The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah—Appendix

Appendix 13—Jewish Angelology and Demonology. The Fall of the Angels. (See Book III. ch. 1.)

Without here entering on a discussion of the doctrine of Angels and devils as presented in Holy Scripture, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha, it will be admitted that considerable progression may be marked as we advance from even the latest Canonical to Apocryphal, and again from these to the Pseudepigraphic Writings. The same remark applies even more strongly to a comparison of the later with Rabbinic literature. There we have comparatively little of the Biblical in its purity. But, added to it, we now find much that is the outcome of Eastern or of prurient imagination, of national conceit, of ignorant superstition, and of foreign, especially Persian, elements. In this latter respect it is true—not, indeed, as regards the doctrine of good and evil Angels, but much of its Rabbinic elaboration—that the names of the Angels (and of the months) were brought form Babylon (Jer. Rosh. haSh. 56 d; Ber. r. 48), and with the names not a few of the notions regarding them. At the same time, it would be unjust to deny that much of the symbolism which it is evidently intended to convey is singularly beautiful. LTJMBA 142.1