Angels in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

The word “angel” comes from the Greek angelos, which means messenger. It translates the Hebrew malakh, and the Arabic malak comes from the same Semitic root. In the oldest biblical stories, the “angel of the Lord” appears to Hagar in the desert, stops Abraham’s hand as he is about to sacrifice Isaac and wrestles, in some readings, with Jacob. These figures are often hard to tell apart from God himself: they speak in his name and vanish once the message is delivered.

Other heavenly beings in the Hebrew Bible are not called messengers at all. Cherubim guard the way to the tree of life after Adam and Eve leave Eden, and two golden cherubim spread their wings over the Ark of the Covenant. In Isaiah’s vision in the Temple, seraphim with six wings cry “Holy, holy, holy” around the throne of God. The prophet Ezekiel describes living creatures with four faces and wheels full of eyes.

Names and ranks came later. Only the Book of Daniel, written in the second century BCE, names angels: Gabriel, who explains Daniel’s visions, and Michael, the protector of Israel. Around the same time the Book of Watchers, part of 1 Enoch, listed a group of archangels with their tasks. Historians often connect this growing interest in angels with contact with Persian ideas during and after the Babylonian exile, though how much was borrowed is debated. Later rabbinic and mystical writings developed a rich angelology of their own, including the figure of Metatron.

The Book of Tobit, a Jewish story probably written in the third or second century BCE and preserved in the Greek Bible, adds a third name. Raphael travels in human disguise with the young Tobias, protects him on the road and heals his father’s blindness. Only at the end does he reveal himself as “one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord”. Catholic and Orthodox Christians include Tobit in their Bibles, while Jews and most Protestants do not.

The New Testament takes angels for granted. Gabriel announces the births of John the Baptist and Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, angels appear at the empty tomb, and the Book of Revelation describes Michael and his angels fighting the dragon. Paul’s letters mention thrones, dominions, principalities and powers, terms later read as ranks of angels.

Around 500 CE an anonymous Christian writer, who presented himself as Dionysius, a convert of Paul in Athens, wrote The Celestial Hierarchy. Scholars call him Pseudo-Dionysius. He arranged the angels into nine choirs in three groups: seraphim, cherubim and thrones nearest to God; then dominions, virtues and powers; then principalities, archangels and angels, closest to humanity. Each rank passes divine light to the one below. This scheme shaped medieval theology, art and poetry, including Dante’s Paradiso.

Medieval theologians asked what angels are made of. Thomas Aquinas, known as the “Angelic Doctor”, taught that angels are pure spirits without bodies, each one a distinct kind of being, who know by intellect rather than by the senses. When they appear to humans, he argued, they take on a form for that purpose. The Western Church was also cautious about naming angels: a council in Rome in 745 condemned prayers to angels other than those named in scripture, and Catholic practice still recognises only Michael, Gabriel and Raphael by name.

In Islam angels are a core belief. The Quran describes them as servants of God who do not disobey his commands, and a widely cited hadith says they were created from light. Jibril (Gabriel) brought the revelation to the Prophet Muhammad. Tradition names Israfil as the angel who will sound the trumpet at the end of time, and ‘Izra’il as the angel of death. Two angels, Munkar and Nakir, question the dead in the grave, and two noble scribes record every person’s deeds. Mainstream Islamic teaching holds that Iblis, the Devil, was not an angel but one of the jinn.

Belief in guardian angels grew from a few scriptural hints. Jesus warns his disciples not to despise “these little ones”, for “their angels” always see the face of God. Early Christian writers concluded that each person is given an angel for protection, and the Catholic Church later fixed a feast of the Guardian Angels on 2 October. Orthodox Christians likewise pray to their guardian angel, and Jewish tradition speaks of angels who accompany people home on the eve of the Sabbath.

Monks and nuns were sometimes said to live an “angelic life”, devoted to praise as the angels are in heaven. The singing of the Sanctus in Christian worship echoes the cry of the seraphim, and the Kedushah prayer in the synagogue repeats the same words from Isaiah. In this sense worshippers on earth are understood to join a liturgy already taking place in heaven.

Art gave angels the shape most people know today. The earliest Christian images, such as a painting of the Annunciation in the Roman catacombs, show the angel as a young man without wings. From around the late fourth century artists added wings, perhaps borrowing from images of the Greek and Roman goddess of victory, Nike or Victoria. Halos, white robes and later the chubby infant angels of the Renaissance followed. Islamic art, especially Persian and Ottoman miniatures, also depicts angels, sometimes with brightly coloured wings, in scenes such as the Prophet’s night journey.

Angels remain part of the official teaching of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though how literally believers understand them varies widely. Many Jewish thinkers, following Maimonides, have interpreted angels as forces or intermediaries rather than winged beings, while many Christians and Muslims understand them as real, personal beings. Surveys in the United States have repeatedly found that a large majority of adults say they believe in angels.

In popular culture angels have taken on a life of their own. Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) features a kindly angel earning his wings, and Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987) imagines angels quietly listening to the thoughts of Berliners. The guardian angel figurine, the angel on top of the Christmas tree and the “angel numbers” of modern spirituality are far from scripture, yet they show how deeply the idea of a protecting messenger has entered everyday life.