1 Enoch 1:9, the Lord-coming-with-myriads passage (Jud 14-15), not 1 Enoch 15's demons-as-spirits passage. Jude's use of 1 Enoch is selective and bounded; it does not canonize the Watchers cosmology entire. Tertullian thought 1 Enoch was Scripture; Augustine did not. The canonical tradition settled with Augustine. The pseudepigraphal sources are valuable historical witnesses to what Second Temple Jews believed; they are not the standard the article uses to read Genesis 6 or to identify what demons are. (For the LXX shift that produced the NT word δαιμόνιον from MT shed / saʿir, see Part 2 of this series.)

X. Why This Matters

The careful reader gains four things from holding these streams apart.

First, exegetical honesty. Verses are read in their literary frames. Isaiah 14 is a taunt over the king of Babylon; Ezekiel 28 is a qinah over the king of Tyre; Luke 10:18 is a kingdom-inauguration vision; Revelation 12 is a Christological enthronement scene. Forcing a primordial-Satan-fall reading onto these passages overrides what the text itself frames. Reading the text on its own terms preserves both its specific historical reference and its larger pride-and-fall pattern.

Second, doctrinal precision. The bound-angels tradition — that some angels sinned, are kept in chains under gloom, and await judgment — is canonical (2 Pe 2:4; Jud 6; cf. 1 Co 6:3 "do you not know that we shall judge angels?"). It does not require fusion with demons to be true. The demons of the Gospels are mobile, possessing spirits that fear the abyss as a future destination (Luk 8:31; Mat 8:29 pro kairou, "before the time"). They are not interchangeable categories.

Third, the futurist horizon is sharpened. Eschatological geography is multi-stage. Demons fear the abyss (a future confinement they have not yet entered). Satan is bound in the abyss for a thousand years (Rev 20:1-3), then released, then thrown into the lake of fire. The bound angels are reserved in Tartarus for the day of judgment (2 Pe 2:4). The lake of fire is the final destination of the dragon, the beast, the false prophet, Death and Hades. These places are not synonyms; they sequence a real eschatological program. Reading them as one place flattens what the text spaces out.

Fourth, the Bible's fifth and sixth registers come into view. Daniel 10 names sar malkut Paras (שַׂר מַלְכוּת פָּרַס, "the prince of the kingdom of Persia," Dan 10:13) and Michael as "one of the chief princes" — territorial princely powers, neither demons nor fallen angels nor Satan. Ephesians 6:12 names archas (G746), exousias (G1849), kosmokratoras (G2888, NT hapax), and pneumatika tēs ponērias — "principalities, authorities, world-rulers of this darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" — a fourth or fifth register of cosmic power. The text uses more vocabulary than the popular fusion does, not fewer. Lexical discipline opens the canon's actual taxonomy; the conflation collapses it.

XI. The Future Horizon

Most of the events the text names are not finished. Satan's millennial binding (Rev 20:1-3), his subsequent release (Rev 20:7), the lake of fire (Rev 20:10, 14, 15), and the saints' judgment of fallen angels (1 Co 6:3) are ahead of the church, not behind it. The Olivet Discourse names a generation that will see the abomination, the great tribulation, and the gathering of the elect "from the four winds" (Mat 24:31) — and that generation walks through the unfinished portions of the texts examined here. The dragon thrown to earth in Rev 12:9 "knows that he has little time" (Rev 12:12); his angels — not his demons — are with him. The reader who keeps these vocabularies apart now will read the future texts more carefully when the time comes.

XII. What the Text Says

Direct statements of the canon, distinguishable from inference:

• Demons (δαιμόνιον) and angels (ἄγγελος) never occupy the same NT verse, the same NT pericope, or the same embedding-space neighborhood. (Direct, three witnesses.)
• Some angels sinned and are kept in chains in Tartarus / under gloom for the day of judgment. (Direct — 2 Pe 2:4; Jud 6.)
• Demons are mobile, possessing, fear the abyss as a future destination, and submit to the name of Jesus. (Direct — Mrk 5:1-13; Luk 8:26-39; 10:17.)
• The dragon, the ancient serpent, the slanderer (διάβολος), and the Satan (Σατανᾶς) are four titles of one being. (Direct — Rev 12:9; 20:2.)
• Satan has his own angels (οἱ ἄγγελοι αὐτοῦ); the NT never calls them his demons. (Direct — Mat 25:41; Rev 12:7-9.)
• Helel (Isa 14:12) is a hapax used of the king of Babylon; LXX renders it ἑωσφόρος, "morning star." (Direct — Isa 14:4, 12, 16; LXX Isa 14:12.)
• Both Ezekiel 28 oracles are addressed to mortal Tyrian rulers — explicitly named adam ve-loʼ ʼel, "a man, and not God" (Ezk 28:9). (Direct.)

What requires inference:

• That some angels' rebellion is the same event Genesis 6:1-4 describes. (Probable — 2 Pe 2:4-5 places "angels who sinned" immediately before Noah and the flood; Jud 6 echoes Watchers vocabulary; Codex Alexandrinus reads ἄγγελοι at Gen 6:2.)
• That Luke 10:18's vision is best read as kingdom-inauguration commentary on the seventy-two's mission, not as a primordial fall. (Strong inference from Luk 10:17-20 frame.)
• That Revelation 12 is dated to Christ's enthronement rather than to a pre-Genesis event. (Strong inference from Rev 12:5, 10-11.)

What 1 Enoch adds beyond the canon — names of angels (Semjaza, Azazel), Mount Hermon, the demons-as-Nephilim-spirits doctrine, the count of 200 — is pseudepigraphal commentary, valuable as a historical witness to Second Temple belief, not Scripture.

The text gives four distinct lexical streams, plus the principalities and territorial princes that make up a fifth register. The careful reader keeps them apart.