Angels and Demons

Daniel Beecher (0:01)

There's the cherubim, which are... They have four faces, an eagle face, a human face, an ox and a lion face. It does kind of have the feel of a design by committee, doesn't it?

It has a feel of like a whole bunch of guys sitting around, and they're like, well, how are we going to get the bowl in there? Well, you could have the bowl's feet.

Daniel McClellan (0:22)

Somebody's leaning over the shoulder of somebody on a drafting table. More eyes. Yeah.

No, more eyes. Hey, everybody. I am Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (0:35)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (0:36)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to give the public more access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (0:51)

You know, it's fall here in Salt Lake City. It's gorgeous. Prettiest fall we've had in a long time, so I'm having a good time. So today's show, Dan, we're going to dive into something that I'm kind of excited about. With apologies to Dan Brown. Again, we are going to dive into actual angels and demons.

Let's launch into our first segment right now, Getting Angelic.

Daniel McClellan (1:20)

Getting Angelic. That sounds wonderful.

You couldn't think of anything more clever than that.

Daniel Beecher (1:26)

Look, we didn't plan anything ahead.

Daniel McClellan (1:28)

So we're just speaking extemporaneously.

Daniel Beecher (1:31)

We're off the cuff, baby. That's all I got right now.

Daniel McClellan (1:34)

I never took any improv classes. I don't know if you have, but I've never taken any improv classes.

Daniel Beecher (1:39)

I literally have, but I wasn't great at it, so there's that. Anyway, here we are. The Bible talks about angels.

Humans talk about angels. Christians and Jews talk about angels. I don't know how much Jews talk about angels. I just know that the Hebrew Bible talks about angels. But it's confusing to me. I've read a lot of weird and conflicting ideas about what an angel actually is.

So I think it's time we dig in. We get to the bottom of what these things are and what purpose they serve at various points in the Bible. It seems like they're different in different places. I could be mistaken on that. So yeah, let's start off with, like, if there is an overview, do we know what an angel actually is?

Daniel McClellan (2:35)

Well, we can start with the word angel in English, which is an English transliteration that is rooted in the Greek word angel. The Greek word angelos, which comes from a root that means to send. So this is one who is sent. It's kind of like an emissary. And the interesting thing is nothing about the word in Greek has any divine denotation.

You can use that word in reference to humans. So when our word angel kind of has a lot of baggage that comes along with it, you could translate that word messenger or emissary or something like that, and it could be a perfectly fine translation of the Bible. We take all that baggage that we have accumulated over the last 2,000 years, and we put it back on our translations when we render angel. And the same is true of the Hebrew. The word there is malach, which again is one who is sent, an emissary, coming from a verbal root that means to send. And in the Hebrew Bible, you have the word used in reference to human messengers as well. So when it says Saul sent messengers or something like that, that's malachim, the word that sometimes we translate angels and sometimes we translate messengers. Rather arbitrarily, we decide, that one's more divine, that one's probably just a human one.

So it's kind of when we use the word angel, it's kind of a bit of a mistranslation in that regard.

There are places where we do see this concept developing of a specific type of divine messenger, but it does not have unique terminology. It uses the same terminology.

Daniel Beecher (4:24)

We've encountered this angel slash messenger thing before when we talked about Lot and the people that came into his city and that he took in, who were messengers, it's translated as angels, but they seem to just be dudes. They seem to just be people.

Daniel McClellan (4:46)

Yeah, and this is also something pretty important to note about the Hebrew Bible, is when we have a discussion, there's a narrative involving these individuals, they get confused for humans. They are referred to using words like ish, which means man.