01-19-2014, 12:08 PM
Ha! Malcolm Godwin's "Angles an endangered Species" is hardly authoritative, at best a pretty picture coffee table book.
According to the first book of Enoch Gabriel is over the Cherubim, outside of the literature from intertestamental period and the Kabbalah, he is basically God's messenger boy as this is all the Christian Bible relates. In the Kabbalah tree of life, he is identified with the 9th of the ten emanations of God: the sephirot of Yesod. Sephirot simply means emanation. As seraphim and sephirah are very similar it is possible the two have been confused, e.g Gabriel is a sephirah not a seraphim. There is not any consistency as to the number of archangels, just in Enoch there is both four and seven archangels, Satan was never Metatron, Enoch became Metatron when "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." (Gen 5:24) In 3 Enoch his transformation is more specifically told. It was not until the 13th century ce that Michael was granted the title of prince of the Seraphim by Saint Bonaventure the "Seraphic Doctor. Regardless, Malcolm Godwin appears to pick and chooses his source material (Which he probably doesn't even research) without much regard to real scholarship. Look up the title of his other books and you will see he is hardly a scholar, but rather a popularizer, "Lucid Dreaming", "Archetypes And Chakras", and the "Holy Grail".
This will probably and should be removed to somewhere else or altogether as it has nothing to do with the poem, so hopefully some mod will save me from myself! But I just felt compelled, and had way to much time on my hands.
Dale
According to the first book of Enoch Gabriel is over the Cherubim, outside of the literature from intertestamental period and the Kabbalah, he is basically God's messenger boy as this is all the Christian Bible relates. In the Kabbalah tree of life, he is identified with the 9th of the ten emanations of God: the sephirot of Yesod. Sephirot simply means emanation. As seraphim and sephirah are very similar it is possible the two have been confused, e.g Gabriel is a sephirah not a seraphim. There is not any consistency as to the number of archangels, just in Enoch there is both four and seven archangels, Satan was never Metatron, Enoch became Metatron when "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." (Gen 5:24) In 3 Enoch his transformation is more specifically told. It was not until the 13th century ce that Michael was granted the title of prince of the Seraphim by Saint Bonaventure the "Seraphic Doctor. Regardless, Malcolm Godwin appears to pick and chooses his source material (Which he probably doesn't even research) without much regard to real scholarship. Look up the title of his other books and you will see he is hardly a scholar, but rather a popularizer, "Lucid Dreaming", "Archetypes And Chakras", and the "Holy Grail".
This will probably and should be removed to somewhere else or altogether as it has nothing to do with the poem, so hopefully some mod will save me from myself! But I just felt compelled, and had way to much time on my hands.
Dale
How long after picking up the brush, the first masterpiece?
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.
The goal is not to obfuscate that which is clear, but make clear that which isn't.