What Do Angels Really Look Like According to the Bible?

There is a popular meme that has been going around on the internet for several years now claiming that “Biblically accurate angels” are actually terrifying, Lovecraftian, otherworldly beings who have all kinds of body parts from different animals and are covered all over in eyes. It’s a fun meme. Unfortunately, as an ancient historian, I’m the sort of person who ruins everything fun, so I’m here to tell you that the “Biblically accurate angel” meme isn’t really “Biblically accurate.”

In both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, beings who are described as angels are always either expressly described as looking like male humans or assumed to look like male humans. Although some texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament do indeed describe a variety of heavenly beings with bizarre and frightening appearances, these beings are only described in a few places, were not originally viewed as angels, and are never described as angels in any canonical Biblical text.

A note concerning my intentions and methods

Before I say anything else, I should clarify that I am an atheist and I do not believe in the existence of angels. I’m writing this post not as a theological corrective because I think that the “Biblically accurate angel” meme misrepresents what angels “really” look like, but rather as a historical corrective to clarify how people in the ancient world actually imagined the appearance of angels.

In line with this goal, I will be treating the various works that are now included in the Bible not as authoritative scriptural texts that “reveal” what angels “really” look like, but rather as historical documents from the ancient world that can only really be understood in the specific historical and cultural contexts in which their various authors originally wrote them. I am also not going to be afraid to acknowledge the fact that these texts are not fully in agreement about everything and sometimes contradict each other.

Christians and Jews who believe in angels and who regard the texts I am about to discuss as authoritative scripture are, of course, absolutely welcome to read, enjoy, and share this piece, but they should be aware that I will not be approaching this subject with the same assumptions and goals as them.

Names for the God of Israel and polytheism in the Hebrew Bible

In order to understand what the authors of the works that are now included in the Hebrew Bible were imagining when they wrote about angels, we need to understand the way they thought about divine and heavenly beings more broadly. Modern academic Biblical scholars generally agree that early Judaism emerged from Canaanite religion and that the authors of the oldest texts that are now included in the Hebrew Bible believed in the existence of many deities and divine beings other than the God of Israel.

The highest deity in the traditional Canaanite pantheon was the chief god אֵל (ʾĒl), whose name is simply the West Semitic word that means “deity.” One of ʾĒl’s epithets in Hebrew is עֶלְיוֹן‎ (ʿElyōn), which means “Most High.” Both of these names appear in the Hebrew Bible, but far more common is the name אֱלֹהִים (ʾĔlōhīm). Morphologically, this is the plural form of ʾĒl, but it is routinely used with singular verb forms as the name for a singular, specific deity and is usually translated into English as “God.”

Traditionally, the morphologically plural form of ʾĔlōhīm has been explained as the “plural of majesty,”—the idea being that, supposedly, using the plural form of the noun with a singular verb indicates the greatest or most awesome example of that noun. The scholar Joel S. Barnett, however, convincingly demonstrates in his monograph A Reassessment of Biblical Elohim, published by the Society of Biblical Literature in 2001, that ʾĔlōhīm is more likely a concretized abstract noun.

Basically, in Hebrew and other West Semitic languages, the plural form of a noun can be used to denote the abstract concept of that noun. Thus, the plural morphological form of ʾĒl, meaning “deity,” could be used with a singular verb to mean the abstract concept of “divinity” or “godhood.”

Over time, though, this abstract form became concretized to simply refer to the noun itself, rather than the abstraction. Thus, ʾĔlōhīm when it is used with a singular verb is semantically identical to the singular form ʾĒl. (For a brief summary of the evidence supporting this view, you can watch this YouTube video by the scholar of the Hebrew Bible Dan McClellan, which does a good job of explaining it.)

The most proper name for the God of Israel in Hebrew is יַהְוֶה‎ ‎(Yahweh), which is sometimes known as the tetragrammaton. As I discuss in this post I wrote in April 2022, the earliest known attestation of this name that can be securely dated and that the majority of scholars agree is genuine occurs on the Mesha Stele, which dates to around 840 BCE.

Some people will tell you that no one knows how the tetragrammaton was pronounced, but this is factually incorrect. As I plan to discuss in a future post, scholars of Biblical Hebrew are actually quite certain that the name was pronounced Yahweh or something very close to that.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the earliest generally-agreed-on occurrence of the divine name YHWH on the Mesha Stele, dating to around 840 BCE

ʾĒl and Yahweh

The people of Israel and Judah originally believed that ʾĒl and Yahweh were two completely distinct deities. They believed that ʾĒl was the chief god and the father of all the other deities and that Yahweh was the national god of the nations of Israel and Judah.

The Second Book of the Kings 22 records that, in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Josiah of Judah (ruled 640 – 609 BCE), the high priest Hilkiah brought forth a “book of the law” that he had supposedly discovered in the Temple that the people had supposedly forgotten. Modern scholars generally agree that this book was, in fact, an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy that Hilkiah either wrote himself or had someone else write for him, probably in some degree of collusion with King Josiah himself, who publicly promulgated the book.

Deuteronomy 32:1–43 quotes a poem written in very archaic Hebrew known as the “Song of Moses,” which is generally agreed to predate the Book of Deuteronomy itself. Most scholars believe that the “Song of Moses” was composed at some point between the tenth and eighth centuries BCE. The Song of Moses, in turn, quotes in verses eight and nine from even older poem, which describes a very ancient myth in which ʾĒl and Yahweh are clearly distinct deities.

In the myth, ʾĒl is described as dividing human beings into different nations. He assigns specific deities to serve as the patrons and protectors of specific nations and assigns Yahweh as the patron god of the descendants of Jacob. The verses in question read as follows, as translated in the NRSV with divine names restored:

“When the Most High [i.e., ʿElyōn] apportioned the nations,
when he divided humankind,
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the gods;
Yahweh’s own portion was his people,
Jacob his allotted share.”

The Song of Deborah is another extremely ancient victory song that is quoted in the Book of Judges 5:2–31. It is sometimes claimed to date to the twelfth century BCE, but it was more likely composed at some point between the tenth and eighth centuries BCE. In any case, the song characterizes Yahweh as a fairly conventional Near Eastern warrior god who leads his divine armies against the divine enemies of Israel. Verses 2–5 read as follows, as translated in the NRSV with divine names restored:

“When locks are long in Israel,
when the people offer themselves willingly—
bless Yahweh!”

“Hear, O kings; give ear, O princes;
to Yahweh I will sing,
I will make melody to Yahweh, the God of Israel.”

“Yahweh, when you went out from Seir,
when you marched from the region of Edom,
the earth trembled,
and the heavens poured,
the clouds indeed poured water.
The mountains quaked before Yahweh, the One of Sinai,
before Yahweh, the God of Israel.”

Later, in verse 20, the Song of Deborah declares:

“The stars fought from heaven,
from their courses they fought against Sisera.”

The “stars” mentioned here are the heavenly hosts of Yahweh. The author of this song seems to have believed that, while the armies of Israel were fighting against the armies of their foes on the battlefield, Yahweh’s divine armies were fighting against the divine armies of the patron deities of the foes of Israel in the heavenly realm. The outcome of the battle in the heavenly realm would then parallel the outcome of the battle on earth.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a gilded statue of the ancient Canaanite god ʾĒl from Megiddo, dating to sometime between c. 1400 and c. 1200 BCE, now held in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago in Illinois

Angelic beings in the Hebrew Bible

There are a variety of different heavenly beings in the Hebrew Bible who are commonly identified as “angels.” One group of such beings are referred to בְנֵי־הָאֱלֹהִים (bənē hāʾĔlōhīm), which means “sons of ʾĔlōhīm.” People of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah most likely originally believed that at least the majority of these beings were the literal offspring and descendants of ʾĔlōhīm, in much the same way that the ancient Mesopotamians believed that most of the deities in their pantheon were offspring and descendants of the god An and the ancient Greeks believed that most of the deities in their pantheon were offspring and descendants of Zeus.

People in the ancient Near East nearly always described and depicted their deities as fully anthropomorphic beings, although, in some cases, they depicted them with bird-like wings. In line with this conception, the original authors of the texts that are now included in the Hebrew Bible almost certainly imagined ʾĔlōhīm himself, along with all of his sons and daughters as anthropomorphic. This is abundantly clear from the way the texts of the Hebrew Bible talk about Yahweh and his offspring.

Perhaps the most blatant example of this occurs in the Book of Genesis 18:1–8. In this passage, Yahweh appears to Abraham along with two other gods whose names are not given. All three gods are described as looking like “men.” Abraham immediately recognizes Yahweh and orders for water to be brought so that he and the two other “men” can wash their feet. Then he serves them a meal and stands by them while they eat in front of him. The text reads as follows, as translated in the NRSV with divine names restored:

“Yahweh appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’”

“And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, ‘Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.’ Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.”

The original author of this passage most likely intended the three “men” as Yahweh himself and two other gods—most likely two of Yahweh’s sons—but they have since been reinterpreted as Yahweh himself and two of his messengers or angels.

What we clearly see in this passage is that Yahweh and the other gods are envisioned as exactly identical to human men; they look like men, they have feet that can be washed, and they even eat human food.

ABOVE: Illustration by the French illustrator James Tissot (lived 1836 – 1902) showing how he imagined the episode of Yahweh and two other gods appearing to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre described in the Book of Genesis 18:1–8

The people of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah also seem to have believed that some of the sons of ʾĔlōhīm came to earth, had sex with human women, and sired demigod offspring known as נְפִילִים (Nəfīlīm). The Book of Genesis 6:1–4 describes how this supposedly happened as follows, as translated in the NRSV, with divine names restored:

“When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of ʾĔlōhīm saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then Yahweh said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.’ The Nəfīlīm were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of ʾĔlōhīm went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.”

Later, in the Book of Numbers 13:32–33, the spies whom Moses has sent into the land of Canaan to scout ahead come back to the Israelite camp to report that they have seen Nəfīlīm in the land. They describe the Nəfīlīm as beings who are not totally unlike demigods in Greek mythology and literature (whose powers and characterization in ancient Greek sources I discuss in great detail in this blog post from May 2022). Here is their description, as translated in the NRSV:

“The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. There we saw the Nəfīlīm (the Anakites come from the Nəfīlīm); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

The Nəfīlīm, who are half human and half divine, therefore seem to have been imagined as looking like humans, only much bigger and stronger as a result of their divine parentage.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of the erotic sculpture The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair by Daniel Chester French (lived 1850 – 1931), showing an angel raping a human woman

The basic trope of a chief god presiding over a council of other deities is widely attested in ancient Near Eastern and classical literature and art. Naturally, this trope also occurs in the writings of the Hebrew Bible, which include many scenes in which Yahweh is either explicitly described as presiding over a council of the other deities or is assumed to preside over such a council.

One especially noteworthy example of this is Psalm 82, which was most likely composed either during the Babylonian captivity (lasted c. 597 – c. 539 BCE) or shortly thereafter, by which point Yahweh and ʾĒl had been thoroughly equated. The psalm reads as follows, as translated in the NRSV with divine names restored:

“ʾĔlōhīm has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
‘How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
Give justice to the weak and the orphan;
maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
they walk around in darkness;
all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I say, ‘You are gods,
children of the Most High [bənē Ĕlyon], all of you;
nevertheless, you shall die like mortals,
and fall like any prince.’
Rise up, O ʾĚlōhīm, judge the earth;
for all the nations belong to you!”

The other deities who appear alongside Yahweh at the council in this poem are his various offspring who preside over the other nations. In the poem, Yahweh chastises them all for allowing injustice in the world and he condemns them all to mortality.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing the relief carving from the upper portion of the Tablet of Shamash, discovered at Sippar in what is now Iraq, dating to the reign of King Nabû-apla-iddina of Babylon (ruled c. 888 – c. 855 BCE), depicting a scene of a divine council presided over by the Babylonian sun-god Shamash. Similar scenes of Yahweh presiding over a divine council occur in the Hebrew Bible.

Malʾāḵīm in the Hebrew Bible

In addition to the “sons of ʾĔlōhīm,” the texts of the Hebrew Bible also mention a class of divine beings known as מלאכים‎ (malʾāḵīm), which literally means “messengers.” As their name suggests, the malʾāḵīm were most likely originally seen as a lower class of deities beneath the “sons of ʾĔlōhīm” who were thought to serve as messengers on behalf of Yahweh and his various offspring.

After the Babylonian captivity, the people of Judah came to demote the “sons of ʾĔlōhīm” into the lower class of malʾāḵīm, eventually equating the two originally separate categories of divine beings as one and the same. These are the divine beings who will eventually become known as “angels.”

In every instance in the Hebrew Bible where a being that is explicitly described as a malʾāḵ appears, the being in question is assumed to be anthropomorphic. The Hebrew Bible never at any point explicitly describes a malʾāḵ as having wings, but, for reasons I will discuss in a moment, it is very likely that the original authors and audiences of these texts did imagine them as having wings.

If you want to know how the authors of the Hebrew Bible probably imagined malʾāḵīm, ancient Near Eastern artworks that are contemporary with the writing of these texts include plenty of depictions of what the lower classes of deities were generally thought to look like at the time. In particular, the Neo-Assyrian Empire (lasted 911 – 609 BCE), which was contemporary with the oldest Biblical texts, produced a large number of relief carvings depicting lesser divine figures whom modern archaeologists have dubbed “winged genii.”

The most famous Neo-Assyrian depictions of “winged genii” come from the Northwest Palace of King Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883 – 859 BCE) at Kalhu (modern Nimrud). Most of the reliefs depict the “genii” as men with long beards, long hair, and bird-like wings. They are usually wearing crowns, short-sleeved knee-length tunics, fringed shawls, and jewelry, including bracelets. In some depictions, they are shown holding pinecones and buckets.

It is extremely likely that the authors of the Hebrew Bible imagined malʾāḵīm as looking very similar to these depictions. In other words, when the Hebrew Bible mentions a divine being that it calls a “malʾāḵ,” we really probably should be imagining it as a man with wings. Never fear, though! A couple of the “winged genii” from Kalhu are shown with the heads of eagles; this at least leaves open the possibility that some people in the time of the Hebrew Bible might have imagined some malʾāḵīm as having eagle heads.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a relief carving from the Northwest Palace of the Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883 – 859 BCE) at Kalhu (modern Nimrud) depicting a bearded “winged genius” wearing a crown and holding some kind of plant

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a relief carving from the Northwest Palace of the Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883 – 859 BCE) at Kalhu (modern Nimrud) depicting a bearded “winged genius” wearing a crown holding a pinecone in his right hand and a basket in his left

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a relief carving from the Northwest Palace of the Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883 – 859 BCE) at Kalhu (modern Nimrud) depicting King Ashurnasirpal II himself standing with a bearded “winged genius” standing behind him holding a basket

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Neo-Assyrian relief carving from Kalhu (modern Nimrud), dating to the ninth century BCE, depicting a “winged genius” with the head of an eagle holding a pinecone in his right hand and a basket in his left

Śərāfîm in the Hebrew Bible

The prophet Isaiah, who was active in the southern kingdom of Judah from around 740 until around 686 BCE, is believed to have written chapters one through thirty-nine of the book that now bears with name, or at least early versions of those chapters that were revised by later editors. (The later chapters of the book were added by two different authors who both lived much later, whom scholars have dubbed “Second Isaiah” and “Third Isaiah.”)

The Book of Isaiah chapter 6 describes a vision that Isaiah supposedly had, in which he saw Yahweh himself in anthropomorphic form seated on a high throne surrounded by heavenly beings known as שְׂרָפִים (śərāfîm). Isaiah 6:1–5 describes the vision as follows, as translated in the NRSV with divine names restored:

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw Yahweh sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Śərāfîm were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:

‘Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’

The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of hosts!’”

Śərāfîm are clearly depicted as heavenly beings, but they are never described at any point anywhere in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament as “sons of ʾĔlōhīm” or “malʾāḵīm”; they appear to be an entirely distinct class of divine beings altogether.

An Aramean relief carving from the palace of Kapara at the site of Tell Halaf in northern Syria, dating to the tenth century BCE, depicts a goddess with six wings who is wearing a plumed headdress. Two of her wings come out of her shoulders and two other pairs of wings seem to come from her legs, sticking out of her dress.

It is unlikely that Isaiah had exactly this image in mind when he wrote his description of the śərāfîm surrounding the throne of Yahweh, but this image certainly can help give us some sense of the historical context in which Isaiah was writing; clearly, he didn’t just pull the image of a divine being with six wings out of thin air.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing an Aramean relief carving of a goddess with six wings wearing a plumed headdress found at the site of Tell Halaf in northern Syria, dating to the tenth century BCE, now held in the Walters Art Museum

Kərūḇīm in the Hebrew Bible

The prophet Ezekiel is believed to have written an early version of the Book of Ezekiel between 593 and 571 BCE while he and the other Judahite elites from Jerusalem were living in captivity in Babylon. The Book of Ezekiel as it survives today has most likely been substantially edited and revised by later writers, but the core of the work is generally agreed to originate with Ezekiel.

As I previously discussed in this post I wrote in May 2020, the Book of Ezekiel is possibly the strangest book in the entire Bible. It is filled with all sorts of bizarre, dream-like imagery and is the source for most of the most bizarre images described in the Book of Revelation.

At the very beginning of the book, in chapter one, Ezekiel describes a strange vision he supposedly saw of the throne of Yahweh descending from the heavens escorted by an array of bizarre hybrid creatures. He describes the appearances of the hybrid creatures in detail in verses 4–14, translated as follows in the NRSV:

“As I looked, a stormy wind came out of the north: a great cloud with brightness around it and fire flashing forth continually, and in the middle of the fire, something like gleaming amber. In the middle of it was something like four living creatures. This was their appearance: they were of human form. Each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot; and they sparkled like burnished bronze.”

“Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings touched one another; each of them moved straight ahead, without turning as they moved. As for the appearance of their faces: the four had the face of a human being, the face of a lion on the right side, the face of an ox on the left side, and the face of an eagle; such were their faces. Their wings were spread out above; each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies.”

“Each moved straight ahead; wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went. In the middle of the living creatures there was something that looked like burning coals of fire, like torches moving to and fro among the living creatures; the fire was bright, and lightning issued from the fire. The living creatures darted to and fro, like a flash of lightning.”

Having described these “living creatures,” Ezekiel goes on to describe things that look like wheels within wheels covered all over in eyes that accompany the living creatures in Ezekiel 1:15–21, which reads as follows in the NRSV’s translation:

“As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the earth beside the living creatures, one for each of the four of them. As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl; and the four had the same form, their construction being something like a wheel within a wheel.”

“When they moved, they moved in any of the four directions without veering as they moved. Their rims were tall and awesome, for the rims of all four were full of eyes all around. When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose.”

“Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When they moved, the others moved; when they stopped, the others stopped; and when they rose from the earth, the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.”

The “wheels” described in this passage from Ezekiel were most likely not originally supposed to be angels or even heavenly beings at all, but rather simply the wheels of Yahweh’s chariot. In much later Jewish and Christian traditions, though, they are identified as heavenly beings and eventually as angels.

Later, in Ezekiel 10:20–21, Ezekiel identifies the “living creatures” from chapter one as כְּרוּבִים (kərūḇīm), saying, in the NRSV’s translation:

“These were the living creatures that I saw underneath the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were kərūḇīm. Each had four faces, each four wings, and underneath their wings something like human hands. As for what their faces were like, they were the same faces whose appearance I had seen by the river Chebar. Each one moved straight ahead.”

Like the śərāfîm from the Book of Isaiah whom I discussed in the previous section, the kərūḇīm are certainly heavenly beings, but they are never described as “sons of ʾĔlōhīm,” nor are they ever described as “malʾāḵīm.” Once again, they appear to be an entirely separate class of divine beings altogether.

The creatures Ezekiel describes in the passages quoted above may at first sound bizarre, but they would have probably been fairly recognizable to people living in the Near East in his time. Surviving works of ancient Mesopotamian and Near Eastern art include many examples of guardian figures who are depicted with human heads and the bodies of bulls or lions.

These figures are especially common in Neo-Assyrian art, where they are usually portrayed as bearded and wearing crowns, with large wings and five legs. Statues of these beings usually guarded both sides of the entrances to Neo-Assyrian palaces and temples. These guardians are usually identified as the same beings who are referenced in Assyrian texts as aladlammû, lamassu, and šēdu.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing two human-headed winged bull figures from the Northwest Palace of the Neo-Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (ruled 883 – 859 BCE) at Kalhu (modern Nimrud), now on display in the British Museum in London

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing two human-headed winged bull guardian figures from Kalhu (modern Nimrud), now on display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing two statues of human-headed winged bull guardian figures from the palace of the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II (ruled 722 – 705 BCE) at Dūr-Šharru-ukin (modern Khorsabad), now on display in the Louvre Museum in Paris

ABOVE: Photograph taken by my mother on 21 October 2016 showing a seventeen-year-old me standing in front of a Neo-Assyrian statue of a lamassu from the reign of Sargon II, now on display at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago

Angels in the Hellenistic Period

The Babylonian captivity ended in 539 BCE when King Cyrus II of the Achaemenid Persian Empire conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Cyrus subsequently allowed the Judahites who had been living in Babylon to return to their homeland and rebuild their Temple to Yahweh. A couple of centuries later, in 332 BCE, King Alexandros III of the Makedonian Empire (i.e., the man commonly known as “Alexander the Great”) conquered Judah as part of his larger conquest of the Achaemenid Empire.

Upon Alexandros’s death in June 323 BCE, his empire swiftly fragmented into a number of different warring kingdoms ruled by Greek monarchs, most of them ruled by generals and companions of Alexandros and their descendants. Egypt came under the rule of the Ptolemaic Empire, while Judah eventually came under the rule of the Seleukid Empire. This period of Greek monarchic rule throughout most of the Near East is known as the Hellenistic Era.

Over the course of the third and second centuries BCE, various translators, most likely living in the city of Alexandria in Egypt, which was the capital of the Ptolemaic Empire, translated the writings of the Hebrew Bible from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek. This early Greek translation of the writings of the Hebrew Bible is known as the Septuagint, which comes from the Latin word for “seventy.”

The Septuagint receives its name due to an apocryphal legend recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philokrates, a pseudepigraphical letter that was composed in around the late third or early second century BCE, which claims that seventy-two Jewish translators working independently under the sponsorship of the Hellenistic Greek king Ptolemaios II Philadelphos of Egypt (ruled 284 – 246 BCE) miraculously all managed to produce the exact same translation with no discrepancies, despite never having consulted each other at any point during their work. This legend is certainly not historically true, but it was well known in antiquity and remains widely retold today.

The translators of the Septuagint chose to translate the Hebrew word malʾāḵ as the Greek ἄγγελος (ángelos), which means “messenger.” This is the source the Modern English word angel.

The emergence of specific, named angels

There is not a single attestation of an angel who is given a specific name in any surviving source from before the third century BCE. The earliest source to attest Jewish belief in named angels is most likely the First Book of Enoch, a Jewish apocalyptic text that was most likely originally written in Hebrew in around the third century BCE, but was significantly revised and expanded over the course of the following two centuries.

1 Enoch 9:1 introduces four angels by name who all play prominent roles in the narrative from that point onward: Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel. Later, 1 Enoch 20 lists the names of seven “holy angels who watch,” which includes the four angels mentioned earlier, plus three more angels: Raguel, Saraqael, and Remiel. The chapter reads as follows, as translated by H. R. Charles (with my own edits):

“And these are the names of the holy angels who watch. Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is over the world and over Tartarus. Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is over the spirits of men. Raguel, one of the holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries. Michael, one of the holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over chaos. Saraqael, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit. Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is over Paradise and the śərāfîmand the kərūḇīm. Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom God set over those who rise.”

Notice that the śərāfîm and the kərūḇīm are mentioned in this passage as heavenly beings, but they are not described as angels.

In later sources, some of the “holy angels who watch” mentioned in 1 Enoch—especially Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael—are referred to in Greek as ἀρχάγγελοι (archángeloi), which is formed by combining the Greek noun ἀρχός, meaning “ruler” or “leader,” with the word ἄγγελος, which, as I have already mentioned, means “messenger.” This word eventually passed from Greek into Latin as archangeli and, from Latin into English as archangels.

ABOVE: Eastern Orthodox icon dating to the nineteenth century CE depicting the seven archangels of modern Christian tradition, derived from the older idea of the seven “holy angels who watch” attested in the First Book of Enoch

Angels in the Book of Daniel

Like 1 Enoch, the Book of Daniel is a Jewish apocalyptic work that most likely developed over time, with various authors revising and adding to it. One of the various indications of this gradual composition is the fact that it was originally written in two different languages; chapters 1 and 8–12 were originally written in Hebrew, but chapters 2–7 were originally written in Aramaic, a different Northwest Semitic language closely related to Hebrew.

Of all the books that are included in the canonical Hebrew Bible, the Book of Daniel is one of the youngest, if not the youngest. Most modern critical scholars agree that it is unlikely that any part of the book dates any earlier than the third century BCE. Moreover, internal evidence from the book itself indicates that at least some of the more expressly apocalyptic parts of the book were written precisely in the year 164 BCE, near the end of the reign of King Antiochos IV of the Seleukid Empire, but before his death in November or December of that year.

The Book of Daniel was translated into Koine Greek sometime around 100 BCE or thereabouts. The Greek version of the book contains three long additional sections not found in the older Hebrew and Aramaic version: the “Prayer of Azariah and the Three Holy Children” (Extended Daniel 3:24–90), “Susanna and the Elders” (Extended Daniel chapter 13), and “Bel and the Dragon” (Extended Daniel chapter 14). Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians consider these sections canonical and usually include them in their translations of the Book of Daniel, but Jews and Protestant Christians do not.

ABOVE: Papyrus 967, dating to the third century CE, bearing part of the Greek text of the story of “Susanna and the Elders”

In addition to being late and having a complicated textual history, Daniel is also the only work that is included in the canonical Hebrew Bible that mentions specific, named angels. The last three chapters of the book (i.e., Daniel 10–12) describe a vision that the book’s central character, the wise man Daniel, supposedly saw of an angelic being in anthropomorphic form. The text never says the name of this particular angel, but he is usually identified as Gabriel. Daniel 10:4–6 describes the appearance of the angel as follows, as translated in the NRSV:

“On the twenty-fourth day of the first month, as I was standing on the bank of the great river (that is, the Tigris), I looked up and saw a man clothed in linen, with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the roar of a multitude.”

Daniel faints with his face to the ground at the sight of the angel and the sound of the angel’s voice, but the angel helps him back up to his hands and knees. Then the angel speaks to him in Daniel 10:10–21, which is translated as follows in the NRSV:

“But then a hand touched me and roused me to my hands and knees. He said to me, ‘Daniel, greatly beloved, pay attention to the words that I am going to speak to you. Stand on your feet, for I have now been sent to you.’ So while he was speaking this word to me, I stood up trembling.”

“He said to me, ‘Do not fear, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia opposed me twenty-one days. So Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, and I left him there with the prince of the kingdom of Persia, and have come to help you understand what is to happen to your people at the end of days. For there is a further vision for those days.’”

“While he was speaking these words to me, I turned my face toward the ground and was speechless. Then one in human form touched my lips, and I opened my mouth to speak, and said to the one who stood before me, ‘My lord, because of the vision such pains have come upon me that I retain no strength. How can my lord’s servant talk with my lord? For I am shaking, no strength remains in me, and no breath is left in me.”

“Again one in human form touched me and strengthened me. He said, ‘Do not fear, greatly beloved, you are safe. Be strong and courageous!’ When he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, ‘Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.’ Then he said, ‘Do you know why I have come to you? Now I must return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I am through with him, the prince of Greece will come. But I am to tell you what is inscribed in the book of truth. There is no one with me who contends against these princes except Michael, your prince.’”

The “prince of the kingdom of Persia” and the “prince of Greece” whom the angel mentions in this passage are not human princes of Persia and Greece, but rather the angels who act as the patrons and protectors of those specific nations.

This is the Book of Daniel’s reinterpretation of the much older idea attested in places like Deuteronomy 32:8–9 that each nation has a specific deity who acts as that nation’s divine patron and protector. The main difference is that, in the Book of Daniel, the deities who act as patrons of the various nations have all been demoted to merely angelic status.

In this passage, the angel Michael is described as acting as the heavenly benefactor of the people of Judah. He is therefore filling the same role that Yahweh himself is described as fulfilling in older texts like Deuteronomy 32:8–9. The replacement of Yahweh in this role with Michael most likely reflects that fact that, by the time the Book of Daniel was written in the second century BCE, Yahweh himself had been exulted to such a high status that it would have been seen as petty for him to be contending against the patron angels of other nations in the way that Michael is described as doing.

Later, in Daniel 12:1–4, the unnamed angel, who is usually identified as Gabriel, describes to Daniel what will happen at the end of days, prophesying as follows, as translated in the NRSV:

“At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people, shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book.”

“Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, keep the words secret and the book sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be running back and forth, and evil shall increase.”

This passage lays out the basic narrative of apocalyptic Judaism.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Makurian mural from the site of Faras in what is now Sudan dating to the ninth century CE, depicting the archangel Michael as a man with wings holding a horn and an orb, currently held in the National Museum in Warsaw, Poland

The Gospel of Mark and the angel at Jesus’s tomb

The previous sections of this article have discussed how heavenly beings are described in the various works that are now included in the Hebrew Bible. Now I shall discuss how angels are described in the Christian gospels.

As I discuss in much greater detail in this post I wrote in September 2021, the oldest Christian gospel that has survived to the present day is the Gospel of Mark (henceforth gMark). Both internal and external evidence strongly indicate that this gospel was written in around the year 70 CE or thereabouts.

gMark 16:4–8 gives the earliest attested version of the story of the empty tomb, in which Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome go to Jesus’s tomb to find that the stone has already been rolled aside. They go inside and see “νεανίσκον καθήμενον ἐν τοῖς δεξιοῖς περιβεβλημένον στολὴν λευκήν” (i.e., “a young man sitting on the right, dressed in a white robe”), who tells them that Jesus has risen. The passage reads as follows as translated in the NRSV:

“When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

gMark does not explicitly say that the young man dressed in a white robe whom the women see at the tomb is an angel, but the author of the gospel almost certainly meant for readers to understand him as one.

ABOVE: Holy Women at Christ’s Tomb, painted c. 1590s by the Italian Baroque painter Annibale Carracci, depicting the three women encountering the young man dressed in a white robe as described in the Gospel of Mark 16:4–8

gMark is most likely getting the idea of the angel wearing a white robe from Daniel 10:4–6, but the description of the angel as looking specifically like a young man is not attested in earlier Jewish sources as far as I am aware. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this aspect of the angel’s appearance may be the result of Greek cultural influence.

The preeminent messenger of the deities in ancient Greek religion and mythology was the god Hermes. By the Hellenistic Period, Hermes was usually represented as an ideally handsome, beardless young man wearing a chlamys (a kind of cloak commonly worn by travelers) and a petasos (a kind of broad-brimmed hat also commonly worn by travelers), often holding a κηρύκειον (kērýkeion), a short staff with two serpents entwined around it and a pair of wings at the top. Sometimes he was also shown holding a sack of coins.

The fact that the preeminent divine messenger in the Greek cultural context in which the author of gMark lived was usually depicted as a young man may have influenced the gospel writer to describe the angel at Jesus’s tomb as looking like a young man as well.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue of the god Hermes dating to the second century BCE, based on a Greek statue of the fifth century BCE, depicting him as a handsome, beardless youth wearing a petasos and chlamys, holding a kerykeion, currently held in the Pio-Clementine Museum

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble statue of the god Hermes dating to the second century BCE, based on an earlier Greek statue of the fourth century BCE, currently held in the Musei Capitolini

Descriptions of angels in gMatthew and gLuke

After gMark, the next oldest surviving gospel is most likely the Gospel of Matthew (henceforth gMatthew), which was most likely composed sometime between c. 75 and c. 100 CE. gMatthew relies heavily on gMark as a source and contains extensive portions that are directly copied word-for-word from gMark.

One part of gMatthew that is not copied from gMark, however, is chapters 1–2. These chapters describe an “ἄγγελος κυρίου” (i.e., “angel of the Lord”) as repeatedly appearing to Joseph, the husband of the Jesus’s mother Mary, in series of dreams, but they do not describe anything about this angel’s appearance.

Later, gMatthew 28:1–8 gives a very different account of the discovery of the empty tomb from the one found in gMark 16:4–8. Unlike gMark, gMatthew explicitly identifies the man at the tomb as an “angel of the Lord.” Also, unlike gMark, which simply describes the man as already sitting in the tomb when the women arrive, gMatthew gives him a much more dramatic entrance, describing him as descending from heaven accompanied by an immense earthquake and declaring that his appearance was “ὡς ἀστραπὴ” (i.e., “like lightning”) and his clothing was “λευκὸν ὡς χιών” (i.e., “white as snow”). The passage reads (as translated in the NRSV):

“After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men.”

“But the angel said to the women, ‘Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.” This is my message for you.’ So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.”

ABOVE: The Three Women at the Tomb of Christ, painted by Irma Martin in 1843

After gMatthew, the next oldest surviving gospel is most likely the Gospel of Luke (henceforth gLuke), which was most likely composed sometime between c. 85 and c. 100 CE. Like gMatthew, gLuke relies heavily on gMark as a source and contains extensive portions that are directly copied from gMark.

Also like gMatthew, gLuke contains a narrative of how Jesus was supposedly born. This narrative, however, has only a couple of details in common with the birth narrative in gMatthew, which it otherwise totally contradicts. gLuke 1 describes the angel Gabriel as first appearing to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and then to Jesus’s mother Mary. gLuke does not describe any details about Gabriel’s appearance, but all the evidence indicates that the author expected readers to imagine him as anthropomorphic.

gLuke 24:1–8 gives yet another very different account of the empty tomb scene. This version claims that the women encountered not one but two angels at Jesus’s tomb, which the gospel describes as “ἄνδρες δύο . . . ἐν ἐσθῆτι ἀστραπτούσῃ” (i.e., “two men in dazzling raiment”). The passages reads as follows in the NRSV:

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them.”

“The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to the hands of sinners and be crucified and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.”

The angels in the garden in gJohn

The Gospel of John (henceforth gJohn), which is probably the latest of the four canonical gospels, was most likely composed at some point between c. 90 and c. 125 CE. Scholars continue to debate whether gJohn relies on the Synoptic Gospels, but, if it does rely on them, it does not do so nearly to the extent that gMatthew and gLuke rely on gMark. In general, gJohn provides a drastically different portrayal of Jesus from the Synoptics and has a much more developed Christology.

Given this, it should come as little surprise that gJohn 20:1–18 gives a version of the empty tomb story that is very different from the versions found in the Synoptic Gospels. In this version, Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb alone while it is still dark (a marked difference already from the Synoptic Gospels, all three of which describe her as going to the tomb accompanied by at least one other woman). She sees that the stone has been removed and immediately runs to tell Peter and the “beloved disciple.” Peter and the “beloved disciple” go to the tomb, where they see the linen cloths that Jesus’s body was wrapped in lying empty, but no angel.

After Peter and the “beloved disciple” leave and go back home, Mary stays behind in the garden crying. This, in gJohn’s account, is the first time Mary alone sees a pair of angels dressed in white. gJohn 20:11–13 describes the encounter as follows, in the NRSV’s translation:

“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’”

Immediately after saying this, Mary turns around and sees the resurrected Jesus standing behind her.

ABOVE: Appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene after Resurrection, painted in 1835 by the Russian Neoclassical painter Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov

Angels and other heavenly beings in the Book of Revelation

One book that is included in the New Testament that discusses angels and other heavenly beings extensively is the Book of Revelation. The author of the book introduces himself in Revelation 1:1 (and again in 1:9) as Ἰωάννης (Iōánnēs), which is a Greek transliteration of the Biblical Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן‎ (Yōḥānān), which means “Yahweh Is Gracious.” Both the Hebrew and Greek versions of this name are traditionally rendered in English as “John.”

Many (but not all) Christians throughout history have regarded this book as the work of the apostle John, the son of Zebedee and brother of James, but modern critical scholars almost universally reject this attribution. Scholars generally point out that John was an extremely common name for Jewish men in the Roman Empire in the first century CE. (At least five distinct men named John are mentioned in the canonical gospels and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles alone.)

Moreover, the author of Revelation never at any point identifies himself as the son of Zebedee, nor does he ever claim to be an apostle, nor does he ever claim to have known Jesus while he was alive on earth, and all evidence strongly indicates that he is a different, otherwise obscure man named John who merely happens to share the same name as the apostle.

This John says in Revelation 1:9 that he is writing the book on the Greek island of Patmos, which is located in the Aegean Sea just off the western coast of Asia Minor. For this reason, scholars sometimes refer to the author of Revelation as “John of Patmos.” Most scholars agree based on internal evidence that John wrote the Book of Revelation on Patmos sometimes during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian (ruled 81 – 96 CE).

Most scholars agree that John the author of Revelation was a Jewish follower of the Jesus of movement who had been raised in traditional Jewish teachings, who was extremely familiar with the works of the Hebrew Bible (especially the prophetic books), and who strongly believed in the continuing importance of obeying the commands laid out in the Torah. This ideological standpoint pervades throughout the Book of Revelation.

In the first three chapters, Jesus appears to John in a fearsome cosmic allegorical form and tells him to write a series of seven letters to the “angels” of the Christian communities of seven cities in Asia Minor. After this, John sees a vision of a heavenly throne room, in which he sees four “living creatures” who are clearly based on the “living creatures” that are described in Ezekiel 1:4–14. John describes the living creatures’ appearances as follows in Revelation 4:6–8, as translated in the NRSV:

“Around the throne, and on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and back: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a face like a human, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing,

‘Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God the Almighty,
    who was and is and is to come.’”

Some proponents of the “Biblically accurate angel” idea have claimed that these beings John describes are angels. In fact, though, he never calls them angels, but rather consistently refers to them in Greek as ζῷα (zôia), which means “living creatures” or “animals.” Once again, they are heavenly beings, but not angels.

When the Book of Revelation does talk about heavenly beings that it expressly calls “angels,” it describes them in a manner that suggests the author expected readers to imagine them as anthropomorphic. For instance, Revelation 7:1–3 describes four angels as “standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree” and another angel as shouting commands to them. Later, Revelation 7:11 refers to the “angels” and the “living creatures” separately as though they were distinct groups.

Revelation 8:3–5 describes an “angel” as holding a “golden censer” and offering it before God before filling it with fire and throwing it at the earth. This passage expressly mentions the angel as holding the censer in his “hand.” Revelation 8:6–9:21 and 11:15 describe angels as blowing trumpets, which indicates that they have mouths and a capacity to breathe in and blow out like humans. In many other places throughout the rest of the apocalypse, John describes angels as holding or carrying various objects. These are just some of the first examples to appear in the text.

Revelation 10:1–3 describes an angel descending from heaven as follows:

“And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun and his legs like pillars of fire. He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded.”

This description tells us that John imagined angels as having a “head” (singular), a recognizable “face,” “legs,” two feet (a left and a right), and an ability to shout (albeit not in a particularly human-like fashion).

John describes this particular angel as having a face “like the sun” (i.e., glowing too brightly for a human being to look upon) and legs “like pillars of fire” (i.e., burning or glowing brightly), but we should not necessarily assume that he imagined all angels as having these particular features. In fact, the fact that he has not described any of the angels he has mentioned in the narrative until this point as having any of these features suggests that they are most likely particular to only this one angel.

Interestingly, John describes angels as “flying” in Revelation 14:6–11 and references them as “coming down from heaven” elsewhere in the apocalypse, but he never expressly describes any of them as having wings, leaving it unclear whether he imagined them as flying with wings like birds or hovering in the air without wings.

ABOVE: Illustration from the Bamberg Apocalypse, an illuminated manuscript copy of the Book of Revelation made at Reichenau Abbey in southern Germany sometime between c. 1000 and c. 1020 CE depicting the seven angels with seven trumpets (upper register) and the angel holding a golden censer (lower register)

Early Christian artistic depictions of angels

The oldest surviving Christian artistic depiction of an angel is a badly damaged fresco in the Cubicolo dell’Annunziazione in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome. It dates to around the middle of the third century CE. It depicts the Virgin Mary sitting on a chair with the angel Gabriel standing before her, gesturing toward her with his right hand.

In the fresco, Gabriel is a beardless man without wings. He is definitely wearing a chlamys and, although it is hard to tell because the fresco is so damaged, it looks to me like he may be wearing a petasos and carrying a kerykeion in his left hand. He is depicted as iconographically almost identical to Hermes.

ABOVE: Early Christian fresco from the Cubicolo dell’Annunziazione in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, dating to the mid-third century CE, depicting the angel Gabriel proclaiming to Mary that she will give birth to Jesus

At this point you may be wondering how Christians came to depict angels as having wings, even though they are not described as having wings in the New Testament and the earliest surviving Christian depictions of angels do not show them with wings. The answer most likely lies in traditional Roman religious iconography.

The ancient Romans believed that each person has a divine being known as a genius who follows them around their whole life, from their birth until their death, and protects them, similar to the Christian notion of a “guardian angel.” From at least the late first century BCE onward, the Romans commonly depicted genii in art as beautiful, young, beardless men with feathered wings, occasionally with pointed ears or other features marking them as not human.

ABOVE: Roman fresco from the peristyle of the villa of P. Fannius Synistor in Pompeii dating to the late first century BCE depicting a winged genius

From the reign of the emperor Augustus (ruled 27 BCE – 14 CE), the genius of the reigning Roman emperor and the genii of other members of the imperial family received special attention. Inhabitants of the empire were expected to perform offerings of incense to the genius of the reigning emperor and the genii of emperors and members of the imperial family commonly appear in works of art.

ABOVE: Detail from the base of a Roman column dating to the second century CE, depicting the genius of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius with long, feathered wings ascending to heaven as part of his apotheosis

The earliest surviving artistic depiction of winged angels is a relief carving on the Prince’s Sarcophagus, which is thought to date to the reign of the Roman emperor Theodosius I (ruled 379 – 395 CE) and to have belonged to child of the imperial family. It was discovered in the 1930s at the site of Sarigüzel near İstanbul.

The relief on the sarcophagus depicts two angels dressed in flowing robes flanking a Chi Rho monogram encircled by crown of thorns. The angels are young and beardless, with long, flowing hair, and each one has a pair of long, feathered wings. They very closely resemble the genii of traditional Roman art and they appear in an artistic context in which genii might previously have appeared before the Roman emperors and their families converted to Christianity.

ABOVE: Photograph of the Prince’s Sarcophagus, a Christian sarcophagus discovered at Sarigüzel dating to the reign of Theodosios I (ruled 379 – 395 CE) bearing the earliest known Christian depiction of winged angels

In the fifth century CE, winged angels became seen as a canonical. A Christian mosaic from the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in the city of Rome, dating to between 432 and 440 CE, depicts a scene of the Annunciation of the virgin in its upper register and a scene of the adoration of the infant Jesus in its lower register, with both scenes featuring hosts of angels, who are all depicted as young, beardless men wearing white togas with white feathered wings and halos.

ABOVE: Christian Roman mosaic from the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in the city of Rome, dating to between 432 and 440 CE

Angels since the Renaissance

In all the books that are included in the Bible, angels are always consistently described and referred to as male. During the Middle Ages, however, western European theologians generally regarded angels as purely spiritual, incorporeal beings. Because they viewed sex as a solely physical, rather than spiritual, distinction, they came to regard angels as beings who are, in their true nature, without sex.

As result of this view, in the later Middle Ages, western European artists increasingly came to depict angels as not only beardless and having long beautiful hair, but also other androgynous features. This trend reached its culmination during the Renaissance, with angels most commonly appearing in Renaissance art as fully androgynous beings. Since this time, western artists have traditionally depicted angels as having long, beautiful, free-flowing hair and feminine facial features, but male bodies without breasts.

As a result of their long hair, beardlessness, and overall feminine appearance, lay viewers who lack training in traditional western Christian iconography have frequently mistaken angels as female, whereas, in reality, they have traditionally been understood as heavenly beings who are beyond and without gender.

ABOVE: Annunciation, painted by the early Italian Renaissance painter Fra Angelico between c. 1440 and 1445, depicting the androgynous angel Gabriel (left) announcing to the virgin Mary (right) that she will give birth to Jesus

ABOVE: Annunciation, painted by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci between c. 1472 and 1476, depicting the androgynous angel Gabriel (left) announcing to the virgin Mary (right) that she will give birth to Jesus

ABOVE: Colorized image from Wikimedia Commons of a black-and-white photograph of the painting Saint Michael and the Angel, which the Italian painter Caravaggio painted in 1602 and which a fire in Berlin destroyed in 1945

ABOVE: Michael, painted by the Italian Baroque painter Guido Reni in 1636, depicting the archangel Michael with long hair and feminine facial characteristics, but a distinctly muscular male body

ABOVE: An Angel Appears to Balaam, illustration made by the French artist Gustave Doré for La Grande Bible de Tours, published in 1866