The information about angels provided by the writings in the Old and New Testaments is very scanty. We know much more about specific acts that they have performed throughout history (e.g., rescuing Lot from Sodom, announcing the birth and resurrection of Jesus) than we know about exactly what they look like, how they function, and what they do with their time when they are not rescuing people and giving announcements.
It would appear that God did not find it important to fill us in on these details, perhaps for very good reasons of His own—which we may not be able to understand with our human minds. But that has not prevented mankind from being extremely curious about such details.
And from the history of religious speculation, it would appear that it has not prevented many writers from rushing in to fill the gap in our
knowledge. Since long before the time when Jesus lived on the Earth, religious authors have collected, and written about … and sometimes perhaps invented out of their own fertile imaginations … stories, legends, myths, and speculations about the goings-on in the supernatural realm. The separate article The separate article The separate article The separate article
Biblical Angelology Biblical Angelology Biblical Angelology Biblical Angelology
provides provides provides provides an overview of what we can clearly know about angels with the an overview of what we can clearly know about angels with the an overview of what we can clearly know about angels with the an overview of what we can clearly know about angels with the Bible as our sole source of inforBible as our sole source of infor Bible as our sole source of infor
Bible as our sole source of information.mation.mation. mation.
The collection of short articles below gives a brief overview of the nature of some of the sources of extraextraextraextra----biblicalbiblicalbiblicalbiblical angelologyangelologyangelologyangelology.
The Canon of the Bible The Canon of the Bible The Canon of the Bible The Canon of the Bible
The Biblical canonBiblical canonBiblical canonBiblical canon is an exclusive list of books written during the formative period of the Jewish or Christian faiths; the leaders of these communities believed these books to be inspired by God or to express the authoritative history of the relationship between God and his people (although there may have been secondary considerations as well).
There are differences between Christians and Jews, as well as between different Christian traditions, over which books meet the standards for canonization. The different criteria for, and the process of, canonization for each community dictates what members of that community consider to be their Bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
The word
canon
itself is derived from a Greek word that implies a“measuring rod.” The underlying idea of the term is that the validityvalidityvalidityvalidity and valuevaluevaluevalue of any information, any other writings, any interpretation of religious ideas must be “measured” against a fixed standard. A simple analogy would be the measuring sticks at the entrance to certain rides at
many amusement parks. A child who wants to go on the ride must stand next to the stick and see if he “measures up” to being tall enough for the ride.
In the religious sense, the measuring standard is the truth revealed in the collection of books that have been historically accepted as having been inspired by God. Any new idea or new writing is measured against that unchanging standard to see if it has merit. Even if it does “measure up,” that does not mean that it becomes a part of that canon. Both Jewish and Christian Biblical canons are considered “closed canons” … it is believed that God guided the collection and establishment of the canon, with the intent that it provide a permanent, unchanging standard for all time.
Since at least 100 AD or so, the Jews have accepted the 39 documents that make up the collection of writings labeled the Old Testament in Christian Bibles as being their canon of scripture. The Jewish term for the collection is the
Tanakh
. Tanakh is an acronym (TNK) for the first letters of the three sections into which they divide the collection: T forTorah
, the first five books, containing “the Law”; N forNeviim
, the Hebrew word for the books of the Prophets; and K forKetuvim
, the Hebrew word for the other “Writings.” Although they may find other documents of historical interest or as having useful speculation on religious topics, only those 39 documents are accepted as having unquestioned divine approval.Most Protestant churches accept as their scriptural canon both the documents of the Tanakh, and the 27 documents that make up the New Testament in the King James Version of the Bible and in most modern translations.
In addition to the 66 documents mentioned, there is a set of 16 documents (usually labeled
The Apocrypha
) that were written betweenthe time of the prophet Malachi (author of the final book of the Old Testament) and the time of Jesus. Even though these documents were evidently written by devout Jews, and are not in any sense Christian documents, the Jews rejected their inclusion in the canon of the Tanakh. The Roman Catholic Church has accepted 10 of these as part of their own canon of scripture. They refer to this collection of ten as the deuterocanonical books—meaning the “second” canon. This indicates their admission that these books were not part of the original Jewish canon, and derive their credibility as inspired from the decision of the Roman Catholic Church to declare them as inspired. The Greek Orthodox Church accepts 14 of the documents of The Aprocrypha into their own canon, and the Russian Orthodox Church accepts a slightly different 14.
Extra Extra Extra
Extra----Canonical Jewish and Christian Writings Canonical Jewish and Christian Writings Canonical Jewish and Christian Writings Canonical Jewish and Christian Writings
The term
extra-canonical
(“outside the canon”) is an adjective describing ancient religious writings that cover some of the same topics and history covered by the books of the Jewish or Christian Bible, but which are not part ofnot part ofnot part ofnot part of the collection of documents making up the scriptural canon of Judaism or Christianity.The “closed canon” of the Jewish and Christian Bibles means that the amount of information considered authoritativeauthoritativeauthoritativeauthoritative that is available on topics of religious interest is very limited. And yet almost every bit of the information we do have in the canonical writings leads to curiosity and questions … for which there are no clear answers provided within those writings. Examples:
Where did Cain and Seth get their wives, if everyone descended from Adam and Eve? The logical conclusion is that they married their own sisters, but the Bible doesn’t say that in so many words. This has led some to speculate that perhaps the wording of the Bible that indicates
God didn’t “create from scratch” any other people than Adam and Eve is misleading, and that outside the Garden of Eden there were many races of people.
What happened to the people of the tribes of the northern Kingdom of Israel after they were taken into captivity by Assyria in the 8th Century BC? The Bible doesn’t say. This has led some people to speculate, for various reasons (also not authoritatively discussed in the Bible) that they migrated by their tribes to areas of northern and western Europe, and became the progenitors of the people in nations such as France and England.
What happened to the Apostles after the time in the Book of Acts where the main attention is given to the ministry of the Apostle Paul?
The Bible doesn’t say. This has led to many legends and myths (and possibly some actual history) about the travels of various individuals and pairs of them to parts of the known world.
What is heaven really like? Is it a physical place in the universe, or a reality in a different dimension? Are the few descriptions of heaven we read in the Bible, particularly in the Book of Revelation, to be taken as literal, or are they merely symbolism for some deeper spiritual concept we can’t even begin to comprehend?
Curiosity and questions like these have been rampant since long before the time of Christ. And wherever there has been curiosity, there have usually been enthusiastic authors ready to respond to that curiosity with written answers. Those answers may have been developed from oral legends and myths. They may have been presented as being the result of visions from God. And in far too many cases, they may have been fanciful speculations from the fertile imagination of the author, presented as solid facts.
A large selection of manuscripts of this sort were circulating in the centuries just before and after the time of Christ. And to this day, many bookstores have translations of the most enduringly appealing of them.
Sometimes collections of some of them are labeled “Lost Books of the Bible,” although this is a misleading designation. The implication is that they were, once upon a time, considered part of the “canon of scripture” of either or both the Jews and Christians, and that somehow they were then strangely lost—or perhaps deliberately suppressed by religious leaders. Both of these implications are erroneous. It is known what documents were part of the Jewish canon at the time of Christ, and they are the same ones that are in the Jewish Bible, the
Tanakh
, now. There was considerable interest at the time, within Jewish scholarly circles, in some of the extra-canonical books that were written after the last of the books of the Tanakh. But there is no record that there was ever any serious consideration that they should have somehow been included in the official canon.There are many records from the earliest years of Christianity showing which documents were commonly considered inspired by Christian believers of the first two centuries, and with a very few exceptions that remained under dispute in some areas of the world, they are the same ones as those currently in the New Testaments of today. The canon was completely settled in most places by at least the fourth century AD. The few debatable documents that finally were rejected as part of that canon are well-known and were never lost—or suppressed, although perhaps most people without an interest in ancient literature may have been unaware of them.
It is not necessarily that any or all of these documents are without value to the serious student of both history and the Bible. In a few cases they may provide valuable and fairly reliable historical information about the time in which they were written. (The primary example of this is the First Book of Maccabees from The Apocrypha.) In other cases, they
give a fascinating view of the legends and myths that were accepted by some as being plausible. And in still other cases, they provide an overview of what some minority sects of the Jewish or Christian religions held as doctrine, and insight into the course of the development of certain theological ideas. Unfortunately, a significant percentage of Christians in recent decades have become fascinated, and at times even obsessed, with the highly fanciful and speculative content of many of these writings, and failed to ground their enthusiasm solidly in the canonical scriptures so that they can “separate the wheat from the chaff.” The result at times has been the acceptance and promotion of some very aberrant doctrinal positions that are incompatible with the Bible, and only supported by this extra-biblical material.
One of the major areas of doctrine that is addressed very little in the Bible, but elaborated to a great extent in many of the extra-biblical writings, is that of
angelology
. Many of the theories and speculation and elaboration of both Jewish and Christian theologians over the centuries about what the angelic world is like have been based not on the Bible, which provides so little information on the topic, but on material gleaned from the extra-canonical writings.There are four main categories of extra-canonical writings which are typically of interest to Bible students:
Apocalypses
,The Apocrypha
andapocryphal writings
, theOld Testament Pseudepigrapha
, and theNew
Testament Pseudepigrapha.
B.C. to A.D. 150 marked by pseudonymity, symbolic imagery, and the expectation of an imminent cosmic cataclysm in whichGod destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the righteous to life in a messianic kingdom. (Etymology: … from Greek
apokalypsis,
fromapokalyptein
to uncover)http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/apocalypse
An
apocalypse
is a document that purports to “reveal” a detailed look at the future when God will once again openly intervene in the affairs of mankind on Earth as He did in ancient times. The official term “The Apocalypse” is reserved in Christian circles as a designation of the last book of the Christian Bible, what is usually called theBook of Revelation
. That book begins with the sentence, “The revelation [apokalypsis] of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.”The word has even made its way into secular writing as a synonym for
“the end of the world as we know it,” in circumstances that have nothing to do with religious belief. Any scenario which seems similar to the massive destruction described in the Book of Revelation, which might be caused by totally non-supernatural circumstances such as nuclear war, or a collision of Earth with a huge asteroid, may be referred to as “apocalyptic.” Science fiction writers have often used such a scenario for either apocalyptic (during the disaster) or “post-apocalyptic” (in the aftermath, short or long, of the disaster) stories and films. An example of the former would include
War of the Worlds
, and the latter thePlanet of the Apes
movies.For a detailed overview and summary of many of the documents of the centuries just before and after the time of Christ which are designated as apocalyptic writings, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptic_literature
When the Jewish people came back from exile in Babylon in the 5th Century BC, and rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple, there were high expectations that the earthly kingdom of the Messiah would be inaugurated soon. When their hopes failed to materialized, and the ancient prophecies of the prophetic writings of the Tanakh, such as the Book of Daniel, did not come to pass on the expected time table, speculation arose that some series of cataclysmic events would eventually usher in the era of fulfillment. And a whole genre of writing arose in which authors purported to provide the details of such a scenario. None of these were ever accepted by the Jewish religious leaders as being authoritative and inspired by God, and thus none ever made it into the “Old Testament canon.”
Likewise, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, many of his followers expected that He would return in a short time to set up an earthly kingdom, or perhaps whisk them off to heaven and destroy the Earth. As the decades passed and it became obvious that this was not going to happen immediately, another genre of apocalyptic writings arose, purporting to give the details of what must come to pass before the Christian Millennial hopes could be realized. They had much in common with the Jewish apocalyptic writings, and often used some of the same symbolism and stylistic elements. Although many of these writings may have excited some readers at the time, only the Book of Revelation, thought to have been written by the Apostle John, was eventually accepted by the religious leaders of the time as being an inspired, authentic revelation from God Himself.
Apocrypha Apocrypha Apocrypha Apocrypha
The English word
apocrypha
is derived from the Greek wordapokryphos,
meaning obscure or hidden. In general use,apocryphal
isan adjective indicating that a document or a statement is of doubtful authenticity. However, when the word is capitalized, as
The Apocrypha
, it is a technical reference to a specific collection of religious documents that were written before the time of Christ, and relate to the history of the Jews, but are not accepted by the Jewish authorities as being part of the canon of the Tanakh. They are also not accepted by most Protestant groups as part of the Bible. But the Roman Catholic and various Orthodox Churches each accept most of them as being part of inspired scripture. In Bibles used by these religious groups, they may be inserted between the Old Testament and the New Testament, in an appendix at the end of the Bible, or in some cases, interspersed throughout parts of the Old Testament. They are sometimes referred to as “intertestamental books” as they primarily cover events believed to have happened after the last events recorded in the Old Testament and before the events of the New Testament. The following chart of the books of The Apocrypha included in some Bibles is fromhttp://gbgm-umc.org/UMW/Bible/apocot.stm
1. Books & Additions to Esther in the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Slavonic Bibles
· Tobit
· Judith
· Additions to the Book of Esther
· Wisdom of Solomon
· Ecclesiasticus (
or the Wisdom of Jesus, Son or Sirach
)· Baruch
· The Letter of Jeremiah (
Baruch ch. 6
)· The Additions to the Greek Book of Daniel: