Angels-JUDAISM

Angels in the traditional sense are prevalent in
the great monotheisms: Zoroastrianism,
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In these
faiths, God is such an august and elevated personage
that he does not usually involve himself
in the day-to-day activities of the world.
Instead, he has created a set of spiritual
beings—the angels—who carry out his commands
and deliver his messages.
Although most accounts of angel history
consider Zoroastrianism to be the first religion
to have true angels, attendant spiritual beings
served Yahweh (God) from the very first biblical
narratives, long before Persian religious
ideas began to exercise an influence on
Judaism. There is, however, some confusion in
the earliest books of the Bible about the socalled
angel of the Lord. In many passages that mention the angel of
the Lord, it seems that God himself has appeared. Some scholars have
hypothesized that in the original (nonextant) sources, Yahweh was
the central actor, with no angel mentioned. According to this line of
thinking, later scribes found it difficult to grasp that God himself
would confront ordinary human beings face-to-face and thus altered
the original stories so that God acted through an intermediary.
Angels are designated by different terms in Hebrew Scriptures.
The most common term is mal’akh, “messenger,” which is sometimes
also used with reference to human messengers. (This term was the
basis for the choice made by Greek translators—angelos means messenger
in Greek—as well as the choice for Muslims—the Koranic
term for angels is mala’ika.) In other places, the angels are called elohim
(literally, “gods”) or, more frequently, bene’elohim or bene’elim
(sons of God). Finally, the Bible also refers to winged beings, such as
the seraphim and the cherubim, which seem to have been adopted
more or less directly from near-Eastern mythology.
The Hebrew Bible pictures angels as busy spiritual beings constantly
coming and going as they carry out God’s directives—as in
Jacob’s vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder. In the first
chapter of the Book of Job, the angels (referred to in Job as the “sons
of God”), Satan among them, come together “to present themselves
before the Lord” (1:6), reporting on what they have done and
observed, at what appears to be a regular celestial gathering.
Beyond carrying messages to humanity, God sends his angels to
protect or destroy. They also have the function of constantly offering
him praise. Only in the last books of Hebrew Scriptures do angels
begin to do more than simply worship God and carry out orders, as
when the angel of the Lord in Zechariah intercedes with God on
behalf of Israel (1:12–13). As a general indication of the subsidiary
role angels play in most of the Bible, Scripture mentions only two
angels by name, Michael and Gabriel.
The final books of the Hebrew Bible, particularly Daniel,
reflect the distinct influence of Persian angelology. As a result of
several centuries of Persian control of the Middle East, Jews were
brought into contact with Zoroastrian religious ideas. Of decisive
significance in view of later developments in Judaism’s sister religions,
Christianity and Islam, was Zoroaster’s doctrine of the ongoing
struggle between good and evil—a dualistic world view that
included war between good and evil angels. Earlier Hebrews had
not postulated an evil counterdivinity or devil opposed to Yahweh.
In Job, for example, Satan is a member of the heavenly court whose
role appears to be that of a prosecuting attorney rather than an
enemy of God.
To explain the origin of a devil in traditionally nondualistic
Judaism, writers developed new stories, although they were never
incorporated into canonical Scripture. These extrabiblical writings
explain evil in terms of the revolt or disobedience of God’s angels.
In one story, Satan declared himself as great as God and led a rebellion
of angels against the celestial order. Defeated, he and his followers
were tossed out of heaven, and now they perpetually war
against God by attempting to ruin the earth, God’s creation. A lesser-
known story, which is best preserved in the apocryphal Book of
Enoch, tells how a group of angels lusted after mortal women and
fell from grace after leaving their heavenly abode and copulating
with them.
In addition to the notion of ongoing spiritual warfare between
good and evil, Judaism also adopted the idea of a final judgment and
resurrection of the dead at the end of time—a time when righteousness
will finally triumph. This happy ending will be preceded by an all
out war in which the angels of God will defeat Satan and his fallen
angels once and for all. These notions particularly characterized the
thought of the Essenes, a small Jewish sect whose surviving writings,
the Dead Sea Scrolls, are characterized by an apocalyptic emphasis
that prophesies a supernatural redemption at the hand of God and his
angels, a view they share with the roughly contemporaneous writings
of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha.
Israel was annexed by Rome during the first century B.C. Under
Roman rule, various Jewish sects proliferated. The pious Pharisees,
while believing in angels, did not particularly emphasize them.
The Sadducees, a group of older landowners that included many
priests, emphasized the authority of the first five books of Hebrew
Scripture (the books of Moses) and are said to have rejected the
notion of angels. The Essenes withdrew from mainstream Judaism
in the mid-second century B.C. and established a monastery on the
shores of the Dead Sea at Qumran, where they had a community
until it was attacked and destroyed by Roman legions between A.D.
66 and 70.
Beyond the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), there
are several important bodies of Jewish religious literature in which
notions about angels are further developed. The most important of
these are contained in the Talmud. While attempting to tone down
what they viewed as an unhealthy overemphasis on angels in the
Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha, the talmudic rabbis simultaneously
recognized such postbiblical revelations as the division between
angels of peace and evil angels and the names of important angels
other than Michael and Gabriel, such as Uriel, Raphael, and Metatron.
The talmudic literature also adds much detailed speculation on
the nature of angels without changing the fundamental notions that
had been developed earlier. Much the same can be said about Jewish
mystical speculations, such as those contained in the Zohar.
Today, particularly in Reform and Orthodox Judaism, the existence
of angels as independent spiritual entities is generally discounted,
rather they are viewed as symbolic or poetic or as embodying an
earlier worldview no longer relevant. Even Orthodox Jews tend to
interpret angels symbolically, without actually denying their ontological
reality. Only the most traditional sects, such as the Hasidim, hold
to a literal belief in angels.