Angels, Part 2: Census Information. Please Specify Cherub, Seraph, or Other.

From the Mailbag (in two places) and my archives (in one):

My daddy and I were just talking about angels. He was telling me that there were originally 6 archangels, each with 6 wings, four faces, and eyes all around. The faces were that of four animals, but he couldn’t remember which ones. I don’t know where he was getting this from, so I can’t look it up — which also means I don’t know in what context it was written. (One of them might have been an eagle.) Then Lucifer and another archangel Fell, leaving four.

And this:

Are there any writings that speculate on the number of angels?

And this:

Are there Biblical texts that talk about angels, or is this all tradition?

Nobody can resist a mystery, and angels in the scriptural texts are mysterious.Raphael’s Angels: Not Nearly Bad-Ass Enough.

A lot of this is hidden in history. Christian “angelology” comes from Jewish sources (apparently Jewish mystical sources). There are more or less “indigenous” angels such as the cherub and seraph (which appear, by the way, in other Eastern theological systems such as the Egyptian and Babylonian) in the Old Testament, obviously, and mentions of “messengers,” which is a pretty mysterious word in the contexts it’s usually used in. So there’s no doubt that the texts have some extremely mysterious references to “angels.”

Adding to the mystery is a lot of bad translation: for example, translators uneasy with the phrase “sons of God” in Genesis 6 and Job 1 sometimes render it “angels.” Psalm 78 refers to “evil angels,” which in the Hebrew is actually more like “angels [messengers] of evil.” 

No, Seriously? Lilies? And in writing of angels some of the authors borrowed from one another: The Seven angels of Revelation are a pretty clear reference to the Book of Tobit’s seven chief angels.

But it seems lots of our understandings about angels are borrowed. 

Best guess: there are strong similarities between Jewish / Christian angelology / demonology and that of Zoroastrianism, and it’s very often thought that contact with Persian religion before the birth of Christ left this particular imprint on Judaism. For example, it seems to be about this point that the passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel (addressed to the King of Babylon and the King of Tyre, respectively) come to be applied to a character called “Satan.”Satan, Sin, and Death, by William Blake, Who Did Everything Bad-Ass

(Not that I’m saying we got “Satan” entirely from Persia: he’s a clear character in the book of Job, for instance, which predates contact with Persia. But if you read that book and set aside what we possibly DID get from Persia, e.g., the belief that Satan is a fallen angel of some sort, it’s a much more mysterious appearance.)

Anyway, what I’ve written above is the way most scholars read the evidence: but most of the good ones are very tentative in this portrait because the evidence is hardly conclusive. The Wikipedia article points out that Judaism could’ve influenced Persia, but I find that somewhat unlikely just based on the Zoroastrian theology.

The Persian religion of Mazda (yeah, zoom-zoom) seems to have had an angel / spirit / daemon / genie for about everything. These were beings whom God emanated for his own purposes, and Jewish mysticism seems to have absorbed it into some of the literature, and even more lastingly, into the interpretations of its own scripture, the Old Testament.

Anyway, whatever the soup of influences and cross-influences, if you want to read about them from the horse’s mouth, there are a few places you should go:

Pseudo-Dionysius the Apreopagite’s Celestial Hierarchy (5th century) seems to be the starting point. (I can’t find it on the web, but here’s the Wikipedia article, which is surprisingly not bad: browse the links and they’re extremely well filled out.) He’s writing in a time when Christians were fascinated by the supernatural and the far out: lots of the Marian legends take root in this time, as do rather doubtful stories about the Lord. It was remarkably like the present day that way, with our “Left Behind Series,” fiction bleeding over into devotion and theology.William Blake’s Angel: Total Bad-Ass

In the Middle Ages, lots of commentaries on works from this period gave us the sort of angelology that you’re referring to. The Jewish philosopher Maimonides added his two cents, which many medieval angelologists read and replied to.

All this gets sifted into the modern / post-modern popular works on angels, often with a dose of New Age subjectivity.

Beelzebulb is a CHERUB?!?  That really messes with my head!

Well, of course, you could just fall back on the belief that “It’s just the traditions of men,” but of course, the traditions of men and the scriptures are incredibly tightly tangled when it comes to these things.Get Your Goat: One For Azazel

I think the fascinating one is the demon of the desert, whom the Israelites are commanded to placate in the Torah: one goat for Yahweh, one goat for Azazel.

Let’s hear a rousing mystified cheer for the Book of Enoch. cited in Jude, canonical for the Copts and Ethiopian orthodox churches, and one weird ball of cat-hair.

Comments

[Jennifer in AZ]

Thanks for this information about angels. I must agree that many times their depictions in art seem sadly wimpy, IMO. I mean, really, would Raphael's angels scare anyone? If they look like that there would be no reason for them to tell people not to be afraid.

[~mouse]

I think the Book of Enoch is so interesting....