By Emilio Mejill & Cristina Roman
Throughout most of history, our collective view of the angels presented by Christianity has hardly changed. These beings have been depicted as humanoids with wings ever since the beginning of the third century, but it wasn’t until the Renaissance era that one of the first paintings of these solidified how we visualize them.
The word “angel” comes from the Greek “ángelos”, meaning “messenger”. This definition fueled the decision of artists like Jan van Eyck and Peter Paul Rubens to depict these beings like this: essentially, humans with wings. And while they were successful at selling this version of Christian angels to the world, it is a surprisingly inaccurate one when compared to the original, biblical description of angels in the Bible.
Because the Bible has many angels with distinct functions and looks, Christian writers and philosophers came up with a host of classifications to sort them out, which resulted in the most famous classification, “three spheres”, popularized by Dionysius the Areopagite (supposedly). Although not the scope of this article, this concept can help us simplify angels as falling into either human-like or nonhuman-like categories. Let us examine the human-like angels first.
These human-like angels are the angels we regularly picture in our minds and the ones we see in paintings, such as Verrochio’s The Baptism of Christ and Bouguereau’s The Song of the Angels. What else do you imagine except pure perfection? But while ethereal, human-like angels play diverse roles in and out of heaven. They range from simple messengers to full blown warriors. Here are two examples:
Six months after Elizabeth knew she was to become a mother, Gabriel was sent from God to Nazareth. (Luke 1: 26)
Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon,…(Revelation 12:7)
As the verses show, angels travel down to Earth to deliver God’s word, or they can take up arms and fight the forces of evil. Also, angels have names! Gabriel and Michael are the most famous. Curiously Raphael is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible; instead we find that name in an apocryphal book titled The Book of Enoch, alongside a whole bunch more such as Uriel, Samyaza, Araqiel, and others. The one angel that has more than one name is Satan. Lucifer, the devil, the dragon, the snake, the beast, just to name a few, all point to the same angel, the challenger to God’s rule and the cause of sin.
Before moving on, it would be nice to mention that while angels seem peaceful, due in large part by their beautiful and divine features, they can easily take lives. For example, 2 Kings 19:35 say:
That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.
So, don’t for a second think angels are pushovers!
Now on to nonhuman-like angels…
This is where the fun begins. Divided into seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, angels of this type are the stuff of mythology. The books of Isaiah and Ezekiel offer the descriptions. First the seraphim:
Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isaiah 6: 2-3)
Now the cherubim:
…,and in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings,… (Ezekiel 1: 5-8)
Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. (Ezekiel 1: 10)
And finally the thrones:
As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around. (Ezekiel 1: 15-18)
As described, our depiction of angels as a whole has been essentially flawed for at least five centuries. The view of these only being winged, humanoid beings can be very much debunked by the Bible itself, which provides an entire roster of angels most know nothing about. This ranges from human-like entities up to what can be best described as almost mythological beings that are near to unfathomable to the human mind.
The Bible provides extensive descriptions of angels, divided into groups and roles that differ not only from their unimaginable looks, but to their roles up in heaven. While it is of course much easier to visualize angels like Verrochio and Bouguereau intended us (or wanted us) to, it isn’t a correct or biblically accurate depiction of what these beings truly are. Knowing what the angels really look like (according to the most veritable source—that being, of course, the Bible) can help us understand the scope of what they fully represent and are meant to depict.