Angels-ANGELOS

The word angelos, from which we derive angel, is a Greek word
meaning “messenger.” Because many communities of Jews were scattered
outside the holy land around the second century B.C., it was
decided to translate Hebrew Scriptures into the universal language of
the day, which—primarily as a result of Alexander the Great’s conquest
of the eastern Mediterranean some centuries before—was
Greek. The Hebrew word for angel is malakh, meaning “heavenly
messenger” (basically the same as mala’ika, the Islamic term for
angel). Translators seem to have considered both angelos, which
refers to rather ordinary messengers, and daimon, which refers to a
peculiarly Greek guardian spirit that could influence the individual
for good or for bad. Because of the complexity of the notion of daimon,
translators chose to use angelos, and the name stuck. The word
daimon, however, lost its positive connotations and became the root
of the English term demon.