Nadene Goldfoot
When the Greeks translated our Torah, they wrote it as a Septuagint, "which is the earliest extant Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures from the original Hebrew." The Hebrew word, Malakh-in English-messenger, was translated as ANGEL. Angel is now used for many kinds of supernatural beings mentioned in the Scriptures. We see the words: Cherubim, Seraphim, heavenly host, etc, but the Bible does not suggest any kinship between these classes, at least in the period before the Babylonian exile. Only the angels (malakhim) appear in human form: as emissaries they convey G-d's words to mortals which were Abraham, Manoah, etc, and even perform practical missions. These episodes come before the Israelites in the Exodus smite Sennacherib's army etc. The place for the angels is heaven as we learn in Jacob's Dream in their human guise they are not always recognized by mortals.
In Genesis 18:2, Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day and was three men standing over him. He ran to them and bowed and asked them to let him bring them water to wash their feet and to sit under the nearby tree. They replied to "DO SO, JUST AS YOU HAVE SAID. " Now Abraham didn't have a Burger King nearby. He had to tell Sarah to make cakes while he picked out a calf to be killed for meat. Then he took the cream and milk and the calf meat (veal to us) and gave to the 3 men. The eerie thing is that they then asked Abraham where Sarah, his wife, was. Abraham answered that she was in the tent. Now one angel answered for the three and said that when they return this time next year he would have a son. Sarah was listening and this was the first inclination for her that she would finally conceive. Sarah laughed when she heard this as she was very old, past the age of conceiving. She already had wrinkles in her skin.
One angel asked why she laughed as is anything beyond Hashem? The angels were heading for Sodom. It is apparent that these three men were actually angels in the "guise" of men. "In other passages, angels appear without wings, looking human in form. For example, the angels in Genesis 18 and 19 that appeared to Abraham looked human, lacking wings. This is why in the Christian Bible, Hebrews 13:2 can state, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
According to the aside notes in my Tanakh, Hagar was the daughter of Pharaoh. ( Remember that Moses was the adopted son of another daughter of Pharaoh later in time.) Abram's wife, Sarai, had been abducted from Abram and taken to the Pharaoh to be an added asset in his harem when the Pharaoh discovered she was a married woman and returned her. After seeing the miracles that were wrought on Sarah's behalf when she was abducted and taken to his palace, he gave Hagar to Sarah saying, "Better that she be a servant in their house than a princess in someone else's," so it was that Hagar, an Egyptian princess, became Abraham's wife and bore him Ishmael. (This bit of knowledge comes from our Midrash's RASHI, famous biblical commentator whose whole name was Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki ben Isaac, born in 1040 in Troyes, France, studied in the Rhineland (Germany).
Today in our time of being able to reach the moon, learn about the makeup of stars, and the possibility of reaching the planets in space travel and the mysteries unfolding about time in space, there are people who wonder if angels might have been aliens from outer space giving a hand to lesser developed people on planet earth to head in the right directions.
After all, 4,000 years ago is nothing when contemplating space travel. Couldn't some of these visions our ancestors had that came from G-d had been helped out by other life forms that could reach them? That mystery of how Moses was led by day and by night on the Exodus could have been from outer-space help.
The characteristics of angels recorded in the Torah and other books in the Tanakh (Old Testament) are that angels are partly human. They speak Hebrew. They are also partly superhuman. They participate in the important events of human life such as pregnancy, birth, etc. G-d consults his household which includes the angels on every subject. Our Kabbalah that originated around the town of Safed in Israel had rabbis that greatly extended the theory of angels.
Reverence to angels is due to them only as the envoys of G-d. Their superhuman character inspire awe, as in Is: 6; Ezek.I, this attitude does not extend to individual angels as until the 2nd Temple period after an absence of over 50 years which would be after 586 BCE when the Israelites returned from Babylon and their captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and were able to build the 2nd Temple. No angel had a personal name even though he may sometimes exercise a permanent function like" the angel who redeems me from all evil" found in Gen. 48:16.
What ideas did our Jews pick up while held in Babylon? Zoroastrianism was around then. This is from ancient Persia. The religion probably spread to Babylon, too. Zoroaster rejected the religion of the Bronze Age Iranians Persians) , with their many gods and oppressive class structure, in which the Karvis and Karapans (princes and priests) controlled the ordinary people. He also opposed animal sacrifices and the use of the hallucinogenic Haoma plant (possibly a species of ephedra) in rituals, but held the rooster as a "symbol of light" and associated it with "good against evil" because of his heraldic actions. Note that our chicken soup is a cure-all for many ills.
Often in our Tanakh angels were mistaken as humans. Other biblical passages speak of the travel of angels as if they were flying (Daniel 9:21). However, a supernatural angel could fly with or without wings.
Seraphim have six wings and cherubim have wings (four in Ezekiel 1 and 10), but most other angelic appearances in Scripture do not include this description. Didn't somebody else in today's news describe this Ezekiel description as something of a space vehicle and not a person?
"The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974) is a book by Josef F. Blumrich (March 17, 1913 – February 10, 2002) about a spaceship that was supposedly observed by the prophet Ezekiel, written while the author was chief of NASA's systems layout branch of the program development office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] It was originally published in German by Econ Verlag GmbH under the title Da tat sich der Himmel auf (March 1973)."
"After ufologists such as Erich von Däniken had pointed to the possibility of interpreting Ezekiel's vision as a report of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, Blumrich decided to disprove the hypothesis. However, a thorough examination convinced him that Ezekiel had, in fact, seen a spaceship. He then made detailed drawings of the alien craft. He decided the technology of the builders must have been somewhat higher than mankind's at the present, and added he had seldom felt as delighted, satisfied, and fascinated by being proven wrong."
They were given names first found in the Book of Daniel where GABRIEL and MICHAEL were first mentioned. The Hellenistic period (323 BCE to about 330 CE) brought out more names such as Uriel and Raphael who were very close to G-d and so were archangels. The importance of angelology grew under foreign influence. I imagine this is when they sprouted wings as well.
It also could be that Moses, when he wrote the Torah dictated to by Hashem, was way ahead of time travel in introducing the angels or messengers. It remains to be that angels, appearing in human form, were emissaries conveying G-d's words.
Resource: https://www.biblehub.com/genesis/18-2.htm
https://www.learnreligions.com/angel-who-wrestled-with-jacob-124068
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/692875/jewish/What-Are-Angels.htm
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/287612/jewish/angels-human-beings-and-the-torah.htm
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/angels/
https://www.compellingtruth.org/angels-wings.html
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/18/its-official-trump-announces-space-force-6th-military-branch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spaceships_of_Ezekiel
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia; angels
Updated 3 hours after publishing.
In Genesis 18:2, Abraham was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day and was three men standing over him. He ran to them and bowed and asked them to let him bring them water to wash their feet and to sit under the nearby tree. They replied to "DO SO, JUST AS YOU HAVE SAID. " Now Abraham didn't have a Burger King nearby. He had to tell Sarah to make cakes while he picked out a calf to be killed for meat. Then he took the cream and milk and the calf meat (veal to us) and gave to the 3 men. The eerie thing is that they then asked Abraham where Sarah, his wife, was. Abraham answered that she was in the tent. Now one angel answered for the three and said that when they return this time next year he would have a son. Sarah was listening and this was the first inclination for her that she would finally conceive. Sarah laughed when she heard this as she was very old, past the age of conceiving. She already had wrinkles in her skin.
One angel asked why she laughed as is anything beyond Hashem? The angels were heading for Sodom. It is apparent that these three men were actually angels in the "guise" of men. "In other passages, angels appear without wings, looking human in form. For example, the angels in Genesis 18 and 19 that appeared to Abraham looked human, lacking wings. This is why in the Christian Bible, Hebrews 13:2 can state, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
 |
| While returning home with property accumulated during his absence of 20 years, Jacob struggled with a heavenly emissary and overcame him, being then given the name ISRAEL. (Gen. 32:29) Jacob was left alone and a man wrestled with him until the break of day when he perceived that he could not overcome him, he struck the socket of his hip, so Jacob's hip-socket was dislocated as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for dawn has broken." and he said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." And he said to him, "What is your name?" He replied."Jacob." He said, "No longer will it be said that your name is Jacob., but Israel. For you have striven with the Divine and with man and have overcome. Then Jacob inquired, and he said, "Divulge, if you please, your name."..and his answer was that "for I have seen the Divine face to face, yet my life was spared." This confrontation was a cosmic event in Jewish history. The Rabbis explained that this "man" was the guardian angel of Esau (Rashi said so) in a human guise. The Sages teach that every nation has an angel that guides its destiny as an "intermediary" between it and God. |
The Jewish belief in angels goes as far back as the Book of Genesis, where we read about angels calling out to Abraham at the binding of Isaac, angels appearing in Jacob's dream, Jacob fighting with an angel, and many more accounts of angelic activity. Angels are then mentioned numerous times throughout the other books of the Torah, Prophets, and Scriptures.
According to Jewish tradition, an angel is a spiritual being and does not have any physical characteristics. The angelic descriptions provided by the prophets – such as wings, arms etc. – are anthropomorphic, referring to their spiritual abilities and tasks.
In Genesis 16, we see an angel mentioned for the first time who speaks to Hagar after she had left Abram's compound after being treated harshly by Sarai, her former mistress, first wife and niece of Abram. He uses today's words of psychology in saying to her, "Hagar, maid servant for Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?" and she tells him that she is running away from Sarai her mistress. Teachers of today when confronted with a child in their class acting out might say, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" The angel tells her to return and submit to her domination and if she does he will greatly increase her offspring and they will not be counted for abundance. He told her that she would conceive and have a son and that she should name him Ishmael because Hashem heard her prayer and that he would be a wild-ass of a man: his hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him: and over all his brothers shall he dwell.
Hagar responded by calling the name of Hashem (THE NAME) (G-d) "You are the God of Vision," for she said, "Could I have seen even here after having seen?"According to the aside notes in my Tanakh, Hagar was the daughter of Pharaoh. ( Remember that Moses was the adopted son of another daughter of Pharaoh later in time.) Abram's wife, Sarai, had been abducted from Abram and taken to the Pharaoh to be an added asset in his harem when the Pharaoh discovered she was a married woman and returned her. After seeing the miracles that were wrought on Sarah's behalf when she was abducted and taken to his palace, he gave Hagar to Sarah saying, "Better that she be a servant in their house than a princess in someone else's," so it was that Hagar, an Egyptian princess, became Abraham's wife and bore him Ishmael. (This bit of knowledge comes from our Midrash's RASHI, famous biblical commentator whose whole name was Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki ben Isaac, born in 1040 in Troyes, France, studied in the Rhineland (Germany).
 |
| Aliens may exist in a parallel universe, say some today That's even farther out in imagination than space travel which the USA is contemplating now. |
Today in our time of being able to reach the moon, learn about the makeup of stars, and the possibility of reaching the planets in space travel and the mysteries unfolding about time in space, there are people who wonder if angels might have been aliens from outer space giving a hand to lesser developed people on planet earth to head in the right directions.
 |
| Today, STAR TREK is an old show which shows Spock here doing the ancient Cohen sign on the graves of Jews who are Cohens (descendants of Aaron, brother of Moses who was the high priest or Cohen.) Spock was one one the crew members of a space vehicle that visited many new planets. |
 |
| President Trump has created a Space Force as the 6th Military Branch of the Armed Forces. |
After all, 4,000 years ago is nothing when contemplating space travel. Couldn't some of these visions our ancestors had that came from G-d had been helped out by other life forms that could reach them? That mystery of how Moses was led by day and by night on the Exodus could have been from outer-space help.
The characteristics of angels recorded in the Torah and other books in the Tanakh (Old Testament) are that angels are partly human. They speak Hebrew. They are also partly superhuman. They participate in the important events of human life such as pregnancy, birth, etc. G-d consults his household which includes the angels on every subject. Our Kabbalah that originated around the town of Safed in Israel had rabbis that greatly extended the theory of angels.
Reverence to angels is due to them only as the envoys of G-d. Their superhuman character inspire awe, as in Is: 6; Ezek.I, this attitude does not extend to individual angels as until the 2nd Temple period after an absence of over 50 years which would be after 586 BCE when the Israelites returned from Babylon and their captivity by Nebuchadnezzar and were able to build the 2nd Temple. No angel had a personal name even though he may sometimes exercise a permanent function like" the angel who redeems me from all evil" found in Gen. 48:16.
 |
| This is the Zoroastrian symbol of a guardian spirit. Faravahar is winged. |
What ideas did our Jews pick up while held in Babylon? Zoroastrianism was around then. This is from ancient Persia. The religion probably spread to Babylon, too. Zoroaster rejected the religion of the Bronze Age Iranians Persians) , with their many gods and oppressive class structure, in which the Karvis and Karapans (princes and priests) controlled the ordinary people. He also opposed animal sacrifices and the use of the hallucinogenic Haoma plant (possibly a species of ephedra) in rituals, but held the rooster as a "symbol of light" and associated it with "good against evil" because of his heraldic actions. Note that our chicken soup is a cure-all for many ills.
Often in our Tanakh angels were mistaken as humans. Other biblical passages speak of the travel of angels as if they were flying (Daniel 9:21). However, a supernatural angel could fly with or without wings.
Seraphim have six wings and cherubim have wings (four in Ezekiel 1 and 10), but most other angelic appearances in Scripture do not include this description. Didn't somebody else in today's news describe this Ezekiel description as something of a space vehicle and not a person?
"The Spaceships of Ezekiel (1974) is a book by Josef F. Blumrich (March 17, 1913 – February 10, 2002) about a spaceship that was supposedly observed by the prophet Ezekiel, written while the author was chief of NASA's systems layout branch of the program development office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] It was originally published in German by Econ Verlag GmbH under the title Da tat sich der Himmel auf (March 1973)."
"After ufologists such as Erich von Däniken had pointed to the possibility of interpreting Ezekiel's vision as a report of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, Blumrich decided to disprove the hypothesis. However, a thorough examination convinced him that Ezekiel had, in fact, seen a spaceship. He then made detailed drawings of the alien craft. He decided the technology of the builders must have been somewhat higher than mankind's at the present, and added he had seldom felt as delighted, satisfied, and fascinated by being proven wrong."
 |
| This is the best of art from the Hellenistic period It it Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. Now we can understand our Nike shoes out of Portland better from 200-190 BCE now in Paris. She has wings. . |
They were given names first found in the Book of Daniel where GABRIEL and MICHAEL were first mentioned. The Hellenistic period (323 BCE to about 330 CE) brought out more names such as Uriel and Raphael who were very close to G-d and so were archangels. The importance of angelology grew under foreign influence. I imagine this is when they sprouted wings as well.
It also could be that Moses, when he wrote the Torah dictated to by Hashem, was way ahead of time travel in introducing the angels or messengers. It remains to be that angels, appearing in human form, were emissaries conveying G-d's words.
Resource: https://www.biblehub.com/genesis/18-2.htm
https://www.learnreligions.com/angel-who-wrestled-with-jacob-124068
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/692875/jewish/What-Are-Angels.htm
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/287612/jewish/angels-human-beings-and-the-torah.htm
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/angels/
https://www.compellingtruth.org/angels-wings.html
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/18/its-official-trump-announces-space-force-6th-military-branch.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winged_Victory_of_Samothrace
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spaceships_of_Ezekiel
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia; angels
Updated 3 hours after publishing.
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