The Latin superstitio and its earlier Greek equivalent deisidaimonia both began their career as neutral or positive terms. Deisi could mean fear, but also “awe” or “respect,” and daimones could be gods, goddesses, semi-divinities, or any other kind of superhuman being, regardless of their good or evil intentions. Hence, deisidaimonia could mean an appropriate awe or respect for the gods (for example, the apostle Paul respectfully addressed the Athenians as deisidaimones in Acts 17:22). However, as pointed out by Dale Martin, it was turned into a negative term in the context of a new and revolutionary concept introduced by Plato and Aristotle, who “taught that the ontological hierarchy of nature was matched by an ethical hierarchy: beings who were superior in nature and power were assumed to be superior ethically.” Based upon this axiom, the gods were good and benevolent by definition, and there could not be any reason to be afraid of them. Thinking otherwise was a clear sign of ignorance. It was from this perspective that the term deisidaimonia came to be used by the later philosophical elite (from the fourth century bc on) as a term of disdain for popular and irrational beliefs about harmful deities, and the various cultic practices based upon misguided fear of the gods. The early locus classicus for “superstition” in this sense is Theophrast’s amusing sketch of “The Superstitious Man” (fourth century bc). However, cracks in the philosophical concept of a matching ontological and ethical hierarchy had begun to appear by the beginning of the Common Era, as philosophers began to doubt whether daimones were really all good and benevolent; and in their polemics against pagan intellectuals, Christians turned the tables on their pagan opponents by arguing that the so-called gods were actually evil demons. Hence the notion of deisidaimonia as “fear of demons” became firmly enshrined in Christian thinking.
– Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (2012), p. 159