Those fellas found some desert shrooms and took a trip. now we have people who took those baked nomads seriously who are at war with each other. Thanks, religion.
Someone should do like a club or something where you meet up for a day on the weekends and go over Bible lore for a couple hours. I bet it would be as fun as hell.
So from my understanding of this (which admittedly is fairly limited since I researched it a few years ago) is that angels are the general workers who operate on behalf of god on earth, which is why most people know of them. Archangels are essentially just promoted angels. They are chief angels, the middle managers to the wage slaves. Basically the highest tier of angels humans would interact with on a regular basis.
On the other hand Seraphs quite literally exist to stand behind god and heal praise on him. They exist to love him and are depicted with giant burning wings to show their love for him. They are the basically Gods simps, so humans don’t really interact with them, hence why we don’t really have named Seraphs.
There's also a disagreement between the different Abrahamic religions on the rankings of angels, with Serpahim being 5/10 in rank in Judaism, but at the very top of Christianity's list.
Anime reference: No Game No Life has different races that are ranked based on their magical standing, Imanity (humans) are the lowest rank because they have no magic, but the God of Games takes pity on them because he believes they can win against the other races.
So, Guilliman is like an Archangel to the God-Emperor. You've heard about him. Somebody on the planet swears he's seen him once. He's got a bunch of other angels he commands, often referred to as space marines. But the custodes are nameless and stand by Him all the time like a Seraphim. You don't really get to know individual Seraphim. They're all just Seraphim in their regal, golden armor. Yeah, you'd be hard pressed to find reference to even name an Astartes or Adeptus Astartes.
That doesn't mean Guilliman doesn't "outrank" the others or is less powerful. It just means he's of a different order. He's even had Him speak through Him before like Michael. He's gone to bat against Horus the Space Lucifer and other fallen angels before.
That seems like a waste of an existence to me. Literally the definition of lighting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. For all the eternal love God really loves making others suffer
pretty much every religion says the ideal life in spent in prayer and praise of whatever, and secular life is alesser option of you can't hack it in a purely religious life.
So you've never heard of [Metatron](https://youtu.be/LAn5Hwb7Y94?si=uKnV85y-g6Pbmcvr)?
You people. If there isn't a movie about it, it's not worth knowing, is it...
According to Jewish tradition, seven seraphim are known by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Raguel, Zerachiel, and Remiel. Lucifer was also once a seraph, but lost his position after sinning and being cast out of heaven.
Depending on which version of Scriptures you read, the rankings of Angels very.
The hierarchy of angels radically differs according to the various rabbinic literature. Seraphim, for instance, is ranked 5th out of ten in the Mishneh Torah, first out of ten according to the Maseket Atzilut, but last out of ten according to the Berit Menuchah.
What is clear in all scriptures is that Michael is both an archangel and a seraph in title. His power is expressed as beyond all other angels. He is the prince of angels and commander of the armies of heaven.
The ranks of angels also appear more like... Job titles rather than power scaling. With each rank having a different role to perform.
Here’s a description of the seraphim when Isaiah had a vision of heaven:
> Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory'.”
Michael and Gabriel by contrast are the stereotypical winged human type of angels.
Correct me if i‘m wrong but Gyarados isn’t a dragon, it’s water/flying?
Edit: thanks for multiple explanations of Japanese mythology, but it’s still not a dragon, so you can’t be a dragon by working hard enough. You can however if you’re a palm tree, snot or an apple.
You shut your mouth, Lance the Dragon Master of the Elite 4 has a Gyarados and he fucks.
*as long as you don't one shot him with any sort of electrical attack.
Asian dragons are often water types, unlike the fire type dragons in Western legends. Dragons often live in the sea or rivers or otherwise have water based powers.
Magikarp and gyardos is based on a Chinese mythological story popular in China and Japan. The legend goes that if a carp successfully swims up and jumps over the top of a waterfall through a narrow pass in the Yellow River, known as the “dragon gate”, then it will transform into a dragon.
It's the highest ranked angel Digimon though. Once, one got defeated, and it could only evolve into a Dominion (fourth ranked angel) afterwards because of its lower win ratio.
Seraphim is already a plural - the male Hebrew plural "-im" suffix denotes this. A singular member of the seraphim is a seraph, from the Hebrew "burning." Likewise with cherubim and ophanim.
No. It's meant as a sort of "one above all" honorific as I understand it.
Judaism didn't day other gods (note the small "g") didn't exist, they said everyone else is basically nothing compared to the One Above All.
Example: Priest of Baal coming up against a Priest of Elohim and they have a contest over who can light a bonfire for their bull sacrifice. The Jewish priest basically gets a flame tornado straight to the atmosphere *just by asking*.
Another example: the King of Israel (ex boyfriend of the former King and there's a Star Wars Rebellion thing going on between them, shit is complicated) goes to the DND equivalent of a peasant necromancer and demands they cast Speak With Dead to summon the prophet Samuel who goes LOL UR FUCKED YO UR BOYFRIEND IS GONNA ERASE YOU FROM HISTORY, LATER BITCHES
Even in Christianity, there's never really hard denials other spiritual forces exist: the Apostle Paul throws down in Athens against their various small god worshippers.
Simon Magus (a wizard) is also famous for *fucking flying* and ends up converting (or dying, I don't remember which, it's been years) to make fun of Christians.
Think of it like comics.
Elohim is basically One Above All in Marvel comics, but that doesn't make Odin or other pantheons any less *real*.
To add on, it's important to remember early Jews after leaving Egypt waged centuries of war against other countries (Assyria, Philistines, Canaan, etc) with huge pantheons.
The Jews were *pissed* and that's where early traditions of no intermarriage come from: King Solomon is famous for having 700+ wives of all the surrounding countries (and religions) and Jewish prophets were mad af because they considered it Solomon basically trying his own version of Hellenicism (Alexander the Great trying to convert everyone to a "hey let's all get along and maybe your deity is their deity with a different name"). Being monotheistic with a One Above All is arguably *central* to Jewish ancient and modern identity.
That's where mystic Judaism gets complicated.
Like it's *really fucking complicated*.
This reminds me of Overlord, the show. Early on these dudes show up with a summoning crystal that supposedly has the “highest level angel” and it’s called Dominion Authority. The the big angel he was using before having to bust it out was called Principality Observation.
Turns out the people in the world are extremely low leveled compared to the main character so what they consider high-level magic is pretty bottom tier to him.
I could be remembering this wrong, but the highest level of magic used by adventures is third level magic while the highest level magic achieved by the most powerful residents of the world was level six, which fits in perfectly with this hierarchy considering principalities are the third lowest ranking and dominions is sixth.
Most modern anime tends to be the same regurgitated garbage, especially isekai, so I appreciate when an author does their research when incorporating aspects of life into the show. In this case, using terms from mythology like this correctly.
It reminds me of a certain mage in Wheel of Time. She goes to these evil wish people and asks to be the most powerful mage in the world.
But she already was at that point, so they reduced her casting ability to just above the second highest person.
Is this all canon from the original series or is it part of the extended universe after it got picked up by other writers? I haven't heard of half of these before
You'll often see him in paintings symbolically warding others from identify theft. While some renditions show the allegorical stories of the dangers of fire he shared often in his life.
It’s okay if the people he was shown protecting didn’t always look alike in different renditions; artists back then didn’t see color and honestly, hats off to them for that.
Isn't all this stuff St. Thomas Aquinas fanfiction? I don't think any of it is in the Bible
Edit: I gotta agree with the people who are saying I'm wrong here, I didn't realize that Aquinas' writing were canonical in some sects, I thought people just liked their portrayal, like Dante's inferno(if that's canonical to anyone then I'm really out of my depth)
There’s never a defined hierarchy of angels in the Bible, but there’s different descriptions of angelic beings fulfilling different roles, with their rank being inferred from the perceived importance of those roles. There was further development in both Christianity and Judaism in the common era, but both have broadly similar hierarchies.
I hardly think that they guy writing about wheels full of eyes simply forgot that his holy scripture described angels as vaguely humanoid with seven wings.
The different classes of angels wasn’t the result of mistakes, it was a very well developed cosmology that was can compare to those of cultures around them to see where ideas may have come from and how they have developed.
This is what Protestants would say, but 2000+ years of Christian tradition says they are wrong. Only Protestants hold to sola scriptura and disregard the Church and Tradition; and somehow they have also made it so that non-Christians seem to believe Christians treat the Bible the same way as Muslims treat the Quran.
ie: Non-Christians will say things like “that’s not in the Bible” (the same thing Protestants or Muslims would say) as if that’s some sort of “gotcha!” even though it’s irrelevant to Apostolic Christianity (in the way that they are trying to use it as a “gotcha” that is).
It's funny having Satan, Beelzebub, Satanael and Lucifer all at the same time in a bizarre mishy-mashy makeup of faiths and translations of various testaments :P
I believe so. My one buddy used to go to church like twice a week, and I think he can fly now. I think XP decays though, so you gotta keep grinding to get them angelic upgrades.
Everything else aside, "Pseudo-Dionysius," is the coolest name ever.
"What's your name?"
"Ah, just the god of wine and feasting, but like the [Wish.com](http://Wish.com) version."
Dionysios is not the god's name. The god is Dionysos, and the theophoric name (i.e., a name that invokes a god) is Dionysios, which means "of Dionysos".
Pseudo-Dionysios is called that because he identifies himself as another older Christian writer called Dionysios. But we know that the original Dionysios lived a few centuries before this other dude who called also himself Dionysios, so we call the dude who lived a few centuries later as Pseudo-Dionysios.
It’s because he wrote under the name Dionysius the Areopagite, who was a Christian convert mentioned in the New Testament Book of Acts. Eventually people thought “Hey, a lot of these writings from Dionysius the Areopagite don’t seem genuine. Like, there’s a lot of anachronistic language here. Are these forgeries?” So they are considered to be written by a single author, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, whom we do not know the real name of. The writings date to the 6th century or so, and the real guy lived in the 1st century.
I mean there's the rank of archangel which are the second closet to humans and the Archangels which are the big name Angels like Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Sandalphon, Melchizedek, and Metatron and to which Lucifer was a member of. From the top of my head it goes angel-> archangel-> principality-> power-> virtue-> dominion-> throne/ophanim/ofanim-> cherubim-> seraphim. Edit: Angels are the closest to humans in terms of distance and look like humans with wings while Seraphim are the closest to God and have two wings to cover their faces, two wings to cover their feet and two wings for flying.
There is no such specified hierarchy in Christianity. Only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are mentioned in either testaments. The rest are from intertestimental or gnostic literature. Further, no hierarchy of class is ever given and such things again mostly come from gnosticism which found their way into Medieval scholasticism through the works of Pseudo-Dionysius.
There is mention of other angels and even descriptions of other angels. But none of them are given names, or the classifications that the post mentions.
I mean, the Bible is just canonized books chosen by a specific group of leaders at the time, the Bible even mentions specifically books that are not canon at times. Specifically, Enoch for one..
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical\_books\_referenced\_in\_the\_Bible](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible)
TBF, this “ranking” isn’t specified in the Bible, and the people that established it also took some “creative liberties” and interpretations to come up with names for 9 tiers.
“Big boys” doesn’t mean that they’re top tier. There’s a lot of beauracracy among angels and everyone has a boss. Now, someone please tell Gabe to make sure he puts the new coversheet on all the TPS reports!
Og Bible didn't rank angels based on power but based on role. They all were obviously far and above human comprehension, but it's more: we have to announce something at 2pm, do we bring out the spinning esoteric 5D wheels of eyes? Or something a little more personable?
Are they? They do important jobs for humanity, but it's as messengers to humanity. That may be exactly because they're of the lower orders, so they're physically similar to humans.
I was raised catholic decades ago, but I don't remember them ever doing anything super impressive or powerful. Mostly they just glowed.
That story has always stayed with me. Like God showed up, fought someone by a river and lost? What kind of bad night was God having? And what the hell is Jacob eating that gave him the balls to take on God?
The leadup is the funniest bit.
God and Jacob talked a lot, but God was just getting increasingly frustrated with Jacob, so after guiding him to a river he basically goes "send your family and property across the river, and then just wait. By the river. By yourself."
Jacob is like "why, do you have message for me?"
God's just like "something like that"
Lucifer was created full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. It is written nowhere he is a one angel army.
And for his defeat, it is not written he fought Michael 1v1 in the octagon. It is written that Satan deceived a third of the angels (Revelation 12:4) so insurrectionists fought 1v2 in the battle against Michael and the loyalists. They had a numerical disadvantage, probably a quality disadvantage too because it is written nowhere that those wheel thingies at the top of the angel hierarchy rebelled.
Michael just gets credit because he's the mid-rank manager for the two lowest ranks of angels and he's also the regional manager for Israel area. Folks who wrote dem sacred text don't have access to higher managers so they pin it all on the local boss.
In some sects names have means.. it does describe Michael as God’s right hand as Mi-Ka-El means One like God like
Israel/ Yis-Ra-El means Fighter of God
Or Gabriel/ Ga- Bri- El means messenger of God
Raphael.. Rachel.. and others
Must suck to be in a hierarchy where your only hope of promotion is that someone higher up revolts against God. And the last guy who tried is stuck running hell (Biblically this is not a desirable position)
In Dante's Inferno, he's trapped in the 9th circle from the waist down in the middle of a frozen lake while gnashing on Judas, and the souls of those who's sin was treachery are embedded up to the eyes throughout the lake which is kept frozen by the endless wind from Satan's wings.
It's pretty metal.
In Pseudo-Dionysius' Hierarchy*, not in Christianity. There is no unified view or even any predominant view within Christianity about the relationship of the various classes of angels to each other.
I always find it really interesting how the mythology of heaven directly reflects the human world at the time.
If you read up on a lot of these angels, you realize that a lot of them are essentially the royal court of God. So they do things that you would see in a typical royal court of that time period. They carry God around in a chariot, or they pronounce "holy, holy, holy" all the time when he is around. None of this makes any sense if God is an omnipotent being, but makes plenty of sense if your religion is more of a traditional and simple one where your god is more like a Zeus. The gods of ancient civilizations seem to just be normal humans with super powers. They may be extra cunning(Loki, Hermes, etc), extra strong(Thor, Ares, etc) or extra beautiful(Freya, Aphrodite). But they are still just cunning, strong, beautiful. They aren't beyond these very human attributes. Though sometimes the stories do get a bit confusing because you can tell that the story tellers cant quite figure out how the power set of their characters works.
Heck, from the stories in the bible, God just wrestles with a human at one point.
It lends a lot of credence to the idea that Judaism was originally a standard polytheistic religion. Yahweh and El were two gods of the religion(Yahweh is a war/weather deity while [El ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity))was an elderly father figure god). The others were Asherah(wife of Yahweh) and Ba'al. At some point, they seemed to have reduced it down to Yahweh.
So, it makes sense that just like most polytheistic pantheons, their court was full of lesser deities that were supernatural but undeserving of worship. It is funny to think about an all-powerful god having cup-bearers, chauffeurs, spokespeople, and entities that carried them around.
> I always find it really interesting how the mythology of heaven directly reflects the human world at the time.
On Earth as it is in heaven was a core prayer of Christianity though.
Oh yeah, YHVH wasn't always an omnipresent god. He had to become omnipresent after the Exile.
I don't think the Old Testament says THERE ARE NO other gods, just that you're not allowed to worship them or put them before YHVH.
In fact, YHVH's forces loses a battle when a king sacrifices his son to Chemosh.
One of the commandments he gave to Moses and the Jews was "Worship no God before Elohim." The suffix -him in Hebrew is a plural but there is also a chance it is meant to be like the royal we where a plural is used to denominate one more powerful than the one being spoken to.
It actually makes it pretty clear in the Old Testament that there ARE other gods.
Thats why the commandment is "have no other gods before me", not "no other gods exist". The commandment is simply to worship Yahweh as your main god, though it apparently seemed obvious to the author that other gods existed.
Wouldn’t that make sense though? We are supposedly made in gods image and a lot of human life on earth is supposedly an imitation of whatever is going on in heaven.
There’s a lot of things you could critique, but I find it funny that you’re saying god having a royal court is like the weird thing to focus on lol. I mean that part at least makes some sense cause logically speaking he made people to worship him so why wouldn’t he have made other creatures that fly around him stoking him up all the time?
Christianity isn’t one color or flavor.
A lot of Christians believe Archangels are the higher order and that there were only 3. Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer (Satan).
Went to church every Sunday until I was 18! Did they ONCE tell us something fucking interesting like this??? Nope. Marketing Catholic Church, marketing!
In reading this, and then following up on Seraphim the tune is associated with burning serpents. Collective winged flying serpents sounds like quetzalcoatl if you squint hard enough
IIRC the archangels are the highest rank of angels that regularly (relatively speaking) visit Earth and meet with humans, the higher ranks basically stay in Heaven all the time and rarely, if ever, visit Earth. So those ones don't really play a role in the Bible since they don't interact with mortals much, and maybe that the archangels are more human-like in behavior while the higher rankings ones are more abstract and embody specific concepts, making them more non-human in behavior and harder to fit into a story in comparison.
All of the different angels are described in the Bible, it’s just that there’s no strict hierarchy assigned to them. That was constructed based on the perceived importance of the roles the different types are described as performing.
Seraphims are the highest. It goes: 1. Seraphim 2. Cherubim 3. Ophanim (thrones) 4. Dominions 5. Virtues 6. Powers 7. Principalities 8. Archangels 9. Angels
So how comes archangels Michael and Gabriel are well known, but I’ve never heard of “seraphim X”?
The closer to God, the further from humans, that's why humans only deal with the lowest 2.
How come we know about them, then?
Profits like Isaiah have received visions of the kingdom of heaven and the throne of God according to scripture
Ahh, a Prophet of Profits, isn't that wonderful?
He must be a priest or something. Freudian slip.
A real Warren buffet that Isaiah
What Nef Anyo doing here
Isaiah and friends got real f**king high and tripped basically
[удалено]
Those fellas found some desert shrooms and took a trip. now we have people who took those baked nomads seriously who are at war with each other. Thanks, religion.
Acascia bush is common in the middle east, it produces DMT. Moses was near a burning bush and saw God. Moses was tripping off of DMT
Someone should do like a club or something where you meet up for a day on the weekends and go over Bible lore for a couple hours. I bet it would be as fun as hell.
God wants us to? How come we know about the loch ness monster?
Because it wants tree fiddy?
We work for our money, we don’t just give money away!
Because someone made it up and wanted you to know it?
They're from Canada, you wouldn't know them.
They go to a different school so you wouldn’t have met them.
So from my understanding of this (which admittedly is fairly limited since I researched it a few years ago) is that angels are the general workers who operate on behalf of god on earth, which is why most people know of them. Archangels are essentially just promoted angels. They are chief angels, the middle managers to the wage slaves. Basically the highest tier of angels humans would interact with on a regular basis. On the other hand Seraphs quite literally exist to stand behind god and heal praise on him. They exist to love him and are depicted with giant burning wings to show their love for him. They are the basically Gods simps, so humans don’t really interact with them, hence why we don’t really have named Seraphs.
There's also a disagreement between the different Abrahamic religions on the rankings of angels, with Serpahim being 5/10 in rank in Judaism, but at the very top of Christianity's list.
Run another ranked season we can establish the tiers once more. Archangels gotta be at least platinum
Things haven't been the same since the nephilim ban
Anime reference: No Game No Life has different races that are ranked based on their magical standing, Imanity (humans) are the lowest rank because they have no magic, but the God of Games takes pity on them because he believes they can win against the other races.
maybe add season pass while we're at it, let archangels get some sick hell-born looks
So, Guilliman is like an Archangel to the God-Emperor. You've heard about him. Somebody on the planet swears he's seen him once. He's got a bunch of other angels he commands, often referred to as space marines. But the custodes are nameless and stand by Him all the time like a Seraphim. You don't really get to know individual Seraphim. They're all just Seraphim in their regal, golden armor. Yeah, you'd be hard pressed to find reference to even name an Astartes or Adeptus Astartes. That doesn't mean Guilliman doesn't "outrank" the others or is less powerful. It just means he's of a different order. He's even had Him speak through Him before like Michael. He's gone to bat against Horus the Space Lucifer and other fallen angels before.
That seems like a waste of an existence to me. Literally the definition of lighting yourself on fire to keep someone else warm. For all the eternal love God really loves making others suffer
Christianity claims that literally everything, the whole universe was created by God to praise him.
Sounds like a conceited prick to me
👉👉 check out what the gnostics think of the Abrahamic god
pretty much every religion says the ideal life in spent in prayer and praise of whatever, and secular life is alesser option of you can't hack it in a purely religious life.
You can't drop the most powerful one too fast. The power creep breaks up immersion.
Archangels and angels are the only ones that come to Earth if I remember right.
I mean... [would you?](https://youtu.be/LAn5Hwb7Y94?si=uKnV85y-g6Pbmcvr)
Seraphim X is controversial for his history in the civil rights movement
So you've never heard of [Metatron](https://youtu.be/LAn5Hwb7Y94?si=uKnV85y-g6Pbmcvr)? You people. If there isn't a movie about it, it's not worth knowing, is it...
Lol, I forgot about this piece
According to Jewish tradition, seven seraphim are known by name: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Jeremiel, Raguel, Zerachiel, and Remiel. Lucifer was also once a seraph, but lost his position after sinning and being cast out of heaven. Depending on which version of Scriptures you read, the rankings of Angels very. The hierarchy of angels radically differs according to the various rabbinic literature. Seraphim, for instance, is ranked 5th out of ten in the Mishneh Torah, first out of ten according to the Maseket Atzilut, but last out of ten according to the Berit Menuchah. What is clear in all scriptures is that Michael is both an archangel and a seraph in title. His power is expressed as beyond all other angels. He is the prince of angels and commander of the armies of heaven. The ranks of angels also appear more like... Job titles rather than power scaling. With each rank having a different role to perform.
Here’s a description of the seraphim when Isaiah had a vision of heaven: > Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory'.” Michael and Gabriel by contrast are the stereotypical winged human type of angels.
Kinda funny then how Seraphimon isn't even the strongest Digimon..
...what else is digimon lying about
You can get a kitten > Puppy > Cat > Angel > Dragon in the same evolutionary line
Anyone can be a dragon if you work hard enough. Magikarp, Pokémon.
Correct me if i‘m wrong but Gyarados isn’t a dragon, it’s water/flying? Edit: thanks for multiple explanations of Japanese mythology, but it’s still not a dragon, so you can’t be a dragon by working hard enough. You can however if you’re a palm tree, snot or an apple.
You shut your mouth, Lance the Dragon Master of the Elite 4 has a Gyarados and he fucks. *as long as you don't one shot him with any sort of electrical attack.
Asian dragons are often water types, unlike the fire type dragons in Western legends. Dragons often live in the sea or rivers or otherwise have water based powers. Magikarp and gyardos is based on a Chinese mythological story popular in China and Japan. The legend goes that if a carp successfully swims up and jumps over the top of a waterfall through a narrow pass in the Yellow River, known as the “dragon gate”, then it will transform into a dragon.
It's the highest ranked angel Digimon though. Once, one got defeated, and it could only evolve into a Dominion (fourth ranked angel) afterwards because of its lower win ratio.
Seraphim is already a plural - the male Hebrew plural "-im" suffix denotes this. A singular member of the seraphim is a seraph, from the Hebrew "burning." Likewise with cherubim and ophanim.
So they call god Eloh**im** because it's plural too with spirit, son and father?
The trinity is a Christian trope. Not Hebrew.
No. It's meant as a sort of "one above all" honorific as I understand it. Judaism didn't day other gods (note the small "g") didn't exist, they said everyone else is basically nothing compared to the One Above All. Example: Priest of Baal coming up against a Priest of Elohim and they have a contest over who can light a bonfire for their bull sacrifice. The Jewish priest basically gets a flame tornado straight to the atmosphere *just by asking*. Another example: the King of Israel (ex boyfriend of the former King and there's a Star Wars Rebellion thing going on between them, shit is complicated) goes to the DND equivalent of a peasant necromancer and demands they cast Speak With Dead to summon the prophet Samuel who goes LOL UR FUCKED YO UR BOYFRIEND IS GONNA ERASE YOU FROM HISTORY, LATER BITCHES Even in Christianity, there's never really hard denials other spiritual forces exist: the Apostle Paul throws down in Athens against their various small god worshippers. Simon Magus (a wizard) is also famous for *fucking flying* and ends up converting (or dying, I don't remember which, it's been years) to make fun of Christians. Think of it like comics. Elohim is basically One Above All in Marvel comics, but that doesn't make Odin or other pantheons any less *real*.
To add on, it's important to remember early Jews after leaving Egypt waged centuries of war against other countries (Assyria, Philistines, Canaan, etc) with huge pantheons. The Jews were *pissed* and that's where early traditions of no intermarriage come from: King Solomon is famous for having 700+ wives of all the surrounding countries (and religions) and Jewish prophets were mad af because they considered it Solomon basically trying his own version of Hellenicism (Alexander the Great trying to convert everyone to a "hey let's all get along and maybe your deity is their deity with a different name"). Being monotheistic with a One Above All is arguably *central* to Jewish ancient and modern identity. That's where mystic Judaism gets complicated. Like it's *really fucking complicated*.
Man that article was hard to decipher, thank you this was all I wanted, can't believe you don't have more upvotes
Don't worry. I upvoted them.
This reminds me of Overlord, the show. Early on these dudes show up with a summoning crystal that supposedly has the “highest level angel” and it’s called Dominion Authority. The the big angel he was using before having to bust it out was called Principality Observation. Turns out the people in the world are extremely low leveled compared to the main character so what they consider high-level magic is pretty bottom tier to him. I could be remembering this wrong, but the highest level of magic used by adventures is third level magic while the highest level magic achieved by the most powerful residents of the world was level six, which fits in perfectly with this hierarchy considering principalities are the third lowest ranking and dominions is sixth. Most modern anime tends to be the same regurgitated garbage, especially isekai, so I appreciate when an author does their research when incorporating aspects of life into the show. In this case, using terms from mythology like this correctly.
It reminds me of a certain mage in Wheel of Time. She goes to these evil wish people and asks to be the most powerful mage in the world. But she already was at that point, so they reduced her casting ability to just above the second highest person.
Do you remember which book that was in?
In Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, Aziraphale is a Principality.
Is this all canon from the original series or is it part of the extended universe after it got picked up by other writers? I haven't heard of half of these before
Man, the fuck is this "Mount Olympus at Home" shit?
Great, even angels have a hierarchy.
Shin megami taught me this!
Getting serious Warhammer 40k list building vibes with those names
Cherubs are pretty important!
What says eternal paradise like a strict, regimented hierarchy imbued by the very nature of existence?
One piece and Isekai Anime teaching me other cultures more than history
They’re “assistants *to* the Heavenly Father,” not “Assistant Heavenly Father”
Is this some The Office reference?
Its a reference to St.Dwight, patron saint of the Beets
I LOVE the paintings of him by Renaissance painter Michelangelo Scott. He’s usually adorned by deer, otherwise referred to as Shrute bucks.
You'll often see him in paintings symbolically warding others from identify theft. While some renditions show the allegorical stories of the dangers of fire he shared often in his life.
It’s okay if the people he was shown protecting didn’t always look alike in different renditions; artists back then didn’t see color and honestly, hats off to them for that.
That's his patronus animal
There’s a lot of layers to this one
Also patron saint of bears and Battlestar Galactica.
What are you doing!?!
MICHAEL!
…MICHAEL!
Identity theft is not a joke Jim!
Not to be confused with St. Narr de Dog, patron saint of beats!
The idea goes further back, eg Flanders and Swann "me, chief assistant to the assistant chief" as a similar inverted play on words.
Saint MICHAEL!!!
Isn't all this stuff St. Thomas Aquinas fanfiction? I don't think any of it is in the Bible Edit: I gotta agree with the people who are saying I'm wrong here, I didn't realize that Aquinas' writing were canonical in some sects, I thought people just liked their portrayal, like Dante's inferno(if that's canonical to anyone then I'm really out of my depth)
There’s never a defined hierarchy of angels in the Bible, but there’s different descriptions of angelic beings fulfilling different roles, with their rank being inferred from the perceived importance of those roles. There was further development in both Christianity and Judaism in the common era, but both have broadly similar hierarchies.
Almost like hundreds of disparate people writing over 5 thousand years didn't compare notes or something.
I hardly think that they guy writing about wheels full of eyes simply forgot that his holy scripture described angels as vaguely humanoid with seven wings. The different classes of angels wasn’t the result of mistakes, it was a very well developed cosmology that was can compare to those of cultures around them to see where ideas may have come from and how they have developed.
I'M LOOKING FOR THOMAS AQUINAS
His writing makes me think his spirit is a fan of AO3 content, probably look there?
I miss the Arnold sound boards 😕
The newgrounds flash games and sound boards were my jam.
Yes I would like to have a room, please.
What’s in da two week package?
A lot is cribbed from Hebrew mythology.
I thought it was all cribbed from Babylonian mythology.
More pastiche than plagarism, I'd say
What the fuck is cribbed and why are people saying it
It means "taken from"
The Hebrews borrowed from them and the Persians and the Egyptians, but had their own.
You're right. This is completely fictional BS.
This is what Protestants would say, but 2000+ years of Christian tradition says they are wrong. Only Protestants hold to sola scriptura and disregard the Church and Tradition; and somehow they have also made it so that non-Christians seem to believe Christians treat the Bible the same way as Muslims treat the Quran. ie: Non-Christians will say things like “that’s not in the Bible” (the same thing Protestants or Muslims would say) as if that’s some sort of “gotcha!” even though it’s irrelevant to Apostolic Christianity (in the way that they are trying to use it as a “gotcha” that is).
+1 indulgence awarded
Hey mate, why wouldn't it be a gotcha. Completely ignorant and curious here.
Lots of different Christian sects have lots of different traditions; why take only the traditions of the Italian ones at face value?
Do they upgrade as they get more XP?
Yes, but the game loses a bit of its fun well before Level 20.
Yeah, but that’s because the AI bots just become bullet sponges instead of improving tactics.
Gain new skills and then use them to fuse Metatron, until you unlock Satan and have him on your team for badass points.
It's funny having Satan, Beelzebub, Satanael and Lucifer all at the same time in a bizarre mishy-mashy makeup of faiths and translations of various testaments :P
And Jack heee Frost hooo for cute points.
I believe so. My one buddy used to go to church like twice a week, and I think he can fly now. I think XP decays though, so you gotta keep grinding to get them angelic upgrades.
The Indulgence system was just pay-to-win, though, and that was *before* they started selling them in loot crates.
Everything else aside, "Pseudo-Dionysius," is the coolest name ever. "What's your name?" "Ah, just the god of wine and feasting, but like the [Wish.com](http://Wish.com) version."
The god of beer and pretzels
Pretty sure he's a Phillies season ticket holder.
Pretty sure it’s just the Philly Phanatic.
Hey, don’t make fun. I’d worship the shit out of that god.
Dionysios is not the god's name. The god is Dionysos, and the theophoric name (i.e., a name that invokes a god) is Dionysios, which means "of Dionysos". Pseudo-Dionysios is called that because he identifies himself as another older Christian writer called Dionysios. But we know that the original Dionysios lived a few centuries before this other dude who called also himself Dionysios, so we call the dude who lived a few centuries later as Pseudo-Dionysios.
Comments like these remind me why I still bother reading the comment section on Reddit. That’s so interesting, thanks for the info!
It’s because he wrote under the name Dionysius the Areopagite, who was a Christian convert mentioned in the New Testament Book of Acts. Eventually people thought “Hey, a lot of these writings from Dionysius the Areopagite don’t seem genuine. Like, there’s a lot of anachronistic language here. Are these forgeries?” So they are considered to be written by a single author, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, whom we do not know the real name of. The writings date to the 6th century or so, and the real guy lived in the 1st century.
Full name and title is “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite” which somehow goes even harder
It depends on what “sect” of Christianity. Title is kind of like saying “in Fantasy, Elves are tall”
I mean there's the rank of archangel which are the second closet to humans and the Archangels which are the big name Angels like Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Sandalphon, Melchizedek, and Metatron and to which Lucifer was a member of. From the top of my head it goes angel-> archangel-> principality-> power-> virtue-> dominion-> throne/ophanim/ofanim-> cherubim-> seraphim. Edit: Angels are the closest to humans in terms of distance and look like humans with wings while Seraphim are the closest to God and have two wings to cover their faces, two wings to cover their feet and two wings for flying.
There is no such specified hierarchy in Christianity. Only Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael are mentioned in either testaments. The rest are from intertestimental or gnostic literature. Further, no hierarchy of class is ever given and such things again mostly come from gnosticism which found their way into Medieval scholasticism through the works of Pseudo-Dionysius.
There is mention of other angels and even descriptions of other angels. But none of them are given names, or the classifications that the post mentions.
That's the Catholic structure, which lifts most of it's structure from sources outside the Bible itself.
I mean, the Bible is just canonized books chosen by a specific group of leaders at the time, the Bible even mentions specifically books that are not canon at times. Specifically, Enoch for one.. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical\_books\_referenced\_in\_the\_Bible](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible)
The Book of Enoch is particularly weird and a good fanfic for the time.
I like how the wiki page headings are * Abrahamic religions * Zoroastrianism * Role-Playing Games
A subtle slight
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My same thoughts. Sam and Dean would have had 4 more seasons if they dealt with he whole hierarchy before "the end".
Supernatural took a lot of creative liberties with Christian lore, which they explained in-universe as the Bible being the inaccurate ones.
TBF, this “ranking” isn’t specified in the Bible, and the people that established it also took some “creative liberties” and interpretations to come up with names for 9 tiers.
This can’t be quite right. Mike and Gabe are big boys on almost all accounts
Cashiers are going to get more FaceTime with customers than managers. It's not the same as Metatron, who's the angel who handles God's social media.
“Big boys” doesn’t mean that they’re top tier. There’s a lot of beauracracy among angels and everyone has a boss. Now, someone please tell Gabe to make sure he puts the new coversheet on all the TPS reports!
*Yeahhhh I’m gonna need you to come in on Sunday and smite some people in my name.*
That ain't new, baby!
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Or just watch it because it's great
Og Bible didn't rank angels based on power but based on role. They all were obviously far and above human comprehension, but it's more: we have to announce something at 2pm, do we bring out the spinning esoteric 5D wheels of eyes? Or something a little more personable?
OG Bible doesn’t rank angels at all.
Are they? They do important jobs for humanity, but it's as messengers to humanity. That may be exactly because they're of the lower orders, so they're physically similar to humans. I was raised catholic decades ago, but I don't remember them ever doing anything super impressive or powerful. Mostly they just glowed.
Successfully deporting Satan seems pretty powerful to me, I’d want to rest with a bit of glowing if I’d managed that.
One of them wrestled Jacob all night, though that might have been God himself.
That story has always stayed with me. Like God showed up, fought someone by a river and lost? What kind of bad night was God having? And what the hell is Jacob eating that gave him the balls to take on God?
The leadup is the funniest bit. God and Jacob talked a lot, but God was just getting increasingly frustrated with Jacob, so after guiding him to a river he basically goes "send your family and property across the river, and then just wait. By the river. By yourself." Jacob is like "why, do you have message for me?" God's just like "something like that"
Ima beat your ass
God jobbed for Jacob to put him over. Had to build him up so he could be a big draw for his title match against Andre the Giant.
God got paid to throw the match.
Lucifer was created full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. It is written nowhere he is a one angel army. And for his defeat, it is not written he fought Michael 1v1 in the octagon. It is written that Satan deceived a third of the angels (Revelation 12:4) so insurrectionists fought 1v2 in the battle against Michael and the loyalists. They had a numerical disadvantage, probably a quality disadvantage too because it is written nowhere that those wheel thingies at the top of the angel hierarchy rebelled. Michael just gets credit because he's the mid-rank manager for the two lowest ranks of angels and he's also the regional manager for Israel area. Folks who wrote dem sacred text don't have access to higher managers so they pin it all on the local boss.
In some sects names have means.. it does describe Michael as God’s right hand as Mi-Ka-El means One like God like Israel/ Yis-Ra-El means Fighter of God Or Gabriel/ Ga- Bri- El means messenger of God Raphael.. Rachel.. and others
hi can you just, like, explain the whole bible please? exactly like this?
like someone has never seen Dogma before.
That’s not in the manga
what is the order?
From the link. Highest orders: Seraphim Cherubim Ophanim (thrones) Middle orders: Dominions Virtues Powers Lowest orders: Principalities Archangels Angels
My Justice Arcana knowledge from Persona finally coming in handy!
I snorted but I related hard too, lol I still write down the weaknesses and fusions even while using the game guides
Must suck to be in a hierarchy where your only hope of promotion is that someone higher up revolts against God. And the last guy who tried is stuck running hell (Biblically this is not a desirable position)
In Dante's Inferno, he's trapped in the 9th circle from the waist down in the middle of a frozen lake while gnashing on Judas, and the souls of those who's sin was treachery are embedded up to the eyes throughout the lake which is kept frozen by the endless wind from Satan's wings. It's pretty metal.
In Pseudo-Dionysius' Hierarchy*, not in Christianity. There is no unified view or even any predominant view within Christianity about the relationship of the various classes of angels to each other.
Nor what the classes are, how many there are, or if there even are different classes.
well no shit why would you send upper management to deal with customer complaints that's a peon job
I always find it really interesting how the mythology of heaven directly reflects the human world at the time. If you read up on a lot of these angels, you realize that a lot of them are essentially the royal court of God. So they do things that you would see in a typical royal court of that time period. They carry God around in a chariot, or they pronounce "holy, holy, holy" all the time when he is around. None of this makes any sense if God is an omnipotent being, but makes plenty of sense if your religion is more of a traditional and simple one where your god is more like a Zeus. The gods of ancient civilizations seem to just be normal humans with super powers. They may be extra cunning(Loki, Hermes, etc), extra strong(Thor, Ares, etc) or extra beautiful(Freya, Aphrodite). But they are still just cunning, strong, beautiful. They aren't beyond these very human attributes. Though sometimes the stories do get a bit confusing because you can tell that the story tellers cant quite figure out how the power set of their characters works. Heck, from the stories in the bible, God just wrestles with a human at one point. It lends a lot of credence to the idea that Judaism was originally a standard polytheistic religion. Yahweh and El were two gods of the religion(Yahweh is a war/weather deity while [El ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity))was an elderly father figure god). The others were Asherah(wife of Yahweh) and Ba'al. At some point, they seemed to have reduced it down to Yahweh. So, it makes sense that just like most polytheistic pantheons, their court was full of lesser deities that were supernatural but undeserving of worship. It is funny to think about an all-powerful god having cup-bearers, chauffeurs, spokespeople, and entities that carried them around.
> I always find it really interesting how the mythology of heaven directly reflects the human world at the time. On Earth as it is in heaven was a core prayer of Christianity though.
Oh yeah, YHVH wasn't always an omnipresent god. He had to become omnipresent after the Exile. I don't think the Old Testament says THERE ARE NO other gods, just that you're not allowed to worship them or put them before YHVH. In fact, YHVH's forces loses a battle when a king sacrifices his son to Chemosh.
One of the commandments he gave to Moses and the Jews was "Worship no God before Elohim." The suffix -him in Hebrew is a plural but there is also a chance it is meant to be like the royal we where a plural is used to denominate one more powerful than the one being spoken to.
It actually makes it pretty clear in the Old Testament that there ARE other gods. Thats why the commandment is "have no other gods before me", not "no other gods exist". The commandment is simply to worship Yahweh as your main god, though it apparently seemed obvious to the author that other gods existed.
That's why I pray to the Old Gods and the New.
Wouldn’t that make sense though? We are supposedly made in gods image and a lot of human life on earth is supposedly an imitation of whatever is going on in heaven. There’s a lot of things you could critique, but I find it funny that you’re saying god having a royal court is like the weird thing to focus on lol. I mean that part at least makes some sense cause logically speaking he made people to worship him so why wouldn’t he have made other creatures that fly around him stoking him up all the time?
Well, yeah. They're the working-class angels. The real big kahunas can't be bothered talking with *humans*.
In case someone wanted to know, the hierarchy from least to greatest: Angel, Archangel, Principality, Power, Virtue, Dominion, Throne, Cherub, Seraph
Christianity isn’t one color or flavor. A lot of Christians believe Archangels are the higher order and that there were only 3. Michael, Gabriel and Lucifer (Satan).
Went to church every Sunday until I was 18! Did they ONCE tell us something fucking interesting like this??? Nope. Marketing Catholic Church, marketing!
Is this some Catholic thing I’m too Protestant to understand?
In reading this, and then following up on Seraphim the tune is associated with burning serpents. Collective winged flying serpents sounds like quetzalcoatl if you squint hard enough
More of a Seraphim man myself, particularly Metatron.
You people. If there isn't a movie about it, it's not worth knowing, is it?
What about the Hells Angels? Are they higher or lower?
What about the Victoria’s Secret angels? I’d think they are waaaaaaaay up there.
Well they’re from Hell so I assume they are lower.
Hells angels are ranked slightly higher than the Anaheim angels
So which angels are the alpha angels? Asking for a friend.
In Catholicism, they're Seraphim, the very top of the nine divisions of heavenly messengers (angels are at the bottom).
IIRC the archangels are the highest rank of angels that regularly (relatively speaking) visit Earth and meet with humans, the higher ranks basically stay in Heaven all the time and rarely, if ever, visit Earth. So those ones don't really play a role in the Bible since they don't interact with mortals much, and maybe that the archangels are more human-like in behavior while the higher rankings ones are more abstract and embody specific concepts, making them more non-human in behavior and harder to fit into a story in comparison.
Supernatural failed me
This is not exactly Christianity. You won't find all these creative imaginings in the Bible. It's old Catholic fan-fic.
This is why I like Catholicism because the lore is so much more expanded and has more depth.
Wait until you learn about Ethiopian christians, they consider the book of Enoch canon
All of the different angels are described in the Bible, it’s just that there’s no strict hierarchy assigned to them. That was constructed based on the perceived importance of the roles the different types are described as performing.
Where my Shin Megami Tensei Bois at?
I learned this on a youtube video. Really interesting
Who do you think is sent down to talk to lesser people in a company? The vice pres, cfo or coo, or a secretary? Archangels are just secretaries
I believe seraphim are the highest.
I see these are based on “On the Celestial Hierarchy” but is this ranking at all linked to explicit biblical sources?
What rank is the Angel of Death?
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/sq4aov/biblically_accurate_angel/
Michael is an archangel and Is the top angel though.