Literature. — A. Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah^, London, 1S97, i. 142, ii. 748 (Appendix, xiii.), etc. ; H. St. J. Thackeray, The Relation of St. Paul to Contemporary Jewish Thought, do. 1900; A. B. Davidson in HDB, art. ' Angel' (almost entirelj' for OT) ; W. Fairweather in HDB, vol. v., art. 'Development of Doctrine in the Apocr3rphal Period,' § iii. ; J. T. Marshall in DCG, art. ' Angels ' ; and the Commentaries, esp. H. B. Swete, Apocalvpae of St. John, London, 1906 ; B. F. Westcott, Hehreusi, do. 1906 ; G. Millig-an, Thessalonians, do. 1908 ; J. B. Lightfoot, Colossiaiis and Philemon, do. 1900 (1st ed. 1875) ; A. Robertson and A Plummer, 1 Corinthians, Edinburgh, 1911.
A. J. Maclean. ANGELS OF THE SEYEN CHURCHES.— The
general practice of NT writers points to the con- clusion that the word 'angels,' used in this con- nexion, is employed to denote superhuman and celestial personalities. We are not, however, without examples of its being used to indicate ordinary 'messengers' (cf. Lk 7^^ 9®^, Ja 2^, etc.). In this case it would be equivalent to the dirda-roXot, £KK\7]cnQv (2 Co S'^ ; of. Ph 2^), who were in some sense the official, if temporary, delegates of one Church to another. The fact that in the Apocalypse
62 Ai^GELS OF THE SEVEN" CHURCHES
Als^GEE,
these ' angels ' are to such a degree the recipients of praise and blame would seem to put both these simple interpretations out of court.
Many ingenious attempts have been made to employ the expression as a collateral or subsidiary proof that episcopacy had already been established within the lifetime of the Johannine author. The passages adduced from the OT in support of this view are certainly irrelevant ; for, while it is con- ceivable that the chief minister of a Church should be styled dyyeXot Kvpiov (cf. Hag P' and JNIal 2' ; see also Is 4-4-" and Mai 3^), it is difficult to under- stand the application to him of the designation dyyeXos iKKXrjaias (Rev 2\ etc.). Nor, again, can the contention be sustained that the expression had its origin in the office of the sMiah zibbur, the messenger or plenipotentiary of the synagogue — for, as Schiirer has pointed out, these ' messengers ' were not permanent officials (see HJP II. ii. 67), but persons chosen for the time by the ruler to pronounce the prayer at public worship (cf. Light- foot, Dissertations on Apostol. Age, 1892, p. 158).
In supporting the contention that by the ' angels' of the Churches are meant the bishops, the strange conclusion has been maintained that in the words Ty)v yvvaiKa [o-on] 'lej'dSeX (Rev 2-**) the author is re- ferring to the Thyatiran bishop's wife (see Grotius, Annotationes in Apoc, ad loc). It ought to be pointed out that this theory is as old as Jerome, who in his commentary on 1 Ti 3^ adopts a similar interpi-etation ; and Socrates [HE iv. 23) describes Serapion as ' the angel of the church of the Thmuitse' (cf. Jerome, de Vir. illustr. 99, where he mentions Serapion as * Thmueos Egypti u?-bis Episcopus '). The same conception is attached to the expression by the 6th cent, commentators, Primasius the African {Com. in Apoc.) and Cassi- odorus the Italian (Complexiones in Apoc.) in their reflexions on Rev P".
An examination of the use of the word iyye\oi in the NT Apocalypse, apart from its connexion with the Churches, shows that the author invari- ably employs it to describe a spiritual being attached to the service of God or of Satan. We are, therefore, confronted with the difficulty of accounting for its presence here in a sense so completely different as the episcopal theory in- volves. There is, indeed, no valid reason to sup- pose that the author, even in a work as highly symbolical as this is, attaches an essentially differ- ent idea to the word when he speaks of * the Angels of the Seven Churches.'
If we can accept the textual purity of the Ascen- sion of Isaiah, iii. 15, tliere is a remarkable parallel: 'the descent of the angel of the Christian Church, which is in the heavens, whom He will summon in the last days.' Even on the supposition that the Ethiopic version, supported by some Greek MSS, is a correct translation of the original, and the simple word ' Church ' is substituted for ' angel of the Christian Church,' we are confronted by the primitive identification of the Church and its angel (see Charles, Asc. of Isaiah, ad loc).
Perhaps the most curious feature of the letters to the Asian Churches is the way in wliich the writer expresses himself in terms of stern reproof or of encouragement to their 'angels.' The objec- tion to this difficulty is considered by Origen, who finds cause for marvel at the care shown by God for men : ' forasmuch as He suffers Hia angels to be blamed and rebuked on our behalf ' {horn, in Num. XX. 3 ; cf . in Luc. xiii. ).
As we have already seen, however, it is difficult to suppose that the writer intended the words to be understood as referring literally to angels who presided over the Churches. There is, no doubt, a natural inclination to see in his use of the plirase a reminiscence of the ' princes ' of the Apocalypse