60 Fun Facts About Angel

The word 'angel' comes from the Greek angelos, which literally means what?

Its earliest form is Mycenaean a-ke-ro in Linear B, and it may itself be a loan word related to the Persian mounted courier, the angaros.

How many orders of angels are there in Pseudo-Dionysius's 6th-century hierarchy?

They are arranged in three spheres of three; the author claimed to be a convert of St Paul, a fiction exposed by Erasmus a thousand years later.

How many wings do the seraphim have in Isaiah's vision of the throne of God?

Two cover the face, two the feet and two are for flying, while they cry 'holy, holy, holy'; the Hebrew saraph means 'burning'.

In Ezekiel's vision, a cherub has four faces: a human, a lion, an eagle and which other creature?

Cherubim also guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden in Genesis, a long way from the chubby babies of Renaissance art.

Which archangel tells Mary she will bear a son in the Gospel of Luke?

He had already announced John the Baptist's birth to Zechariah, and Muslims believe he delivered the first Quranic verses to Muhammad.

Which archangel is described as the warrior of God and chief of the heavenly armies?

He is called the Taxiarch in the East and is the guardian prince of Israel in the Book of Daniel.

In the Book of Tobit, which archangel poses as a man named Azariah and heals Tobit's blindness with a fish?

His name means 'God has healed', and he uses the same fish to bind the demon Asmodeus.

How many archangels does the Book of Enoch list?

Uriel, Raguel, Sariel and Remiel round out the list alongside the three archangels most people can name today.

In Jewish mystical tradition, which biblical patriarch was transformed into the angel Metatron?

Metatron is sometimes cast as the celestial scribe, and appears in the Talmud three times but nowhere in the Torah.

In Roman folklore, Lucifer, meaning 'light-bringer', was the name for which planet?

The Greeks called the morning star Phosphoros; the fallen-angel reading came from a passage in Isaiah 14 filtered through the Vulgate.

According to Genesis 6 as read in the Book of Enoch, what were the Nephilim?

The Watchers who fathered them fell from heaven, and God sent the Flood partly to purge their monstrous children.

Which 12th-century theologian first laid out a scheme of guardian angels, one per soul at conception?

Aquinas agreed that guardians came from the lowest order of angels; the Catholic feast of the Guardian Angels falls on 2 October.

Which biblical figure's donkey saw the Angel of the Lord blocking the road before he did?

God was angry that he had set out with the princes of Moab, and the sword-bearing angel was invisible to him at first.

In Islam, which angel is the canonical angel of death, responsible for transporting souls?

He is said to hold a scroll recording the fate of mortals, writing names at birth and erasing them at death.

In Islamic tradition, which angel will blow the trumpet to announce the Day of Judgment?

He is unnamed in the Quran but counted as one of the four archangels, and is often seen as the counterpart of the archangel of healing.

What do the angels Munkar and Nakir do in Islamic eschatology?

Their names translate roughly as 'The Denied and The Denier', and tradition says tongues of fire come from their mouths.

According to Joseph Smith, which angel guarded the golden plates that became the Book of Mormon?

Latter Day Saints hold he was a pre-Columbian prophet-warrior who buried the plates and later returned as an angel; a golden statue of him tops many temples.

The Catholic Angelus prayer takes its name from its opening words about which angel's message?

'Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae' opens the devotion, and it is traditionally accompanied by the ringing of the Angelus bell.

Angel Falls, the world's tallest uninterrupted waterfall, is in which country?

It plunges nearly a kilometre off the Auyán-tepui in Canaima National Park.

Angel Falls is named after Jimmie Angel, who was what?

His ashes were scattered over the falls in 1960; Hugo Chávez later floated renaming it with its indigenous Pemon name.

Which sculptor created the Angel of the North in Gateshead?

Like much of his work it is based on a cast of his own body, and its wingspan is wider than a Boeing 757's.

How wide is the Angel of the North's wingspan?

The 208-tonne steel figure stands 20 metres tall and is seen by an estimated 33 million people a year from the A1.

Which singing cowboy founded the American League's Angels baseball franchise in 1961?

They were one of MLB's first two expansion teams and the first to originate in California, later called the California and Anaheim Angels.

Which future Inception actor played the lead child, Roger, in Angels in the Outfield (1994)?

Christopher Lloyd plays Al the Boss Angel, and Adrien Brody and Matthew McConaughey are among the ballplayers.

Which actress starred in only the first season of Charlie's Angels yet became its most famous face?

Her red swimsuit poster sold six million copies in its first year, and Cheryl Ladd replaced her as Kris Munroe in 1977.

How did the unseen Charlie Townsend communicate with his Angels?

John Forsythe recorded his lines in an audio studio and was never on set.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vampire Angel was cursed with a soul by whom?

Born Liam in 18th-century Ireland, he had rampaged across Europe as Angelus before the curse gave him a conscience.

In which city is the Buffy spin-off series Angel set?

David Boreanaz's vampire works as a private detective there for five seasons and 110 episodes on The WB.

Which former Sunnydale cheerleader joins Angel's detective agency in the spin-off's first season?

Charisma Carpenter's character starts out vain and self-absorbed and inherits Doyle's painful visions from The Powers That Be.

What is the name of George Bailey's guardian angel in It's a Wonderful Life?

He is an angel second class trying to earn his wings, played by Henry Travers.

What is Bedford Falls called in the alternate world where George Bailey was never born?

Clarence shows him a town of sleazy bars where even his mother and Mary don't know him.

Whose 1997 single 'Angels' was voted the best song of the previous 25 years at the 2005 Brit Awards?

Britons also voted it the song they most wanted played at their funeral, and Irish songwriter Ray Heffernan claims he wrote the first version.

Tony Kushner's Pulitzer-winning play Angels in America is subtitled what?

Its two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, became a six-episode HBO miniseries in 2003.

Which of these ingredients is used in angel food cake?

Folklore credits frugal Pennsylvania Dutch cooks with inventing it to use up whites left over from making noodles.

'Angel hair' pasta is the English name for which even-thinner cousin of capellini?

Its strands measure well under a millimetre across, and it is often sold coiled into nests.

Angel sharks are unusual among sharks because they resemble which other animals?

Their flattened bodies and broad pectoral fins suit life on sandy seabeds, and they are sometimes sold as monkfish.

The US Navy's Blue Angels took their name from what?

Formed in 1946, they are the world's second-oldest formal aerobatic team after France's Patrouille de France.

In which California town did the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club originate in 1948?

World War II veteran Otto Friedli is credited with starting it after splitting from a club called the Pissed Off Bastards.

Angel Island in San Francisco Bay is best known as the site of what?

It has been called the Ellis Island of the West, and later held Japanese and German prisoners of war.

The term 'angel investor' was borrowed from which world?

Wealthy backers who rescued productions were called angels; the business sense dates only from William Wetzel's 1978 study of seed capital.

Which winged X-Man, a founding member of the team, is Warren Worthington III?

He first appeared in The X-Men #1 in 1963 and later became Apocalypse's horseman Archangel; Ben Foster played him in The Last Stand.

The 'Angel of Independence' victory column stands on which Mexico City boulevard?

Built in 1910 for the centenary of the War of Independence, it has needed 14 extra steps as the city sinks around it.

The legend of the Angels of Mons, said to have protected British troops in 1914, grew from a story by which writer?

His tale of phantom bowmen from Agincourt was taken as fact by many readers during the First World War.

California's largest city was founded in 1781 as a pueblo named for whom?

Forty-four settlers known as Los Pobladores founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles.

'Angel dust' is a street name for which drug?

Phencyclidine was developed as an anaesthetic before becoming a notorious hallucinogen.

In Genesis 28, which patriarch dreams of a ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending?

He named the place Bethel, and Christian commentators read the ladder as a figure of Christ linking heaven and earth.

In Zoroastrianism, which guardian-angel-like spirits descend as warriors of Ahura Mazda to fight demons?

The Amesha Spentas are more like emanations of God; Vohu Manah among them reveals God's true nature to Zoroaster.

According to Rabbinic Judaism, angels are eternally living creatures created out of what?

The Talmud says the Torah was not given to ministering angels, and humans who follow it are held superior to the flawless angels.

In the rabbinic image of four camps of ministering angels, which archangel stands before God?

Michael is on the right, Gabriel on the left and Raphael behind, with the Shekhinah at the centre.

Which tradition holds that even the names of the angels 'came up from Babylon' with the exiles?

Before the exile angels were anonymous messengers; afterwards texts name 'the man Gabriel' and 'Michael your prince'.

Which Jewish philosopher of Alexandria identified the angel with the Logos, the immaterial voice of God?

For him the angel is distinct from God but serves as God's instrument.

In Islamic tradition, which two angels failed God's test and ended up on earth?

Al-Maturidi taught that heaven's inhabitants were tested by adornments just as humans and jinn are tested on earth.

The Quran describes angels as messengers with how many wings?

The verse adds that God 'adds to Creation as He pleases'; the 13th-century Wonders of Creation by al-Qazwini is full of angel illustrations.

In Yazidism, which being leads the seven Divine Beings created before the world?

God assigned all the world's affairs to these seven, often called angels in the literature.

In Gnostic cosmologies, angels are generally portrayed as what?

The Nag Hammadi texts show them as servants of the Demiurge, usurpers the Gnostic must struggle against to reach the immaterial realms.

Where is the earliest known Christian image of an angel, shown without wings, found?

The mid-3rd-century Annunciation scene predates the first winged angels, on the 'Prince's Sarcophagus' from the time of Theodosius I.

Which emperor's era produced the 'Prince's Sarcophagus', the earliest known depiction of winged angels?

It was found at Sarigüzel near Istanbul in the 1930s; from then on Christian art gave angels wings, as in the mosaics of Saint Mary Major.

Why does Mormon art usually depict heavenly messengers wingless?

The quote is 'An angel of God never has wings'; John Chrysostom, by contrast, read wings as a symbol of angels' sublime nature.

In late medieval art, angels such as Gabriel in Annunciation scenes often wear the vestments of what?

A cope over a dalmatic, as in Jan van Eyck's Annunciation in Washington; Michael, by contrast, wears Byzantine military dress.

In the Ukrainian Vertep nativity play, the Angel of Ukraine draws on visions of a priest from which country?

Joseph Schrijvers' early 20th-century visions at the Univ Lavra inspired the figure, dressed in blue and yellow with sword, candle and wheat.