Angels began as demoted gods, according to biblical scholars
The Greek angelos just meant messenger, and in early Hebrew texts the equivalent word often described a human prophet. Scholars argue that once Israel's faith became strictly monotheistic, the old divine council of lesser gods was quietly downgraded into created, immortal servants: the winged beings of later art.
The English word travels from Old English engel and Old French angele back through Latin angelus to Greek angelos, a term already present in Mycenaean Linear B as a-ke-ro. The linguist R. S. P. Beekes suspected an Eastern loan, related to a Greek word for a Persian mounted courier. The Septuagint used angelos for Hebrew mal'akh, simply messenger, and the Latin Vulgate split the meaning, keeping angelus for supernatural beings and nuntius or legatus for human envoys.
In the oldest Hebrew writings, God acts directly, and the mal'akh can be God's own voice: in Exodus 3, Moses is addressed both by Yahweh and by a messenger. The sons of God appear as a heavenly court. Michael Coogan notes that only in later books do these terms mean the kindly semi-divine figures familiar today, and that after the exile, with explicit monotheism, the divine council was effectively demoted. Daniel is the first biblical book to name individual angels, Gabriel and Michael.
Persian religion probably shaped the idea of angels as forces of pure good opposed by demons. Zoroastrianism imagined a battle between Ahura Mazda's holy beings and a principle of evil, and its Amesha Spentas and Fravashi, the latter functioning like guardian spirits, have long been compared with angels. The Dead Sea Scrolls' War Scroll pictures angels of light fighting beings of darkness.
Rabbinic tradition gave angels bodies of fire but no free will, each able to perform just one divine command, which paradoxically ranks them below humans. The Talmud notes that the Torah was not given to ministering angels, and in the Midrash angels grow jealous of God's affection for people who resist temptation and repent. Mystical texts elevate Metatron as a heavenly scribe, yet Judaism shows no evidence of angel worship, only of invoking them. Philo of Alexandria identified the angel with the Logos, God's immaterial voice.
Source: Angel
