Angels! Those cute little winged babies in Renaissance paintings! Those gender-fluid humans adorning the tops of Christmas trees! Those charming stars of Good Omens! They’re totally accurate to how angels appeared the Bible right?
Right … ?
“Be not afraid?” I am VERY afraid. I was surfing the Internet the other day and I found some images for “Biblically accurate angels” that are anything BUT angelic! Flaming wheels covered in eyes! Four-headed feathered monstrosities! What in heaven’s name is going on!? Where did all this divine horror come from? Now I know why the Bible has angels saying “be not afraid” before appearing to those shepherds to announce the birth of Jesus. These dudes are TERRIFYING.
But where did this idea of “Biblically accurate angels” come from? For that we must turn to the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible. The story goes that this prophet Ezekiel was chilling by the Kebar River when BAM—God smacks him in the face with a vision of “heavenly creatures.” The author of the Book of Ezekiel describes two different sorts of “heavenly creatures.” One sort, he describes as having four heads facing the four cardinal directions—the head of a lion, eagle, ox, and man. These creatures also have four wings, and their many heads grow from a single body that ends in one foot. And when they fly, they don’t turn. Why? They don’t need to! They look in every direction at once! Freaky!
Meanwhile, surrounding the chariot of God are these burning wheel-looking things that shine with gemstone-like brilliance. And these wheels are covered in freaky eyes! And after that, Ezekiel hears the the voice of God speaking. These flying dudes have got to be angels, right? Announcing Old Testament God’s dramatic entrance? According to early Christian scholars, that’s a yes.
There was a dude named Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite who lived in the 5th or 6th century and had a bit of an obsession with angels. He wrote a book called De Coelesti Hierarchia (“The Celestial Hierarchy”) that categorized angels into nine distinct types, or “choirs”: Angels, Archangels, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and finally, Seraphim. I’m not gonna get into all the various distinctions of angels, but the “heavenly creatures” described in the Book of Ezekiel fall into the Cherubim and Thrones categories respectively.
The Cherubim are the four-faced, four-winged beings that float around on one leg. They are one of the highest ranking choirs of angels, second only to the Seraphim, who sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” around the throne of God. The Thrones (also known as Ophanim) are the burning wheels covered in eyes, and are ranked one degree lower than the Cherubim. The Ophanim, Cherubim, and Seraphim were thought to be the holiest and most powerful of angels, and were consequently the least humanlike. Medieval religious scholars were equally obsessed with the denizens of heaven, and quickly accepted this categorization as dogma.
So they’re angels. Case closed, right?
While the Thrones and Cherubim were categorized as angels in the centuries after the Bible was written, calling these angels “Biblically accurate” is not accurate whatsoever. Throughout the Bible, angels are referred to as “malakim,” a word meaning “messengers.” It’s a job title, and not a type of creature. In fact, the word “angel” derives from the Greek word “angelos,” which means “messenger,” as well. Both human and divine beings are referred to as “malakim” throughout the Bible. However, divine messengers bearing this title are described in a very particular, very human way. Heavenly “malakim,” or “angels,” are depicted in the Bible as male-presenting humans. How boring, right? A “biblically accurate” angel in this case would look like a dude—a regular dude. As for the “heavenly creatures” covered in wings and eyes from Ezekiel? They are never referred to as “malakim,” meaning that the authors of the Bible did not consider them angels at all, but rather, a different sort of heavenly denizen.
So where did the confusion come from?
From Pseudo-Dyonisus, who else? He reasoned that all of heaven’s denizens are “messengers” or “malakim” because they all must operate under the instructions of God. The angels in the highest choir of angels (seraphim, cherubim, and thrones) receive direct messages from God. Those angels then pass those messages down the divine chain to the middle choir (powers, virtues, dominions), who then pass those instructions down to the lowest choir (principalities, archangels, angels). The Cherubim and Thrones in Ezekiel are only angels from a Pseudo-Dyonisian perspective, not a biblical one. Bummer, because burning wheels covered in eyes are way cooler than regular dudes.
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