The development of angels in canon and apocryphal literature
In modern literature, particularly in fantasy and semi-religious books and films, angels and demons are featured as well rounded characters. God himself, however, while looming invisibly in the background on occasion, only rarely makes a prominent or active appearance. This is done in accordance with the religious canon, where the angels often appear as messengers and executers of the Divine will. God himself, on the other hand, appears distant and aloof from the main event, even in the New Testament. This essay will show that this situation has not always been like that. In fact, this situation initially was inverted, with the angels being generic and featureless, while the Creator was a fully rounded literary character in His own right.
This state of affairs is displayed by the story in Genesis 18, when Abraham entertains God and two of His angels in his tent:
1And the LORD appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; 2And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, 3And said, My LORD, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant: 4Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: 5And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. 6And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. 7And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to dress it. 8And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.
(Genesis 18:1-8)
Old Testament is especially known for being very concise and providing few descriptions, but in this quote, God is described as an active character. He has dust on his feet and is either sufficiently thirsty and hungry to accept Abraham's offer of a drink and a meal without argument, or is simply being polite by accepting Abraham's offer. This humanizes God and gives him a personality as a literary character - and also as a lordly one. Abraham's initial offer of `bread and water' quickly evolves into an entire feast - a definite indication that his visitor is someone very important, to warrant "butter, and milk, and the calf" for his meal.
Conversely, the angels also eat the meal that Abraham and Sarah prepare for God; nobody saw anything unnatural in their action either: apparently, at that moment in literary history it was perfectly natural for God to eat and rest among His faithful. However, the angels appear to join in the meal not because they are hungry and thirsty, but because it is their job to do what God does or tell them to do, as it is shown further in Genesis 19. (Admittedly, there is some dispute regarding whether or not the three strangers encountered by Abraham were God and His angels; however the accepted opinion is that actually that is who they were. (West, Tommy)) They just accompany God and are his underlings - they are not important in themselves: never does Abraham - or any other of the Old Testament's patriarchs - offer angels such a feast, for they are nowhere as important and prominent as God is, even as literary characters.
Therefore, while Genesis 18 focused on God and His relationship with Abraham and Sarah, Genesis 19 focused on angels as they execute Divine wrath upon Sodom and Gomorrah, albeit by God's command and not by their own will. For example, Genesis 19 shows that while the angels had powers of their own, they did not even come to the two cities out of their own volition, but rather by God's will:
12And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: 13For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it.
(Genesis 19:12-13)
As this quotation demonstrates, the citizens' actions enraged God specifically, not His angels - that is why the angels came to Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed them. Thus, the angels are shown to be nothing more than God's messengers and executors. They do not seem to be particularly remarkable literary characters either: just a pair of men who looked generic enough to blend into the crowd - they had no special features that characterized them as seen in more modern depictions of angels. They lack even personality traits of Lot and his family: they are simply featureless and generic.
By contrast to canon Genesis, written before recorded history, the more modern and apocryphal texts like Jubilees and Joseph and Aseneth have angels that are much more developed when compared to the nearly featureless characters of the Old Testament (and of the New Testament, although to a lesser extent). In Jubilees, published around 100 CE, the readers encounter an angel as the narrating character, as he is talking to Moses about creation, including the creation of angels:
1 And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying: Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and 2 appointed it as a sign for all His works. For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before him -the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer and of all the spirits of his creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide (and night), and the light, dawn and day
(Jubilees)
There is no doubt that Jubilees is paraphrasing Genesis, since "after listing the numerous kinds of angels made on the first day [...]", Jubilees added that "[There were also] the depths, darkness and light, dawn and evening..."" created in that time period (Vanderkam, pg. 509). Yet, if Jubilees is a paraphrase of Genesis, the creation of the angels is a noticeable difference, for Genesis 1 makes no mention of them. There is no specific indication in Genesis on what day the angels were actually created by God; however, there is already a guardian with a flaming sword when Adam and Eve have to leave Eden; the information quoted above from the Jubilees is an invention of a later period:
The Book of Jubilees was written in Hebrew by a Pharisee between the year of the accession of Hyrcanus to the high priesthood in 135 and his breach with the Pharisees some years before his death in 105 B.C. It is the most advanced pre-Christian representative of the midrashic tendency, which has already been at work in the Old Testament Chronicles.
(Jubilees)
In the case of Joseph and Aseneth (written in the sixth century CE - later yet) the role of angels is different again. On one hand, they still act as messengers of God, but on the other hand, they are treated like pagan spirits and gods, who enjoy eating a good meal, like Jupiter and Mercury in Philemon and Baucis. In particular, in Joseph and Aseneth XV, Aseneth offers the angel a meal that he does not refuse, a scene reminiscent of God in Genesis 18. There, the angels showed no individual character traits, whereas the angel of Joseph and Aseneth was as well-rounded a character as God himself was. God as a character, however, does not appear at all in Joseph and Aseneth, indicating that by the sixth century CE, the modern religious and literary stereotypes already became established.
The second indication of changed literary role of angels in Joseph and Aseneth is when this text is compared to the Old Testament: it is their connection to stars, or the natural phenomenon of the world.
After Aseneth has abased herself for seven days, culminating in her exculpatory prayer to God, Aseneth sees the morning star rising in the east, which she takes as a sign that God has heard her. [...], this relatively unremarkable event is immediately followed by an extraordinary one: the heaven splits apart near the morning star [...] While Aseneth prostrates herself, a human figure appears out of heaven in Aseneth's chamber, who is clearly an emissary of the divine
(When Aseneth Met Joseph, pg 31)
In this quotation, the bond between stars and angels is quite evident, as the star brings forth the angel. There is no indication of this bond in the Old Testament; however, there was the stellar sign when the Saviour was born in the Gospels. This strong connection between stars, Heaven and angels is further evidence that as a text Joseph and Aseneth was written after the Testaments both Old and New.
The final argument in favour of the changing and evolving role of the angels in literature is their character development in Joseph and Aseneth. Just as in the Jubilees, the angel is a literary character in his own right; he is a religious instructor to Aseneth, showing her the right way to join Joseph in true faith. Curiously, there is no direct indication whether that faith is Judaism or Christianity; Asenath apparently converts from paganism (polytheism) to monotheism, making one wonder whether Joseph and Aseneth was a Christian or a Judaic text. This lack of definition only adds further justification as to how the angel from Joseph and Aseneth is so different from the angels described in the Old Testament: he is a more modern creation representing not the generic angels of Genesis 18, but the more modern angels, who have personalities of their own.
Regardless of this lack of definition, it is still obvious that the further away the readers move from the first chapters of Genesis towards the more modern religious texts, such as in the case of the Jubilees and Joseph and Asenath, the more that text features a noticeable increase and development in the angels' literary role. Jubilees, although an apocryphal text, was still a Jewish apocryphal text and therefore it was partially connected to the Torah. The angel of the Jubilees may have a voice of his own, but still no personality: he is just a disembodied voice, which tells Moses about the history of the world. Actually, that is very similar to the narrator of Genesis who tells the audience what has happened since the beginning, but in an emotionless, detached manner. Contrastingly, the identity of the angel from Joseph and Aseneth is obvious: he is a stern disciplinarian, but also an understanding teacher of Aseneth.
As the angels' role grew, God's role diminished. As far as the Old Testament was concerned, similar scenes to the one in Genesis 18 do not appear there again; this role of a humane and easily approachable God will be taken over by Jesus in the New Testament until the Ascension. The Divinity itself will become detached from the world even as the religious writings became more elaborate.
To conclude, this essay has aimed to show the early stage of the gradual transformation of the roles of the angels and God in the religious literature. Initially portrayed as mere attendants of God in Genesis, the angels began to grow closer to mankind in literature and their characters evolved, until they began to overshadow Him: even in the Jubilees or Joseph and Asenath God plays no role as a literary character. Perhaps this is because His angels are less absolute than He is and thus closer to us, or perhaps due to some other reason, but that is the way things are in modern literature and odds are that this is how they will remain.
End
Works cited
BibleGateway Com. 17 March 2012. .
From Revelation to Canon. James G. Vanderkam. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
The Book of Jubilees. R.H. Charles Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1913. "The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament". 17 March 2012. < http://wesley.nnu.edu/index.php?id=2127>.
West, Tom. "Who were the three MYSTERIOUS strangers that visited Abraham?" 17 March 2012. < http://www.biblestudy.org/question/who-were-three-strangers-abraham-met.html>.
When Joseph Met Asenath. Ross Shepard Kraemer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.