eREVIEWS: Of "Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire "
From <http://tropaion.blogspot.com/2011/12/angels-in-greco-roman-religion-and.html>:
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Angels in Greco-Roman Religion and Polytheism
Posted by Nikolaos Markoulakis
[Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire
by Rangar Cline
Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 172
ISSN: 0927-7633
ISBN13: 9789004194533
Publication Year: 2011
Pages, Illustrations: xviii, 182 pp.
Imprint: BRILL
€95.00 $134.00
<http://www.brill.nl/ancient-angels>]
I had the pleasure to read through the Rangar Cline’s book entitled
Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire (2011)
which discusses in great detail the concept of angelos (angel) in
non-Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam) in
the Roman era. It is an incredibly interesting theme of scholarly
debate from the early 20th century. It is also a contemporary issue of
discussion and debate for modern Hellenic polytheists: what was the
nature of angels in ancient Greek religion, how it was involved and
presented in the Late Greco-Roman religion, and how it could be
differentiated from its Christian understanding? Cline gives immensely
beautiful answers with the use of literary, inscriptional, and
archaeological evidences. Cline focuses to the study of the
Greco-Roman understanding of angels and how they have been worshiped.
For Cline, the Christian authorities reacted to this unorthodox
characteristic of Roman religion. The author does not “attempt to
trace religious influence in one direction or another” (p.xvii), and
seek to bring a holistic view of the popular beliefs about angels in
Greco-Roman religion, equally providing the prevalent assumptions
about and veneration of them in the Late Antiquity, Roman Empire.
It is quite straightforward from the archaeological and literary
evidences that angelos (the Greek term for ‘angels’) was a noteworthy
feature of the Late Antiquity’s Greco-Roman religion (p.2). An
interesting first attempt for scholarly evaluate the non-Christian
conception of angles in the ancient World was in Cumon, F., (1915)
“Les anges du paganisme,” Revue de l’histoire des religions, 12, pp.
159–182 and later in Sheppard, A. R. R., (1980/1981), “The Pagan Cult
of Angels in Roman Asia Minor,” Talanta, 13-14, pp. 77–101. The term
appears in Homer (a messenger, envoy, Il.24.292,296.) later in
Herodotus (Hdt.5.92); all ancient Greek literary sources identifying
angelos as a term which defines a specific responsibility or
assignment that labelled the function of a particular deity or a
‘semi-divine’ (celestial) being. For Gentiles as well as for the first
Christians throughout the antiquity, angelos means a messenger of
divine communication (generally, one that announces, of birds of
augury, Il.2.26.; Μουσῶν ἄγγελος, of a poet, Theogn.769; Διὸς ἄγγ., of
the nightingale, Soph. El. 149.; c. gen. rei, ἄγγ. κακῶν ἐμῶν id=Soph.
; in LSJ, ἄγγελος , ὁ, ἡ).
Though angelos in its origin does not ineludibly represent a
‘semi-divine’ (celestial) being, it will eventually be used to
identify a special class of ‘semi-divine’ (celestial) beings. Angelos,
would be eventually, especially in the second and third century AD,
described as a “semi-divine being or a lesser god in the service of a
supreme god, a manifestation of a supreme god, the soul after death,
or even a guardian spirit” (p.3).
For that specific reason the Christian Apologetics tried to outline a
distinction between the Christian and non-Christian use of the term.
In the Origen versus Celsus debate, it is evident that the focus on
the division of meaning was based on the sematic relation between the
terms angelos, daimon and theos. Origen identified the theological
problem founded in the scriptures, which is the use of the term
angelos as a reference to theoi (the gods). Immediately, in this point
the rhetorical fallacy can be clearly viewed: as the Gentile theoi
where daemons (evil spirits), also mentioned in the scriptures as
angeloi, thus angelos could be a malevolent spirit too. Resulting to
confusion in the early Christian writings, Origen stated that
Christians should not venerate angels but straightforwardly pray and
worship God (Contra Celsum, 5.4). In similar lines of argumentation
Augustine suggested that the term daimon can be used only for
malevolent spirits and angelos could be both be God’s “boni angeli” as
well as an evil spirit. He further argued that the Neo-Platonic
philosophers (namely Porphyry; see Civ. Dei., 10.26) theosophical
rituals and their worship of angeloi were actually venerating
daimones, evil spirits, or angels of Devil (Civ. Dei., 9.19). The
Augustine’s argumentation is a good example to an alternative reading
of the already existent terminology for the divine.
In fact there was a term used for the ‘evil angel’ – or in a similar
approach – in the Hellenic Polytheistic World, which according to LSJ
is ἀλάστωρ, (ορος, ὁ, ἡ) is an avenging spirit or deity, with or
without δαίμων, (freq. Trag., A.Pers.354, Ag.1501, 1508, cf. Men.8);
“ἀ. οὑμός” (S.OC 788); “ἐξ ἀλαστόρων νοσεῖν” (Id.Tr.1235); “ἀλάστορας
ἔχειν” (Hp.Morb.Sacr. 1); “Ζεὺς Ἀ.” (Orph.H.73). he who does deeds
which merit vengeance, wretch, (A.Eu.236, S.Aj.374); μιαροὶ..καὶ
“κόλακες καὶ ἀ.” (D.18.296); “βάρβαρόν τε . . καὶ ἀ. τὸν Φίλιππον
ἀποκαλῶν” (Id.19.305); “ἄνθρωπ᾽ ἀλάστωρ” (Bato 2.5, cf. Men.7D.,
Pk.408); “Διονύσιος ἁπάσης Σικελίας ἀ.” (Clearch.10). It was,
therefore, a fact that different polytheistic cults of the Greco-Roman
World used the term angelos to pray and venerate the divine which
according to Cline “reveals the role of Hellenism in allowing distinct
and divergent religious traditions to express similar ideas about
angeloi in a common religious vocabulary” (p.167).
Ancient Angels: Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire (2011) is
an excellent source for readers and scholars interested on the concept
of angels within the Greco-Roman polytheistic religion.
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