WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.120 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I hope you're 00:00:02.120 --> 00:00:03.899 ready to stretch your brain a little bit today 00:00:03.899 --> 00:00:07.919 because we are tackling a subject that I think 00:00:07.919 --> 00:00:10.539 everyone thinks they know. Oh, absolutely. But, 00:00:10.580 --> 00:00:13.019 and I'm going to go out on a limb here, most 00:00:13.019 --> 00:00:15.179 of us probably have it completely wrong. We're 00:00:15.179 --> 00:00:17.559 looking at something that sits right on the edge 00:00:17.559 --> 00:00:20.399 of, you know, human perception. It is certainly 00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:23.000 a topic where pop culture has sort of completely 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:25.260 overwritten the original source code. We're talking 00:00:25.260 --> 00:00:27.839 about angels. Exactly. When I say the word angel, 00:00:27.960 --> 00:00:30.940 what pops into your head? Probably a chubby baby 00:00:30.940 --> 00:00:34.240 with wings, right? Maybe a harp, sitting on a 00:00:34.240 --> 00:00:36.460 cloud, looking very benevolent and, I don't know, 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:39.500 slightly bored. Or maybe a beautiful person in 00:00:39.500 --> 00:00:41.500 a white robe saving you from stepping in front 00:00:41.500 --> 00:00:43.659 of a bus. That's the one. The guardian angel 00:00:43.659 --> 00:00:46.020 trope. That is the standard imagery. But if you 00:00:46.020 --> 00:00:48.759 actually dig into the history, the theology, 00:00:49.079 --> 00:00:51.500 and the philosophy, which is our mission today, 00:00:51.700 --> 00:00:54.560 you find something vastly more complex. It's 00:00:54.560 --> 00:00:57.399 a rabbit hole. It really is. You find beings 00:00:57.399 --> 00:01:00.119 made of fire and light. You find cosmic wheels 00:01:00.119 --> 00:01:03.060 covered in eyes. Entities that don't just deliver 00:01:03.060 --> 00:01:05.760 messages but actually are the message. It really 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:08.019 is a journey from the, well, the mundane to the 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:11.579 metaphysical. We're taking a comprehensive stack 00:01:11.579 --> 00:01:14.299 of historical and theological texts and we're 00:01:14.299 --> 00:01:17.120 primarily using the very extensive Wikipedia 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:21.400 entry on Angel as our roadmap to unpack the evolution 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:24.640 of this concept across millennia. Right. We're 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:27.340 going to look at how a word for basically a mailman 00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:30.780 turned into a supernatural superpower. And to 00:01:30.780 --> 00:01:32.239 hook you in right from the start, let me just 00:01:32.239 --> 00:01:33.900 drop a couple of facts we found in the research 00:01:33.900 --> 00:01:36.560 that just, they blew my mind. Okay. First off, 00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:38.079 for the first few centuries of Christianity, 00:01:38.500 --> 00:01:41.480 angels in art didn't have wings. No way. At all. 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:43.819 They were just guys. Regular guys in tunics. 00:01:43.900 --> 00:01:46.200 And second, and this is the big one for me, there 00:01:46.200 --> 00:01:48.159 is a very strong argument in some theological 00:01:48.159 --> 00:01:50.060 traditions that humans are actually superior 00:01:50.060 --> 00:01:52.719 to angels. Which sounds completely counterintuitive 00:01:52.719 --> 00:01:54.620 until you understand the mechanics of free will. 00:01:54.840 --> 00:01:58.420 It changes the entire power dynamic of the cosmos. 00:01:58.719 --> 00:02:01.480 It really does. So before we get into the linguistic 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:05.040 detective work, set the stage for us. Why do 00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:09.150 we even have... Angels, like conceptually, if 00:02:09.150 --> 00:02:11.689 you have a God who is all powerful, why does 00:02:11.689 --> 00:02:13.689 he need a staff? Why does he need a middleman? 00:02:13.830 --> 00:02:16.330 That is the fundamental question. And it really 00:02:16.330 --> 00:02:18.770 comes down to the problem of the gap. In almost 00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:22.050 every major religion, you have the profane, that's 00:02:22.050 --> 00:02:24.969 us, the messy, physical, earthbound reality. 00:02:25.289 --> 00:02:27.349 Right. We are dust. We are blood. We are temporary. 00:02:27.750 --> 00:02:29.669 Exactly. And then you have the transcendent, 00:02:29.669 --> 00:02:32.770 the divine. which is holy, distant, and often 00:02:32.770 --> 00:02:34.810 just too overwhelming to interact with directly. 00:02:35.110 --> 00:02:37.629 So if the two touch, the profane might just burn 00:02:37.629 --> 00:02:39.889 up, like touching a high -voltage wire? That's 00:02:39.889 --> 00:02:42.430 a perfect analogy. As theology evolved, particularly 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:45.349 in the monotheistic traditions, God became seen 00:02:45.349 --> 00:02:48.969 as more abstract, more distant, and more holy. 00:02:49.129 --> 00:02:51.150 You couldn't just have God walking in the garden 00:02:51.150 --> 00:02:53.810 in the cool of the day as easily as in the earliest 00:02:53.810 --> 00:02:56.449 stories. It's a different scale of being. A totally 00:02:56.449 --> 00:02:59.599 different scale. So if God is the consuming fire 00:02:59.599 --> 00:03:02.159 of the universe, you need a bucker zone. You 00:03:02.159 --> 00:03:03.939 need a transformer to step down the voltage. 00:03:04.500 --> 00:03:07.180 Angels represent humanity's attempt to solve 00:03:07.180 --> 00:03:10.080 the problem of a distant God. They bridge that 00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:13.460 massive gap between the creator and the created. 00:03:13.620 --> 00:03:16.060 Yeah. Okay. So they are the cosmic middlemen. 00:03:16.120 --> 00:03:19.460 They are the interface. I like that. So let's 00:03:19.460 --> 00:03:21.240 look at the job description then. I love etymology 00:03:21.240 --> 00:03:23.340 because it usually reveals the humble origins 00:03:23.340 --> 00:03:26.840 of these huge ideas. Where does the word angel 00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:28.939 actually come from? Because we use it so casually 00:03:28.939 --> 00:03:32.199 now. It's a classic case of a job title becoming 00:03:32.199 --> 00:03:34.759 a species name. Yeah. In modern English, we get 00:03:34.759 --> 00:03:37.120 angel from the old English angel and the old 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:39.620 French angele. But those both go back to the 00:03:39.620 --> 00:03:42.840 Latin angelus. And Latin, as always, stole it 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:45.319 from the Greek. Correct. The Greek word is angelos. 00:03:45.789 --> 00:03:48.770 And this is crucial. Angelos literally just means 00:03:48.770 --> 00:03:51.169 messenger. Just messenger, nothing else. Nothing 00:03:51.169 --> 00:03:52.810 else. It doesn't inherently mean a spiritual 00:03:52.810 --> 00:03:55.830 being with wings. It doesn't mean a glowing entity. 00:03:56.110 --> 00:03:58.270 If I sent you to the store to tell someone we 00:03:58.270 --> 00:04:00.810 needed milk, you would be my Angelos. I'm your 00:04:00.810 --> 00:04:03.289 angel of dairy. In a very literal sense, yes. 00:04:03.810 --> 00:04:06.069 But here's where it gets fascinating for the 00:04:06.069 --> 00:04:09.580 history buffs. The earliest attested form of 00:04:09.580 --> 00:04:12.240 this word isn't even in the Greek alphabet we 00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:15.379 know. It's in linear B script from the Mycenaean 00:04:15.379 --> 00:04:18.000 civilization. Wow. Okay, so we're talking Bronze 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:20.779 Age here, long before the classical Greece of 00:04:20.779 --> 00:04:25.600 Plato or Aristotle. Yes, roughly 1400 BC. The 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:29.230 word found on these clay tablets was akiro. And 00:04:29.230 --> 00:04:31.769 linguists, like the Dutch scholar R .S .P. Beeks, 00:04:31.870 --> 00:04:34.589 suggest that this Greek term might actually be 00:04:34.589 --> 00:04:37.149 a loan word from an Oriental term, specifically 00:04:37.149 --> 00:04:40.230 the Persian word angros. Persian. Okay, I wouldn't 00:04:40.230 --> 00:04:42.310 have guessed that. And what was an angros? A 00:04:42.310 --> 00:04:45.449 mounted career. Oh! Think of the Persian Empire's 00:04:45.449 --> 00:04:47.730 version of the Pony Express. This was a massive 00:04:47.730 --> 00:04:50.310 empire, stretching from India to Greece. To run 00:04:50.310 --> 00:04:52.029 it, you needed communication. You had the king 00:04:52.029 --> 00:04:53.850 sitting in the capital, and you had these rider 00:04:53.850 --> 00:04:56.449 Zangaros galloping across the plains, switching 00:04:56.449 --> 00:04:59.550 horses at way stations, delivering royal decrees. 00:04:59.769 --> 00:05:01.430 That makes so much sense. If you're trying to 00:05:01.430 --> 00:05:03.769 describe how God gets a message to Earth, you 00:05:03.769 --> 00:05:05.769 use the vocabulary of the royal courts you know. 00:05:05.910 --> 00:05:08.189 You picture the king's messenger. The speed, 00:05:08.269 --> 00:05:10.689 the authority. Right. You see the dust kicking 00:05:10.689 --> 00:05:14.430 up, the speed, the authority of the sea. Exactly. 00:05:15.069 --> 00:05:18.569 Deep in the DNA of the word angel is this image 00:05:18.569 --> 00:05:21.810 of a Persian mounted courier. It implies a hierarchy. 00:05:22.129 --> 00:05:24.990 It implies a king who is too important to come 00:05:24.990 --> 00:05:27.269 deliver the mail himself. And we see this in 00:05:27.269 --> 00:05:30.410 Hebrew as well. The Hebrew word is malak. Which 00:05:30.410 --> 00:05:33.689 also means? Messenger. Just messenger. In the 00:05:33.689 --> 00:05:35.689 Old Testament, the context is everything. It 00:05:35.689 --> 00:05:37.569 tells you if it's a human or a spirit. And the 00:05:37.569 --> 00:05:39.370 research pointed out a really interesting split 00:05:39.370 --> 00:05:41.370 that happened when the Bible was translated into 00:05:41.370 --> 00:05:44.230 Latin, right? This is the bifurcation. Yes. This 00:05:44.230 --> 00:05:46.310 happened in the Latin Vulgate translation by 00:05:46.310 --> 00:05:49.269 St. Jerome in the late 4th century. He had to 00:05:49.269 --> 00:05:52.699 make a choice. The Hebrew malach covers both 00:05:52.699 --> 00:05:55.680 human and divine messengers. But in Latin, they 00:05:55.680 --> 00:05:57.980 decided to split the concept. If the text was 00:05:57.980 --> 00:06:00.040 talking about a human messenger, a guy carrying 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:02.439 a letter, they used the word nintius. We're getting 00:06:02.439 --> 00:06:05.300 a nintio, or announce. Correct. But if it was 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:07.220 a supernatural being sent by God, they used the 00:06:07.220 --> 00:06:09.800 lone word angelus. So that's the moment they 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:11.879 became two different things in the Western mind. 00:06:12.199 --> 00:06:15.120 Before that, the line was blurrier. The word 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:18.339 was the same. After that, angel becomes a specific 00:06:18.339 --> 00:06:21.639 creature. It becomes a distinct category of existence. 00:06:21.959 --> 00:06:24.060 It's a really pivotal linguistic moment. That 00:06:24.060 --> 00:06:26.459 is fascinating. And speaking of categories, we 00:06:26.459 --> 00:06:29.220 have to talk about the shift from polytheism 00:06:29.220 --> 00:06:32.860 to monotheism. Because angels didn't just appear 00:06:32.860 --> 00:06:37.319 out of nowhere. They are part of a massive corporate 00:06:37.319 --> 00:06:40.459 restructuring of the cosmos. Right. In the source 00:06:40.459 --> 00:06:44.180 material, it talks about how in animistic worldviews, 00:06:44.180 --> 00:06:46.319 which is how most humans lived for most of history, 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:49.379 you have spirits everywhere. Everywhere. The 00:06:49.379 --> 00:06:51.180 river has a spirit. The mountain has a spirit. 00:06:51.259 --> 00:06:54.199 The storm has a spirit. Exactly. In a polytheistic 00:06:54.199 --> 00:06:57.100 system, those are independent, minor deities. 00:06:57.120 --> 00:06:58.819 They have their own agency. You pray to the river 00:06:58.819 --> 00:07:00.819 god so he doesn't flood. You offer something 00:07:00.819 --> 00:07:03.060 to the storm god so he doesn't destroy your crops. 00:07:03.199 --> 00:07:05.079 They're all free agents. It's a whole ecosystem 00:07:05.079 --> 00:07:08.939 of divinity. It is. But as the Israelites move 00:07:08.939 --> 00:07:11.819 toward monotheism, the belief in one supreme 00:07:11.819 --> 00:07:14.819 god, Yahweh, you have a theological problem. 00:07:15.279 --> 00:07:16.620 What do you do with all these other spirits? 00:07:16.819 --> 00:07:18.620 You can't say they are gods because there is 00:07:18.620 --> 00:07:21.300 only one God. So you demote them. You strip them 00:07:21.300 --> 00:07:23.680 of their title. Or rebrand them. They get hired 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:25.699 by the supreme deity. They are stripped of their 00:07:25.699 --> 00:07:28.180 autonomy and become servants. The spirit of the 00:07:28.180 --> 00:07:30.879 wind isn't a god anymore. He's an angel sent 00:07:30.879 --> 00:07:33.600 by Yahweh to control the wind. It brings the 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:36.459 chaotic supernatural world under one central 00:07:36.459 --> 00:07:38.860 administration. It's a hostile takeover. God 00:07:38.860 --> 00:07:41.240 acquires the competition and makes the middle 00:07:41.240 --> 00:07:44.000 management. That's a cynical but... Actually, 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:46.240 pretty accurate way to put it. Instead of the 00:07:46.240 --> 00:07:49.120 chaotic democracy of spirits, you now have a 00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:51.600 monarchy. Everything reports up the chain. And 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:53.660 we can't talk about this shift without mentioning 00:07:53.660 --> 00:07:56.680 Zoroastrianism. No, you can't. This is a big 00:07:56.680 --> 00:07:59.480 aha moment in the reading for me. I didn't realize 00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:02.439 how much influence ancient Persian religion had 00:08:02.439 --> 00:08:05.240 on our concept of angels. We usually jump straight 00:08:05.240 --> 00:08:07.439 from the Bible to the Renaissance, but there 00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:09.899 is this huge Persian influence in the middle. 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:14.240 It is massive. Zoroastrianism is one of the world's 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:17.120 oldest monotheistic religions. They believe in 00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:19.800 a supreme good god, Ahura Mazda, and they have 00:08:19.800 --> 00:08:22.980 these holy entities called Amesha Spentas. Amesha 00:08:22.980 --> 00:08:25.319 Spentas, okay. They aren't exactly gods, but 00:08:25.319 --> 00:08:27.339 they are emanations of God, representing things 00:08:27.339 --> 00:08:30.639 like truth, good mind, and righteousness. They 00:08:30.639 --> 00:08:33.059 function very much like the archangels would 00:08:33.059 --> 00:08:35.539 later function in Judaism and Christianity. They're 00:08:35.539 --> 00:08:37.759 like aspects of God -given personality. And they 00:08:37.759 --> 00:08:40.029 also had something called Fravashi. Right. That 00:08:40.029 --> 00:08:42.990 was another concept. Yes. The Farvashi are fascinating. 00:08:43.250 --> 00:08:45.950 They are like guardian angels, but much more 00:08:45.950 --> 00:08:48.789 active, much more martial. They are individualized 00:08:48.789 --> 00:08:51.490 warriors that belong to Ahura Mazda's celestial 00:08:51.490 --> 00:08:54.450 army. Every human has one. So everyone gets their 00:08:54.450 --> 00:08:57.149 own divine bodyguard. Exactly. And if a human 00:08:57.149 --> 00:08:59.330 summons them, they descend to fight against demons. 00:08:59.590 --> 00:09:01.750 It's a very active participatory relationship. 00:09:02.110 --> 00:09:04.110 And this introduces the idea of dualism, this 00:09:04.110 --> 00:09:06.110 cosmic battle between light and darkness. Right. 00:09:06.149 --> 00:09:08.230 And that was a new idea. For the region, yes. 00:09:09.439 --> 00:09:11.919 Before this influence, the early Hebrew view 00:09:11.919 --> 00:09:14.980 of God was that he did everything good and bad. 00:09:15.759 --> 00:09:24.460 Isaiah says, God was responsible for both sides 00:09:24.460 --> 00:09:26.019 of the ledger. He was the source of everything. 00:09:26.429 --> 00:09:28.490 But under the influence of Zoroastrian thought, 00:09:28.669 --> 00:09:31.230 perhaps during the Babylonian exile where Jews 00:09:31.230 --> 00:09:34.110 and Persians interacted, you start to see a clearer 00:09:34.110 --> 00:09:36.450 separation. You get a hierarchy of light fighting 00:09:36.450 --> 00:09:39.250 against forces of darkness. So you get a cosmic 00:09:39.250 --> 00:09:43.210 enemy, a team evil. Precisely. You see this heavily 00:09:43.210 --> 00:09:46.190 in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in texts like The War 00:09:46.190 --> 00:09:47.990 of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. 00:09:48.210 --> 00:09:51.429 That kind of thinking is a direct echo of Zoroastrian 00:09:51.429 --> 00:09:53.980 dualism. OK, so we've got the linguistic roots. 00:09:54.120 --> 00:09:56.259 We've got the Persian influence. Let's dive into 00:09:56.259 --> 00:09:58.580 Judaism specifically, because in the Hebrew Bible, 00:09:58.659 --> 00:10:00.580 the evolution of angels is really a story of 00:10:00.580 --> 00:10:03.720 God getting further away, isn't it? That's a 00:10:03.720 --> 00:10:05.500 great way to frame it. If you look at the early 00:10:05.500 --> 00:10:08.440 texts like Genesis, the distinction between God 00:10:08.440 --> 00:10:11.059 and his messenger is incredibly confusing. You 00:10:11.059 --> 00:10:13.700 have this figure of the Moloch YHWH, the angel 00:10:13.700 --> 00:10:15.659 of the Lord. Right. I was thinking of the story 00:10:15.659 --> 00:10:18.299 of the burning bush or Hagar in the desert. The 00:10:18.299 --> 00:10:20.440 text will say the angel of the Lord appeared. 00:10:21.159 --> 00:10:22.820 But then the angel speaks in the first person 00:10:22.820 --> 00:10:25.419 as God. It says, I am the God of your father. 00:10:25.720 --> 00:10:28.159 Exactly. It's what scholars call a theophanic 00:10:28.159 --> 00:10:31.340 angel. It's an appearance of God himself, just 00:10:31.340 --> 00:10:34.039 in a slightly mediated form. It's God wearing 00:10:34.039 --> 00:10:36.240 a mask so you can look at him without going blind. 00:10:36.500 --> 00:10:38.940 There isn't a clear us versus them distinction 00:10:38.940 --> 00:10:41.580 yet. The angel is just an extension of God's 00:10:41.580 --> 00:10:43.940 presence. But then you have the divine council. 00:10:44.039 --> 00:10:46.279 This sounds like a boardroom meeting in the sky. 00:10:46.559 --> 00:10:49.909 The brina hajam, the sons of God. Originally, 00:10:49.970 --> 00:10:52.190 in the ancient Near Eastern context, this would 00:10:52.190 --> 00:10:55.029 have been the pantheon of gods serving the high 00:10:55.029 --> 00:10:58.029 god El. Like in Canaanite religion. Precisely. 00:10:58.389 --> 00:11:01.009 But in the Bible, they are reimagined as a heavenly 00:11:01.009 --> 00:11:03.669 court. They surround the throne, they offer praise, 00:11:03.870 --> 00:11:06.350 but they are created beings. They are the staff. 00:11:06.710 --> 00:11:09.830 Psalm 82 is a classic example where God is judging 00:11:09.830 --> 00:11:11.889 among the gods or sons of God. And they didn't 00:11:11.889 --> 00:11:13.629 have names for a long, long time. They were just 00:11:13.629 --> 00:11:16.809 the staff. Anonymity was a feature. Anonymity 00:11:16.809 --> 00:11:19.340 was key. If you give something a name, you can 00:11:19.340 --> 00:11:22.139 pray to it. You can worship it. Early Judaism 00:11:22.139 --> 00:11:24.399 was very strict about only worshiping Yahweh. 00:11:24.500 --> 00:11:26.519 It's not until the book of Daniel, which is a 00:11:26.519 --> 00:11:28.340 much later text written around the second century 00:11:28.340 --> 00:11:30.740 B .C., that we get specific names like Gabriel 00:11:30.740 --> 00:11:33.320 and Michael. And Daniel is dealing with a post 00:11:33.320 --> 00:11:35.879 -exilic world, right? God feels very distant. 00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:39.080 The temple has been destroyed. So maybe you need 00:11:39.080 --> 00:11:41.679 named intermediaries more than before. Exactly. 00:11:41.879 --> 00:11:44.340 The theology reflects the historical situation. 00:11:44.580 --> 00:11:47.899 And Daniel is apocalyptic literature. It's all 00:11:47.899 --> 00:11:51.710 about revealing cosmic secrets. specific angelic 00:11:51.710 --> 00:11:54.710 guides like Gabriel to explain the visions becomes 00:11:54.710 --> 00:11:57.269 a literary necessity. You need a tour guide for 00:11:57.269 --> 00:11:59.129 the end of the world. A celestial tour guide. 00:11:59.210 --> 00:12:01.230 I like that. Now let's get to the juicy part 00:12:01.230 --> 00:12:04.149 of rabbinic Judaism, the rivalry. I love this 00:12:04.149 --> 00:12:06.169 idea that angels and humans are in a competition. 00:12:06.590 --> 00:12:08.789 It is a recurring theme in the Midrash and the 00:12:08.789 --> 00:12:11.710 Talmud. The rabbis describe angels as being made 00:12:11.710 --> 00:12:14.389 of fire, eternally living but having no bodies. 00:12:14.610 --> 00:12:16.690 But here is the kicker, and you mentioned it 00:12:16.690 --> 00:12:19.409 earlier. In many Jewish traditions, humans are 00:12:19.409 --> 00:12:22.309 considered worthier than angels. That seems backwards. 00:12:22.450 --> 00:12:24.570 They are made of fire and live in heaven. We 00:12:24.570 --> 00:12:26.970 are made of dirt and live on earth. We get sick. 00:12:27.009 --> 00:12:29.309 We die. We make mistakes all the time. How are 00:12:29.309 --> 00:12:34.210 we superior? Consider the why. Angels, according 00:12:34.210 --> 00:12:38.110 to this tradition, have no yetzer hara, no evil 00:12:38.110 --> 00:12:41.590 inclination. No impulse to do bad things. None. 00:12:41.970 --> 00:12:45.220 They are programmed to obey. They have no choice 00:12:45.220 --> 00:12:47.259 but to be good. They stand in the direct light 00:12:47.259 --> 00:12:49.779 of God. To disobey would be an impossibility. 00:12:50.200 --> 00:12:52.100 It's like a computer program running its code. 00:12:52.139 --> 00:12:54.279 It can't choose not to. Whereas we are just a 00:12:54.279 --> 00:12:56.940 mess of conflicting impulses. Exactly. We have 00:12:56.940 --> 00:12:59.080 the Yetzir Hara. We want to be selfish. We want 00:12:59.080 --> 00:13:01.360 to sin. We want to hurt others. So when a human 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:03.539 chooses to overcome that instinct and do a good 00:13:03.539 --> 00:13:05.960 deed, it's an infinitely more impressive to God 00:13:05.960 --> 00:13:07.919 than an angel doing it automatically. I love 00:13:07.919 --> 00:13:10.399 that. It's the robot versus human argument. A 00:13:10.399 --> 00:13:12.860 robot vacuuming your floor isn't virtuous. A 00:13:12.860 --> 00:13:14.679 teenager choosing to vacuum the floor instead 00:13:14.679 --> 00:13:17.080 of playing video games is. Well, it's a miracle. 00:13:17.620 --> 00:13:20.309 Precisely. The struggle is what gives the action 00:13:20.309 --> 00:13:24.049 its value. And this leads to stories of angelic 00:13:24.049 --> 00:13:27.490 jealousy. The Midrashim are full of tales where 00:13:27.490 --> 00:13:29.669 angels get annoyed at how much attention God 00:13:29.669 --> 00:13:32.929 pays to flawed, imperfect humanity. They're resentful. 00:13:33.070 --> 00:13:36.090 They are. And there's a famous story in the Talmud, 00:13:36.190 --> 00:13:38.669 a debate about the Torah. It happens when Moses 00:13:38.669 --> 00:13:41.450 goes up Mount Sinai, the angels argue with God. 00:13:41.899 --> 00:13:44.279 They say, why are you giving this holy, perfect 00:13:44.279 --> 00:13:47.740 law to these flawed, smelly humans? Keep it here 00:13:47.740 --> 00:13:50.179 with us. We are pure. They were gatekeeping the 00:13:50.179 --> 00:13:51.940 Bible. They wanted to keep the good stuff in 00:13:51.940 --> 00:13:54.259 heaven. They absolutely were. Yeah. And God tells 00:13:54.259 --> 00:13:56.879 Moses to answer them. And Moses says, okay, let's 00:13:56.879 --> 00:13:59.620 look at the Torah. It says, I am the Lord who 00:13:59.620 --> 00:14:02.080 brought you out of Egypt. Were you angels enslaved 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:05.620 in Egypt? No. The angels have to admit, no. It 00:14:05.620 --> 00:14:07.519 says, honor your father and mother. Do angels 00:14:07.519 --> 00:14:10.379 have parents? Do you have families? No. It says, 00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:12.970 do not steal. Do you angels have property or 00:14:12.970 --> 00:14:15.450 feel jealousy? No, it says do not commit adultery. 00:14:15.529 --> 00:14:17.610 And angels don't have bodies. They don't have 00:14:17.610 --> 00:14:21.049 sex. Right. So Moses wins the argument. The law 00:14:21.049 --> 00:14:24.490 is designed for beings who struggle. It is a 00:14:24.490 --> 00:14:27.429 mechanism for managing friction and angels don't 00:14:27.429 --> 00:14:30.909 have friction. Therefore, the Torah belongs to 00:14:30.909 --> 00:14:34.490 humanity. That is such a profound way to look 00:14:34.490 --> 00:14:37.379 at religious law. It's not for perfect beings. 00:14:37.580 --> 00:14:41.179 It's a toolkit for imperfect ones. It validates 00:14:41.179 --> 00:14:43.480 the human experience. It does. It puts humanity 00:14:43.480 --> 00:14:45.320 at the center of the story. But then we have 00:14:45.320 --> 00:14:47.799 Maimonides. He comes along in the 12th century 00:14:47.799 --> 00:14:50.080 and takes this in a completely different, hyper 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:52.539 -rational direction. Maimonides is the great 00:14:52.539 --> 00:14:55.080 medieval philosopher. He was a doctor, a scientist. 00:14:55.320 --> 00:14:57.659 He wanted to reconcile the Bible with Aristotle. 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:00.539 And Aristotle didn't talk about winged men. He 00:15:00.539 --> 00:15:02.779 talked about forces and intellects and the laws 00:15:02.779 --> 00:15:06.279 of physics. Right. something radical. He said 00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:08.759 that angel is just the biblical word for a force 00:15:08.759 --> 00:15:11.840 of nature. Wait, so gravity is an angel? In Maimonides' 00:15:11.980 --> 00:15:14.120 view, yes. The force of gravity is the angel 00:15:14.120 --> 00:15:16.299 of falling. He writes that when the Bible says 00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:18.960 an angel shapes the embryo in the womb, a naive 00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:21.179 person thinks a little spirit flies in with a 00:15:21.179 --> 00:15:23.379 hammer and chisel. Right, a tiny sculptor. But 00:15:23.379 --> 00:15:26.279 a wise person, a philosopher, understands that 00:15:26.279 --> 00:15:29.240 God has created a biological force, what we would 00:15:29.240 --> 00:15:32.419 call DNA, growth, cell division, that shapes 00:15:32.419 --> 00:15:36.049 the embryo. That force is the angel. That blows 00:15:36.049 --> 00:15:38.549 the whole thing wide open. It turns science into 00:15:38.549 --> 00:15:41.570 angelology. It does. He says all forces are angels. 00:15:41.929 --> 00:15:45.809 It demythologizes them while simultaneously elevating 00:15:45.809 --> 00:15:48.149 the physical world. It suggests that when we 00:15:48.149 --> 00:15:50.389 study physics, we are studying the messengers 00:15:50.389 --> 00:15:53.950 of God. It's a breathtakingly modern idea. It 00:15:53.950 --> 00:15:56.809 really is. And then swinging the pendulum completely 00:15:56.809 --> 00:15:59.029 back to the mystical, we have Kabbalah. Yes, 00:15:59.090 --> 00:16:01.789 Jewish mysticism. Here, angels are often seen 00:16:01.789 --> 00:16:05.000 as tasks. An angel is an extension of God's will 00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:07.659 sent to perform a specific action. So it's not 00:16:07.659 --> 00:16:09.559 a creature, it's a function. More of a function, 00:16:09.720 --> 00:16:12.019 yes. And the fascinating part is the idea that 00:16:12.019 --> 00:16:14.320 once the task is done, the angel might cease 00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:17.500 to exist. Or rather, the angel is the task. So 00:16:17.500 --> 00:16:19.659 if God sends an angel to save someone, the angel 00:16:19.659 --> 00:16:21.720 is the act of saving. When the saving is done, 00:16:21.879 --> 00:16:24.799 the angel is gone. Correct. It emphasizes that 00:16:24.799 --> 00:16:27.700 there is only one actor in the universe. Everything 00:16:27.700 --> 00:16:30.639 else is just a temporary tool, a temporary manifestation 00:16:30.639 --> 00:16:34.340 of his will. Though Kabbalah also has high -ranking 00:16:34.340 --> 00:16:37.139 permanent angels like Metatron. Metatron sounds 00:16:37.139 --> 00:16:39.720 like a transformer. He's the highest of the angels 00:16:39.720 --> 00:16:42.440 in some mystical traditions, the celestial scribe, 00:16:42.440 --> 00:16:45.539 who sits and records the deeds of humanity. He's 00:16:45.539 --> 00:16:48.120 said to have once been the human Enoch. Wow. 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:50.159 Okay, we'll leave him for another day. Let's 00:16:50.159 --> 00:16:52.659 move to Christianity. Because if Judaism emphasized 00:16:52.659 --> 00:16:55.779 the rivalry and the law, Christianity got really 00:16:55.779 --> 00:16:58.580 obsessed with the physics of angels. Physics 00:16:58.580 --> 00:17:01.309 is a good word for it. Christian theology, especially 00:17:01.309 --> 00:17:03.289 in the Middle Ages, tried to map out exactly 00:17:03.289 --> 00:17:06.450 how these beings function in the cosmos. Augustine 00:17:06.450 --> 00:17:09.009 of Hippo gave us the famous distinction, angel 00:17:09.009 --> 00:17:11.670 is the name of the office, not the nature. Their 00:17:11.670 --> 00:17:13.890 nature is spirit. Okay, so that sets the stage. 00:17:13.990 --> 00:17:15.970 But the heavy hitter here is Thomas Aquinas, 00:17:16.130 --> 00:17:18.849 right? They called him the angelic doctor. Yes, 00:17:18.930 --> 00:17:22.109 the 13th century theologian. He wrote a massive 00:17:22.109 --> 00:17:24.250 amount about angels in his Summa Theologica. 00:17:24.329 --> 00:17:26.809 He treats it almost like a hard science of biological 00:17:26.809 --> 00:17:30.589 classification. He argues that angels are pure 00:17:30.589 --> 00:17:33.309 form without matter. Okay, unpack that. Form 00:17:33.309 --> 00:17:35.369 without matter. What does that mean in practical 00:17:35.369 --> 00:17:38.150 terms? Think of it this way. In Aristotelian 00:17:38.150 --> 00:17:40.549 philosophy, which Aquinas was using, everything 00:17:40.549 --> 00:17:43.930 is made of matter, the stuff, and form, the shape 00:17:43.930 --> 00:17:47.410 or idea. A cup is made of plastic. matter and 00:17:47.410 --> 00:17:50.829 has the shape of a cup form got it aquinas argued 00:17:50.829 --> 00:17:54.569 that angels are intellects their minds they don't 00:17:54.569 --> 00:17:57.269 have matter they're just the idea or the mind 00:17:57.269 --> 00:17:59.970 of a being okay so they are disembodied intelligences 00:17:59.970 --> 00:18:02.670 pure thought but this created a logical problem 00:18:02.670 --> 00:18:07.670 for aquinas If they have, no matter how do you 00:18:07.670 --> 00:18:09.170 tell them apart? What do you mean? Like, how 00:18:09.170 --> 00:18:11.089 do you know Gabriel from Michael? Exactly. If 00:18:11.089 --> 00:18:12.930 I have two identical cups, I can tell them apart 00:18:12.930 --> 00:18:15.430 because this one is made of this specific chunk 00:18:15.430 --> 00:18:17.130 of plastic and that one is made of that separate 00:18:17.130 --> 00:18:20.009 chunk of plastic. Their matter individuates them. 00:18:20.150 --> 00:18:22.589 But if you take away the matter, if you just 00:18:22.589 --> 00:18:25.269 have the pure concept of a cup, there's only 00:18:25.269 --> 00:18:28.940 one concept. You can't have two identical. Separate 00:18:28.940 --> 00:18:30.839 concepts floating next to each other. They'd 00:18:30.839 --> 00:18:32.640 just be the same one thing. He can't have two 00:18:32.640 --> 00:18:34.880 angels of the same type. That was his astonishing 00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:38.019 conclusion. Yeah. Every single angel must be 00:18:38.019 --> 00:18:40.480 its own distinct species. Wait, what? Every single 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:42.460 angel is a different species. Not just a different 00:18:42.460 --> 00:18:44.420 individual, but a different species. That was 00:18:44.420 --> 00:18:47.039 his logic. Gabriel isn't just a different guy 00:18:47.039 --> 00:18:49.420 than Michael. He is as different from Michael 00:18:49.420 --> 00:18:52.460 as a cat is from a dog, or as a dog is from a 00:18:52.460 --> 00:18:56.099 fish. Each angel is a unique, one -of -a -kind 00:18:56.099 --> 00:18:59.779 category of being. A universe of one. What? That's 00:18:59.779 --> 00:19:03.220 a wild thought. A billion angels, a billion species. 00:19:03.359 --> 00:19:06.400 It's like a cosmic menagerie of intellects. Did 00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:08.960 Aquinas figure out how they think? He did. He 00:19:08.960 --> 00:19:11.000 distinguished between morning knowledge and evening 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:12.839 knowledge. Sounds like a shift schedule at a 00:19:12.839 --> 00:19:15.880 factory. It's metaphorical. Morning knowledge 00:19:15.880 --> 00:19:19.630 is knowing things as they exist in God. It's 00:19:19.630 --> 00:19:21.950 seeing the blueprints of creation in the mind 00:19:21.950 --> 00:19:24.809 of the architect, seeing the idea before it's 00:19:24.809 --> 00:19:27.670 made. Evening knowledge is knowing things as 00:19:27.670 --> 00:19:30.490 they exist in the created world, seeing the building 00:19:30.490 --> 00:19:33.029 after it's built. And he argued that only certain 00:19:33.029 --> 00:19:35.170 angels have morning knowledge, right? Right. 00:19:35.230 --> 00:19:37.650 Only the beatified angels, the ones who are in 00:19:37.650 --> 00:19:39.930 direct contemplation of God, have that direct 00:19:39.930 --> 00:19:41.890 access to the source code. And they don't learn 00:19:41.890 --> 00:19:43.569 like us, right? They don't have to go to school 00:19:43.569 --> 00:19:46.259 or read books. No. Humans learn sequentially. 00:19:46.299 --> 00:19:49.319 We count one, two, three. We reason from A to 00:19:49.319 --> 00:19:52.619 B to C. Aquinas says angels learn intuitively 00:19:52.619 --> 00:19:56.319 and instantly. They grasp the totality of a concept 00:19:56.319 --> 00:19:59.420 in a flash. So they just download it. That's 00:19:59.420 --> 00:20:01.759 a perfect modern analogy. They download the entire 00:20:01.759 --> 00:20:04.440 file in one nanosecond. If an angel looks at 00:20:04.440 --> 00:20:07.019 a complex mathematical formula, they don't solve 00:20:07.019 --> 00:20:09.460 it step by step. They just know the answer and 00:20:09.460 --> 00:20:11.680 all its implications immediately. That sounds 00:20:11.680 --> 00:20:13.980 useful. But there's a limit. Can they read our 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:16.500 minds? Can they know our secret thoughts? Aquinas 00:20:16.500 --> 00:20:20.220 says no. This is crucial for Christian theology 00:20:20.220 --> 00:20:23.039 of free will. They can know the external world 00:20:23.039 --> 00:20:25.980 perfectly. They can observe our bodies, our actions. 00:20:26.140 --> 00:20:28.619 They can predict human behavior because they 00:20:28.619 --> 00:20:31.180 are super intelligent and have observed us for 00:20:31.180 --> 00:20:34.140 thousands of years. But the secret thoughts of 00:20:34.140 --> 00:20:37.160 the heart depend on human free will, and that 00:20:37.160 --> 00:20:40.180 is a locked room. Only God has the key. Only 00:20:40.180 --> 00:20:42.279 God has the key to that. Your guardian angel 00:20:42.279 --> 00:20:44.440 can see you reach for the donut and predict you're 00:20:44.440 --> 00:20:46.559 going to eat the donut based on past behavior. 00:20:46.700 --> 00:20:48.779 But he doesn't know the internal monologue you're 00:20:48.779 --> 00:20:51.359 having about the calories versus the deliciousness. 00:20:51.559 --> 00:20:53.720 Unless I say it out loud. Exactly. Unless you 00:20:53.720 --> 00:20:56.579 speak it or act on it, your inner will is private. 00:20:56.819 --> 00:20:58.559 Let's look at the Bible interactions in Christianity. 00:20:58.940 --> 00:21:02.079 We have the Annunciation Gabriel visiting Zachariah 00:21:02.079 --> 00:21:04.160 and Mary. The quintessential messenger role, 00:21:04.319 --> 00:21:06.920 announcing a birth, but also the role of comfort. 00:21:07.470 --> 00:21:10.069 Angels appear to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane 00:21:10.069 --> 00:21:12.690 to strengthen him when he is in agony. And they're 00:21:12.690 --> 00:21:14.910 at the tomb. Right. They roll back the stone 00:21:14.910 --> 00:21:16.349 at the tomb. They announce the resurrection. 00:21:16.710 --> 00:21:19.269 They are the supporting cast in the great drama 00:21:19.269 --> 00:21:22.190 of the Gospels, showing up at key moments. And 00:21:22.190 --> 00:21:25.349 Jesus himself mentions that angels don't marry. 00:21:25.549 --> 00:21:28.269 Right. In the Gospels, he's asked about marriage 00:21:28.269 --> 00:21:30.630 in the resurrection. And he says people will. 00:21:31.049 --> 00:21:33.170 Neither marry nor are given in marriage, but 00:21:33.170 --> 00:21:35.829 are like angels in heaven. This reinforced the 00:21:35.829 --> 00:21:38.789 idea that they are sexless and incorporeal. This 00:21:38.789 --> 00:21:41.269 became a huge deal for monks and nuns later on. 00:21:41.410 --> 00:21:44.230 The idea of living an angelic life meant living 00:21:44.230 --> 00:21:46.410 without sex or marriage. But then you have Paul 00:21:46.410 --> 00:21:48.730 the Apostle. He always throws a wrench in things, 00:21:48.849 --> 00:21:51.009 doesn't he? He always adds a layer of complexity. 00:21:51.190 --> 00:21:54.549 He mentions tongues of men and angels, implying 00:21:54.549 --> 00:21:57.069 some kind of heavenly language. But then in 1 00:21:57.069 --> 00:21:59.490 Corinthians he says, Do you not know that we 00:21:59.490 --> 00:22:02.799 will judge angels? Which is just, what does that 00:22:02.799 --> 00:22:05.740 even mean? It is a very mysterious verse. It 00:22:05.740 --> 00:22:08.319 implies a future reversal of hierarchy. Even 00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:10.900 though angels are powerful now, in the end times, 00:22:10.920 --> 00:22:13.319 redeemed humanity, who have suffered and chosen 00:22:13.319 --> 00:22:15.940 Christ, will somehow have authority or judgment 00:22:15.940 --> 00:22:18.900 over the angelic host. It echoes that Jewish 00:22:18.900 --> 00:22:21.900 idea of the struggle making us more in the end. 00:22:21.980 --> 00:22:24.599 We graduate to a level above them. Fascinating. 00:22:24.660 --> 00:22:27.420 Let's pivot to Islam. Because angels are absolutely 00:22:27.420 --> 00:22:29.920 fundamental to Islamic belief. You can't be a 00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:31.839 Muslim without believing in angels, right? Correct. 00:22:32.059 --> 00:22:34.359 It is one of the six articles of faith, alongside 00:22:34.359 --> 00:22:37.559 belief in God, his books, his prophets, the day 00:22:37.559 --> 00:22:39.859 of judgment, and destiny. You cannot treat them 00:22:39.859 --> 00:22:42.599 as just metaphors. They are real, created beings. 00:22:43.079 --> 00:22:45.240 And the Islamic view has some very distinct features. 00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:47.619 First, the substance. We said Jewish tradition 00:22:47.619 --> 00:22:51.039 often cites fire. Aquinas said pure form. In 00:22:51.039 --> 00:22:52.839 Islam, the dominant tradition is that angels 00:22:52.839 --> 00:22:55.400 are created from light or nur. Contrasting with 00:22:55.400 --> 00:22:58.400 humans made of clay, tin, and jinn made of smokeless 00:22:58.400 --> 00:23:01.259 fire already. Exactly. Light, fire, and clay. 00:23:01.380 --> 00:23:03.880 That is the periodic table of intelligent life 00:23:03.880 --> 00:23:06.180 in Islamic theology. It's a very clear taxonomy. 00:23:06.519 --> 00:23:08.539 And this leads to the big devote about free will. 00:23:08.990 --> 00:23:12.589 The mainstream Sunni Islamic view is that angels 00:23:12.589 --> 00:23:15.809 are masam impeccable. They are completely obedient. 00:23:16.029 --> 00:23:18.609 They do not disobey God. They are immersed in 00:23:18.609 --> 00:23:21.390 the truth. So the very concept of rebellion is 00:23:21.390 --> 00:23:23.710 foreign to their nature. But there's a massive 00:23:23.710 --> 00:23:26.650 exception in the story of creation. Iblis, the 00:23:26.650 --> 00:23:29.190 figure we equate with Satan. Right. This is the 00:23:29.190 --> 00:23:32.769 central problem. When God created Adam, he commanded 00:23:32.769 --> 00:23:35.430 the angels to bow down to him as a sign of respect 00:23:35.430 --> 00:23:38.680 for God's creation. Iblis refused. He said, I 00:23:38.680 --> 00:23:40.900 am better than him. You created me from fire 00:23:40.900 --> 00:23:43.940 and him from clay. Now here's the logical trap. 00:23:44.420 --> 00:23:47.200 If angels cannot disobey, how did Iblis refuse? 00:23:47.559 --> 00:23:49.920 That's the plot hole. Well, Islamic theology 00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:52.200 resolves this in a few ways. The most common 00:23:52.200 --> 00:23:54.160 explanation is that Iblis was never an angel 00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:57.119 to begin with. He was a jinn. He was a jinn who 00:23:57.119 --> 00:23:59.259 was so pious and powerful that he was allowed 00:23:59.259 --> 00:24:01.000 to hang out with the angels because of his high 00:24:01.000 --> 00:24:04.180 rank. He was an honorary angel. Jinn have free 00:24:04.180 --> 00:24:06.319 will. just like humans, so he could choose to 00:24:06.319 --> 00:24:08.779 disobey. Ah, so he was an interloper, a different 00:24:08.779 --> 00:24:10.759 species who was in the room when the order was 00:24:10.759 --> 00:24:14.619 given. Or a diversity -ire who went rogue. He 00:24:14.619 --> 00:24:17.539 was a being of fire among beings of light, and 00:24:17.539 --> 00:24:20.559 his fiery pride got the better of him. But there 00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:22.819 are some traditions, like the story of Harut 00:24:22.819 --> 00:24:26.099 and Marut, that suggest angels can fall... Or 00:24:26.099 --> 00:24:28.400 be tested. What's the story of Herut and Merut? 00:24:28.440 --> 00:24:31.099 I found this one really compelling. It's a fascinating 00:24:31.099 --> 00:24:33.319 narrative from the Quran and later traditions. 00:24:33.700 --> 00:24:35.900 The angels were looking down at earth from heaven, 00:24:36.039 --> 00:24:38.640 criticizing humans for sinning. Look at them. 00:24:38.839 --> 00:24:41.200 Killing, stealing, cheating. We would never do 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:44.119 that. Very judgmental. And God said, if you had 00:24:44.119 --> 00:24:46.400 their desires, you'd do the same. The angels 00:24:46.400 --> 00:24:49.380 said, no way. We are holy. We are pure. A challenge 00:24:49.380 --> 00:24:51.559 was issued. So God picked two of the angels, 00:24:51.759 --> 00:24:54.420 Herut and Merut, sent them to Babylon. gave them 00:24:54.420 --> 00:24:56.779 human bodies and human desires, lust, greed, 00:24:56.960 --> 00:24:59.420 anger, and said, okay, your test is to live on 00:24:59.420 --> 00:25:02.200 earth and just don't sin. How did they do? They 00:25:02.200 --> 00:25:05.700 failed spectacularly. A beautiful woman came 00:25:05.700 --> 00:25:08.420 to them, and they were overcome with lust. She 00:25:08.420 --> 00:25:09.940 said she'd be with them if they worshipped her 00:25:09.940 --> 00:25:12.400 idols, drank wine, and told her the secret name 00:25:12.400 --> 00:25:14.940 of God to ascend to heaven. They refused the 00:25:14.940 --> 00:25:16.980 idolatry, but figured the wine wasn't so bad. 00:25:17.390 --> 00:25:20.170 It's a slippery slope. The worst. They got drunk. 00:25:20.230 --> 00:25:22.609 They committed adultery with her. A witness saw 00:25:22.609 --> 00:25:24.750 them and they killed him. It was a complete disaster. 00:25:25.170 --> 00:25:27.150 They couldn't handle the human experience for 00:25:27.150 --> 00:25:29.210 one afternoon. Right. And they were given a choice. 00:25:29.809 --> 00:25:31.849 Punishment now on earth or punishment in the 00:25:31.849 --> 00:25:34.869 hereafter. They chose the former. So they are 00:25:34.869 --> 00:25:38.170 said to be hanging upside down in a well in Babylon, 00:25:38.269 --> 00:25:41.609 being punished until the day of judgment. It's 00:25:41.609 --> 00:25:44.130 a lesson in humility. It says to the heavens, 00:25:44.289 --> 00:25:47.099 don't judge the humans. Their test is harder 00:25:47.099 --> 00:25:50.099 than yours. Though you said modern scholars are 00:25:50.099 --> 00:25:53.240 wary of this story. Yes. Many modern Salafi and 00:25:53.240 --> 00:25:55.500 other reformist scholars reject this story as 00:25:55.500 --> 00:25:58.859 non -canonical. folklore, insisting on the absolute 00:25:58.859 --> 00:26:01.759 infallibility of all angels. They stick to the 00:26:01.759 --> 00:26:03.960 Iblis was a jinn explanation. The bureaucracy 00:26:03.960 --> 00:26:06.279 of heaven and Islam seems very detailed. You 00:26:06.279 --> 00:26:08.180 have specific angels for everything. It's highly 00:26:08.180 --> 00:26:10.480 organized. It is very structured. You have the 00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:13.140 Kirman Khatiban, the honorable scribes. Every 00:26:13.140 --> 00:26:14.700 person has two of them. The one on the right 00:26:14.700 --> 00:26:16.720 shoulder and the one on the left. The one on 00:26:16.720 --> 00:26:19.319 the right records your good deeds. The one on 00:26:19.319 --> 00:26:21.440 the left records your bad deeds. And tradition 00:26:21.440 --> 00:26:23.039 says the one on the right is the supervisor. 00:26:23.759 --> 00:26:26.660 If you commit a sin, The angel on the left asks 00:26:26.660 --> 00:26:28.400 the one on the right, should I write it down? 00:26:28.779 --> 00:26:31.680 And the angel on the right says, wait, give him 00:26:31.680 --> 00:26:34.259 six or seven hours. Maybe he will repent. That 00:26:34.259 --> 00:26:36.960 is a beautiful detail. It shows the system is 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:39.799 rigged in favor of mercy. The bureaucracy has 00:26:39.799 --> 00:26:42.380 a grace period built in. But the good deeds is 00:26:42.380 --> 00:26:45.839 written down instantly, multiplied tenfold. Then 00:26:45.839 --> 00:26:48.900 you have Munkar and Nakir. These are the angels 00:26:48.900 --> 00:26:50.799 who visit you in the grave immediately after 00:26:50.799 --> 00:26:53.319 death to test your faith. What do they do? They're 00:26:53.319 --> 00:26:55.940 described as terrifying figures who sit the deceased 00:26:55.940 --> 00:26:58.900 person up and ask three questions. Who is your 00:26:58.900 --> 00:27:01.220 lord? What is your religion? Who is your prophet? 00:27:01.420 --> 00:27:03.460 And your answers determine your state in the 00:27:03.460 --> 00:27:06.119 grave until the final resurrection. And interestingly, 00:27:06.220 --> 00:27:09.140 the Quran specifies that angels, not demons, 00:27:09.380 --> 00:27:12.619 are the guardians of hell. Yes. That's a crucial 00:27:12.619 --> 00:27:14.900 point. I think we usually imagine demons running 00:27:14.900 --> 00:27:17.220 hell, you know, the bad guys running the prison. 00:27:17.380 --> 00:27:20.680 In Western pop culture, yes. Dante's Inferno, 00:27:20.700 --> 00:27:23.779 for instance. But in Islamic theology, God runs 00:27:23.779 --> 00:27:26.700 everything. Hell is a place of divine justice, 00:27:26.859 --> 00:27:30.279 not a separate kingdom of evil. So the guards, 00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:33.259 the Zabania, are obedient angels carrying out 00:27:33.259 --> 00:27:35.859 God's sentence. They are described as stern and 00:27:35.859 --> 00:27:38.019 powerful, but they aren't evil. They are just 00:27:38.019 --> 00:27:41.000 doing a grim job. They are the corrections officers 00:27:41.000 --> 00:27:43.400 of the cosmos. That is a crucial distinction. 00:27:44.029 --> 00:27:46.430 It keeps God in control of the entire system. 00:27:46.569 --> 00:27:49.029 There is no rival kingdom of darkness that rules 00:27:49.029 --> 00:27:51.190 itself. Exactly. Everything from heaven to hell 00:27:51.190 --> 00:27:53.690 is under one administration. Okay, we have to 00:27:53.690 --> 00:27:55.150 talk about what these things look like because 00:27:55.150 --> 00:27:57.309 we promised the listener we'd get past the cherubs. 00:27:57.470 --> 00:27:59.970 Let's talk about the visuals, wings. The wing 00:27:59.970 --> 00:28:02.089 controversy. Right. So if you read the Bible, 00:28:02.230 --> 00:28:04.869 do angels have wings? What does the source material 00:28:04.869 --> 00:28:08.420 say? Here is the surprise. Simpler messengers, 00:28:08.660 --> 00:28:11.160 the malach, are almost never described as having 00:28:11.160 --> 00:28:14.420 wings in the text. When angels show up to Abraham's 00:28:14.420 --> 00:28:16.980 tent or to Lot and Sodom, they just look like 00:28:16.980 --> 00:28:19.339 men. You often don't know it's an angel until 00:28:19.339 --> 00:28:21.380 they do something spooky like vanish or refuse 00:28:21.380 --> 00:28:24.000 to eat. But the cherubim and seraphim do have 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:26.700 wings. In the visions. Yes, in the visions of 00:28:26.700 --> 00:28:28.900 Isaiah and Ezekiel. Those are the high -ranking, 00:28:28.900 --> 00:28:31.519 bizarre throne guardians. The seraphim have six 00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:33.799 wings, the cherubim have four. But those were 00:28:33.799 --> 00:28:36.779 a special class. The standard angel on the street, 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:39.019 the messenger, didn't seem to have them in the 00:28:39.019 --> 00:28:42.240 text. And the art reflects this, this lack of 00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:45.220 wings. For a long time it does. If you go to 00:28:45.220 --> 00:28:47.779 the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome, we are talking 00:28:47.779 --> 00:28:51.420 mid -third century, very early Christian art, 00:28:51.500 --> 00:28:54.359 you see depictions of the Annunciation. And the 00:28:54.359 --> 00:28:57.819 angel Gabriel is just a guy. He's wearing a Roman 00:28:57.819 --> 00:29:00.940 tunic, no wings, no halo, just a man delivering 00:29:00.940 --> 00:29:02.700 a message. So when did they get their wings? 00:29:02.799 --> 00:29:05.119 When did that become the standard image? It appears 00:29:05.119 --> 00:29:07.880 to happen in the late 4th century, around the 00:29:07.880 --> 00:29:10.380 time of Emperor Theodosius, when Christianity 00:29:10.380 --> 00:29:12.220 became the state religion of the Roman Empire. 00:29:12.420 --> 00:29:14.180 It seems to be a cultural merger. What do you 00:29:14.180 --> 00:29:16.039 mean? Well, the Roman world was full of images 00:29:16.039 --> 00:29:18.119 of Nike, the goddess of victory. She always had 00:29:18.119 --> 00:29:21.640 wings. Eros or Cupid had wings. Sonatos, the 00:29:21.640 --> 00:29:24.279 personification of death, had wings. Wings were 00:29:24.279 --> 00:29:26.400 the established visual shorthand for a divine 00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:29.000 or supernatural being. So Christians essentially 00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:32.220 borrowed the iconography. They adopted the visual 00:29:32.220 --> 00:29:34.279 language of their culture. They adopted visual 00:29:34.279 --> 00:29:37.839 language that meant speed and power and divine 00:29:37.839 --> 00:29:40.339 origin. It was a way to signal to the viewer, 00:29:40.500 --> 00:29:43.220 this isn't just a guy in a tunic. This is a being 00:29:43.220 --> 00:29:45.900 from the higher realms. It was a practical artistic 00:29:45.900 --> 00:29:49.079 choice. John Chrysostom, the early church father, 00:29:49.240 --> 00:29:51.480 actually wrote about this. He said the wings 00:29:51.480 --> 00:29:55.220 symbolize sublimity. Right. He was clear. Yeah. 00:29:55.299 --> 00:29:58.140 They don't literally have bird wings made of 00:29:58.140 --> 00:30:00.400 bone and feather. It's a symbol of their ability 00:30:00.400 --> 00:30:02.579 to move between the heights of heaven and the 00:30:02.579 --> 00:30:05.319 lowness of earth with great speed. It was a visual 00:30:05.319 --> 00:30:07.099 metaphor that became so popular we forgot it 00:30:07.099 --> 00:30:09.440 was metaphor. And what about gender? Theology 00:30:09.440 --> 00:30:12.440 says they are sexless and corporeal. Art says. 00:30:12.740 --> 00:30:15.200 Well, art is confused, isn't it? Artists had 00:30:15.200 --> 00:30:17.319 a long and varied history with this. For a long 00:30:17.319 --> 00:30:19.319 time, they were masculine, or at least military. 00:30:19.779 --> 00:30:22.960 In the Byzantine era, angels, especially Michael 00:30:22.960 --> 00:30:24.819 the Archangel, were dressed like the emperor's 00:30:24.819 --> 00:30:27.420 bodyguards. They wore armor, carried spears, 00:30:27.460 --> 00:30:29.819 wore court robes. They were soldiers and courtiers. 00:30:30.059 --> 00:30:32.460 When did they become feminine or cute? The cute 00:30:32.460 --> 00:30:35.599 factor, the putty, those little chubby toddlers, 00:30:35.720 --> 00:30:38.640 really explodes in the Renaissance and Baroque 00:30:38.640 --> 00:30:41.960 periods. It's a revival of the Greek Eros figures. 00:30:42.519 --> 00:30:45.779 They became symbols of divine love or just decoration. 00:30:46.440 --> 00:30:49.640 And the more feminine, gentle, long -haired angel 00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:52.640 becomes popular much later, really peaking in 00:30:52.640 --> 00:30:56.160 the 19th century. Victorian sentimentalism softened 00:30:56.160 --> 00:30:58.640 the scary warrior angels into comforting guardians. 00:30:59.079 --> 00:31:01.140 So we went from wanting a commander -in -chief 00:31:01.140 --> 00:31:04.640 to wanting a nanny. A celestial nanny, yes. The 00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:06.819 cultural need changed and so the art changed 00:31:06.819 --> 00:31:09.279 with it. But if we go back to the Bible, some 00:31:09.279 --> 00:31:12.140 of them are terrifying. Genuinely monstrous. 00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:15.819 Absolutely. The Ophanim, or thrones, Ezekiel 00:31:15.819 --> 00:31:18.039 describes them as wheels within wheels. And they're 00:31:18.039 --> 00:31:20.900 covered in eyes. Yes. Gyroscopes of judgment, 00:31:21.039 --> 00:31:24.119 constantly moving, covered in eyes. And the Seraphim, 00:31:24.220 --> 00:31:27.000 the burning ones, these are beings of fire, with 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:28.940 six wings, two to cover their face, two to cover 00:31:28.940 --> 00:31:31.140 their feet, and two to fly. If one of those showed 00:31:31.140 --> 00:31:32.819 up in your bedroom, you wouldn't feel comforted. 00:31:32.819 --> 00:31:34.819 You'd be terrified. Which is why the first thing 00:31:34.819 --> 00:31:36.799 angels usually say in the Bible is... Do not 00:31:36.799 --> 00:31:39.019 be afraid. Because they are scary. Because the 00:31:39.019 --> 00:31:42.000 natural human reaction to the transcendent breaking 00:31:42.000 --> 00:31:45.440 into your reality is terror. It shatters your 00:31:45.440 --> 00:31:47.740 sense of normalcy. You need reassurance before 00:31:47.740 --> 00:31:49.759 you can even hear the message. Let's move into 00:31:49.759 --> 00:31:52.740 the final section. Philosophy, ethics, and the 00:31:52.740 --> 00:31:55.339 esoteric. Because angels aren't just religious 00:31:55.339 --> 00:31:57.799 figures, they are useful tools for thinking. 00:31:58.140 --> 00:32:00.720 Right. Medieval philosophers, both Christian 00:32:00.720 --> 00:32:03.619 and Muslim, loved using angels as moral thought 00:32:03.619 --> 00:32:06.019 experiments. Like what kind of experiments? Well, 00:32:06.019 --> 00:32:10.670 think about free will. We sin, but why? Humans 00:32:10.670 --> 00:32:14.029 are distracted by hunger, lust, tiredness, pain. 00:32:14.470 --> 00:32:16.910 It's hard to tell if we sin because we are truly 00:32:16.910 --> 00:32:19.990 evil or because we are just, you know, hangry. 00:32:20.029 --> 00:32:22.789 Right. But an angel has no body, no hormones, 00:32:22.930 --> 00:32:24.789 no hunger. It has perfect knowledge of what is 00:32:24.789 --> 00:32:27.509 good. If that being sins, it tells you something 00:32:27.509 --> 00:32:30.190 profound about the nature of will itself, separated 00:32:30.190 --> 00:32:32.849 from all biological excuses. It isolates the 00:32:32.849 --> 00:32:35.559 variable. It's a pure test of choice. Exactly. 00:32:35.640 --> 00:32:38.059 It sparked huge debates. The intellectualists 00:32:38.059 --> 00:32:40.859 versus the voluntarists. Did the fallen angels 00:32:40.859 --> 00:32:43.720 fall because of intellectual error? They just 00:32:43.720 --> 00:32:45.920 didn't focus their minds on God's goodness enough? 00:32:46.259 --> 00:32:49.900 Or was it a pure willful choice to embrace evil 00:32:49.900 --> 00:32:53.059 just for the sake of autonomy? Is sin a mistake 00:32:53.059 --> 00:32:55.640 of the mind or a rebellion of the will? That's 00:32:55.640 --> 00:32:58.039 deep. And on the flip side, you have thinkers 00:32:58.039 --> 00:33:01.359 like the Muslim theologian Al -Razi. He argued 00:33:01.359 --> 00:33:04.240 for the superiority of angels. Yes, his virtue 00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:06.559 ethics took the opposite stance of the rabbis. 00:33:06.880 --> 00:33:09.339 He argued that angels are superior to humans 00:33:09.339 --> 00:33:11.960 because they are morally perfect by nature. They 00:33:11.960 --> 00:33:13.940 don't have to struggle. Humans are limited by 00:33:13.940 --> 00:33:17.339 our biology, our needs, our pain. He saw that 00:33:17.339 --> 00:33:20.289 as a flaw, not a feature. So for him, effortless 00:33:20.289 --> 00:33:22.890 perfection is better than hard -won virtue. Exactly. 00:33:23.109 --> 00:33:25.009 It's a fundamental disagreement about what makes 00:33:25.009 --> 00:33:27.130 an action good. And then you have the Gnostics 00:33:27.130 --> 00:33:29.430 who flip the script entirely. The Gnostics are 00:33:29.430 --> 00:33:31.849 always the plot twist. In many Gnostic texts, 00:33:32.049 --> 00:33:34.410 like those found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt, the 00:33:34.410 --> 00:33:37.190 material world is a trap. It's a prison. It was 00:33:37.190 --> 00:33:40.109 created by a false, ignorant god called the Demiurge. 00:33:40.250 --> 00:33:42.609 And the angels in this system? They are the prison 00:33:42.609 --> 00:33:45.789 guards. They are the archons. They aren't benevolent 00:33:45.789 --> 00:33:48.710 messengers of a good god. They are hostile powers 00:33:48.710 --> 00:33:51.450 that rule over the planets and the material world. 00:33:51.609 --> 00:33:55.309 And their job is to stop the divine spark, the 00:33:55.309 --> 00:33:58.210 soul. from escaping the earth and returning to 00:33:58.210 --> 00:34:01.609 the true transcendent divine realm. So in Gnosticism, 00:34:01.750 --> 00:34:03.710 you don't want to meet an angel. You want to 00:34:03.710 --> 00:34:06.250 sneak past him. You need secret passwords, secret 00:34:06.250 --> 00:34:09.070 knowledge gnosis, to bypass them as your soul 00:34:09.070 --> 00:34:11.570 ascends through the heavens. It's a cosmic jailbreak. 00:34:11.829 --> 00:34:14.429 The angel isn't a helper. He's the warden. That 00:34:14.429 --> 00:34:16.849 is such a cool sci -fi concept, the heavens as 00:34:16.849 --> 00:34:18.869 a series of guarded gates. It's very influential 00:34:18.869 --> 00:34:21.190 on a lot of later esoteric thought. And speaking 00:34:21.190 --> 00:34:23.750 of alternative views, what about theosophy? This 00:34:23.750 --> 00:34:26.590 was the late 19th century mystical movement. 00:34:26.909 --> 00:34:29.610 Yes. Helena Blavatsky and her followers. They 00:34:29.610 --> 00:34:31.730 had a very different take. They viewed angels, 00:34:31.769 --> 00:34:34.349 or divas as they called them, using a Hindu term, 00:34:34.449 --> 00:34:37.329 as agents of evolution. How so? They believed 00:34:37.329 --> 00:34:39.269 these beings lived in the atmosphere, or the 00:34:39.269 --> 00:34:41.969 sun, and were responsible for guiding the growth 00:34:41.969 --> 00:34:44.610 of plants and the formation of nature. They were 00:34:44.610 --> 00:34:46.889 seen as the intelligent minds behind natural 00:34:46.889 --> 00:34:49.869 processes. So they were like supernatural gardeners, 00:34:49.889 --> 00:34:52.989 or programmers for the simulation. In a way. 00:34:53.500 --> 00:34:55.599 But they saw them as a separate evolutionary 00:34:55.599 --> 00:34:59.420 line. Humans are evolving one way. Divas are 00:34:59.420 --> 00:35:01.940 evolving another. We don't turn into them when 00:35:01.940 --> 00:35:04.599 we die. They are a different kingdom of life, 00:35:04.760 --> 00:35:07.539 just as distinct as the animal and plant kingdoms 00:35:07.539 --> 00:35:10.159 are from us. And finally, before we wrap up, 00:35:10.219 --> 00:35:12.079 we have to mention the Baha 'i faith, which has 00:35:12.079 --> 00:35:14.559 a very beautiful metaphorical take on all this. 00:35:14.739 --> 00:35:17.760 They view angels as people, specifically people 00:35:17.760 --> 00:35:20.039 who have consumed all human limitations with 00:35:20.039 --> 00:35:23.030 the fire of the love of God. So an angel isn't 00:35:23.030 --> 00:35:25.489 a different species. It's a state of being. A 00:35:25.489 --> 00:35:28.829 human can become angelic. Exactly. To be an angel 00:35:28.829 --> 00:35:30.909 is to have burned away your selfishness, your 00:35:30.909 --> 00:35:34.329 ego, and to act as a pure conduit for God's will 00:35:34.329 --> 00:35:37.030 on earth. It brings the concept right back down 00:35:37.030 --> 00:35:39.219 to human potential. That brings us full circle 00:35:39.219 --> 00:35:41.500 back to the idea of humanity's role in the cosmos. 00:35:41.820 --> 00:35:44.539 It does. So we've covered linguistic roots, Zoroastrian 00:35:44.539 --> 00:35:47.780 wars, Jewish rivalry, Christian physics, Islamic 00:35:47.780 --> 00:35:50.340 obedience, wheel monsters, and Gnostic prison 00:35:50.340 --> 00:35:52.760 guards. What is the synthesis here? What does 00:35:52.760 --> 00:35:54.820 this journey tell us? I think the journey shows 00:35:54.820 --> 00:35:57.440 that angels started as a functional necessity, 00:35:57.840 --> 00:36:00.380 a way to explain how the divine interacts with 00:36:00.380 --> 00:36:04.079 a distant world, the messenger. It was a solution 00:36:04.079 --> 00:36:07.659 to a theological problem. But over time, they 00:36:07.659 --> 00:36:10.809 became a canvas. A canvas for what? A canvas 00:36:10.809 --> 00:36:13.130 for us to project our own anxieties and hopes 00:36:13.130 --> 00:36:16.190 onto. Are we better than them? Do they judge 00:36:16.190 --> 00:36:18.849 us? Are they just forces of physics? Are they 00:36:18.849 --> 00:36:21.989 our guardians or our jailers? The way a culture 00:36:21.989 --> 00:36:24.710 defines its angels tells you a lot about how 00:36:24.710 --> 00:36:27.010 that culture defines itself and its place in 00:36:27.010 --> 00:36:30.090 the universe. They are a mirror for what we think 00:36:30.090 --> 00:36:32.670 about God and ourselves. Precisely. And I want 00:36:32.670 --> 00:36:34.429 to leave the listener with that provocative thought 00:36:34.429 --> 00:36:35.909 you mentioned earlier, the one that comes from 00:36:35.909 --> 00:36:38.769 Maimonides. Yes. It's a powerful one. sit with 00:36:38.769 --> 00:36:41.590 if mnemonides is right and angels are essentially 00:36:41.590 --> 00:36:43.829 the laws of nature the forces that make the universe 00:36:43.829 --> 00:36:47.590 run then consider this when a scientist describes 00:36:47.590 --> 00:36:50.130 the force of gravity or a biologist described 00:36:50.130 --> 00:36:53.130 the elegant mechanism of dna replication are 00:36:53.130 --> 00:36:55.289 they actually doing theology are they describing 00:36:55.289 --> 00:36:57.909 the angels just using a different language if 00:36:57.909 --> 00:37:01.119 the distinction between scientific law and angelic 00:37:01.119 --> 00:37:04.440 agent is just a matter of vocabulary, then we 00:37:04.440 --> 00:37:06.519 are interacting with angels every single moment 00:37:06.519 --> 00:37:09.320 of our lives. We just call it physics or biology. 00:37:09.639 --> 00:37:12.159 That is going to keep me up tonight. Next time 00:37:12.159 --> 00:37:14.260 you see a bird catching up draft or a lightning 00:37:14.260 --> 00:37:17.219 storm or just drop a cup on the floor, ask yourself 00:37:17.219 --> 00:37:20.360 who or what is making that happen. Indeed. What 00:37:20.360 --> 00:37:22.800 forces are at work? Thanks for diving deep with 00:37:22.800 --> 00:37:23.840 us. We'll see you next time.