Representations of Angelic Beings in Early Jewish and in Christian Traditions

This collection of essays illuminates the role of angelology in Judaism and Christianity in relation to hermeneutical issues, cosmology, liturgical practices, religio-magical texts, homiletic tradition, and the interpretation and development of ancient ideas.
Angelic beings have occupied an important place in many traditions within Judaism and Christianity from Second Temple times up until the present. In this volume, essays by scholars from the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America draw attention to a wide variety of ways in which traditions about angels were addressed and developed over time, including examples from the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls and related literature, early Christian writings, magical texts, and the rich heritage of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The contributions as a whole demonstrate the interwovenness of Jewish and Christian tradition and, in turn, reveal how much the consideration of angelology reflects broader hermeneutical, textual, and tradition-historical approaches to the study of religion.
Survey of contents
Loren T. Stuckenbruck/Amsalu Tefera: Introduction – Loreen Maseno: An Angel Indeed! Hagar and the Angel in Genesis 16 – Eshbal Ratzon: The Heavenly Abode of the Luminaries – Jacques T.A.G.M. van Ruiten: Angelic Authority: Continuities and Transformation in the Angelic World of the Book of Jubilees – Loren T. Stuckenbruck: In Praise of Angels: The Case of a Wandering Liturgical Fragment – Matthias Hoffmann: Systematic Chaos or Chain of Tradition? References to Angels and 'Magic' in Early Jewish and Early Christian Literature and Magical Writings – Amsalu Tefera: Angelology of the Ethiopic Homily on Uriel (Dǝrsanä Ura'el) – Tedros Abraha: The Place of the Angels in the Mäṣḥafä Qəddase (The Book of Hallowing) and in its Andəmta – Ralph Lee: Little Known Giants Traditions in Ethiopian Literature