Hi, just fyi, there have been a few threads on angels that you may be interested in

• Where did the modern conception of Angels come from? How did they change through history? - featuring /u/koine_lingua, with some follow-up discussion in When and why did painters begin to portray angels as having wings?

• How did angels in Western Christianity acquire wings? - more recent post featuring /u/sunagainstgold

I like to think I'm pretty familiar with the Bible. I don't recognize these eldritch nonhumans you mention. Am I so infected with the aesthetics of our time? Can you show us a passage that describes these things?

Edit: I see the OT references. I guess I'm not trapped by modern sensibilities but by Greek ones - those things can't be angeloi - angels. The language is wrong.

Edit 2: I looked through the concordance of the Greek Bible, including the Septuagint. Ez 1 and 10 aren't listed as a passage that has angelos in any form. Neither does Is. 6. Nor Rv. 4, even in the NT. Dn. 10 does, in reference to Michael. Whatever those critters are, they aren't "angels" in Greek.

There were different types of divine beings that served God, some were humanoids without wings, some were non-humanoids with wings. By the end of the 4th century CE these all became lumped into an angelic category and popular interpretation took over from there. Humans are easier to paint than the others, and I would argue they are more popular than the cherubim, which are explicitly bizarre and hard to comprehend. (True) Cherubim art was used a lot before the destruction of the temple. There were Cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, and on the walls of the temple.

Over time, outside of Judaism, the distinction between angelic orders became muddled and forgotten (by the laity and artists, at least). If popular artists think angels are humans with wings, it doesn't take long for everyone to assume the depictions are accurate, which is a feedback loop.

Relevant terms:

• Cherubim : Sphinx- or Shedu- like divine beings, four legs, 1 face, 1 pair of wings; except for in Ezekial where they have four faces and four pairs of wings.

• Seraphim : Fiery, 6-winged thingies

• Malakh : Messengers, divine or otherwise, sent by YHWH or Elohim. Can be mortal humans or divine humanoids.

• Archangel : NEW TESTAMENT ONLY (Thessalonians and Jude) reference to Michael. Seems to be a class of divine warrior being.

• Fallen Angels : NT Only (Revelation)

• Angelos : Greek word for Messenger.

• Malakh : Hebrew word for Messenger.

Relevant Timeline:

• Jewish scribes pen the Septuagint, angelos is used for malakh; the clear distinction between Malakh and Cherubim is preserved. (Cherubs aren't really considered messengers/angels in the text)

• Insert all that stuff with that Jesus guy up through Constatine.

• Christian tombs with human angels (no wings) showing up in artistic depictions up through the end of the 4th century CE.

• Latin Vulgate (4th Century CE) - Angelus is now used to refer to any divine being, with human messengers Malakh or Angelos being translated into either nuntius or legatus.

• Also in the 4th century St Augustine classified "Angel" as the name of the office of divine beings, which included Cherubim and Seraphim and Archangels and Angelus/messengers.

• The late 4th century is also when we start to see humanoid angels with wings in surviving art.

• The Earliest angelic art in the late 4th century that we'd recognize as "modern" angels, very closely resembles earlier depictions of other winged divinities, like the goddess of victory, Nike.

So it's hard to tell exactly when the shift happened, but it was probably due to the influence of Hellenistic angel and god/goddess statuary. But it was no later than the 4th century. Accurate dating of the texts that reference archangels would probably pin it down a little better, especially if we can track the concept to pre-Christian sources.

Is it acceptable to suggest that /r/AcademicBiblical would be a good subreddit to which to submit your question?