Why Actual Biblical Angels Are Creepy, Beastly, and Hardly Angelic

Close to­ly 70 per­cent of Amer­i­cans imagine in angels, at the least accord­ing to a sta­tis­tic usually cit­ed in recent times. However what, actual­ly, involves their minds — or these of any oth­er believ­ers around the globe — after they imag­ine one? Per­son­al con­cep­tions could differ, after all, however we will be honest­ly cer­tain of 1 factor: most of them will bear no resem­blance to the angels actu­al­ly described within the Bible. Right here to present us a way of their seem­ance is Tom­mie Trelawny, cre­ator of the YouTube chan­nel Hochela­ga, whose video above explains “Why Bible Accu­fee Angels Are So Creepy.”

Removed from the winged, white-robed embod­i­ments of gen­tle­ness we would know from greet­ing playing cards, says Trelawny, the angels of the Bible, and specif­i­cal­ly the Previous Tes­ta­ment, are “hor­ri­fy­ing abom­i­na­tions” who could be extra at dwelling in an H. P. Love­craft nov­el. Angel, from the Greek ange­los, which itself comes from the Hebrew mal’akh, means “mes­sen­ger.” That means an innocu­ous-enough set of duties, however then, you might recall the sto­ry of Passover, with its angel who slaugh­tered the Egyp­tians’ first-born sons; or the angel who “struck 70,000 Israelites to dying”; or the angel who “sin­gle­hand­ed­ly killed 185,000 Assyr­i­an sol­diers in a single evening.”

The Bible does­n’t say any­factor about these angels hav­ing wings. “In actual fact, they seem like any ordi­nary per­son,” as do even probably the most well-known examination­ples like Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael. Within the grand heav­en­ly scheme of issues, such humanoid angels, or Malakh, don’t rank par­tic­u­lar­ly excessive. Nonetheless, they’re one rung above the Cheru­bim, who turn into much less like Cupid and extra like “the parable­i­cal beasts of historic Mesopotamia, espe­cial­ly the Child­lon­ian Lamas­su, which has the wings of an eagle, the physique of a lion, and the pinnacle of a king” — with a more-than-pass­ing resem­blance to the Egypt­ian sphinx or the Hit­tite grif­fin. Even the pop­u­lar picture of the pudgy, fly­ing cherub, which emerged a lot lat­er, appears to have been import­ed from Greek and Roman myths.

Ranked above the Malakh are the six-winged Seraphim, or “burn­ing ones.” The ori­gins of those “care­tak­ers of God’s throne” are sug­gest­ed by the Hebrew phrase Saraph, imply­ing “a ven­omous ser­pent within the desert,” very similar to the cobra whose picture adorned the pinnacle of the Egypt­ian pharaoh. As for the Ophan­im, it’s any­one’s guess the place they arrive from. Tak­ing the type of a wheel with­in a wheel float­ing within the sky, its rims lined with eyes, an Ophan would make for an intim­i­dat­ing sight certainly: per­haps a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the wheels of God’s char­i­ot, per­haps the results of “the prophet ingest­ing a psy­che­del­ic plant,” and per­haps — accord­ing to a fringe the­o­ry — vis­i­ta­tion by an area­craft. What­ev­er the evi­dence for these expla­na­tions, it’s secure to say they’re not fairly as com­fort­ing as all these placid celes­tial harpists.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Our Depic­tion of Jesus Modified Over 2,000 Years and What He Might Have Actu­al­ly Seemed Like

The Ori­gins of Devil: The Evo­lu­tion of the Dev­il in Reli­gion

Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Satan’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Man­u­script within the World

Chris­tian­i­ty Via Its Scrip­tures: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty

Angels & Demons: The Sci­ence Revealed

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.