(May 4, 2021 at 4:43 am)Belacqua Wrote:(May 4, 2021 at 3:17 am)WinterHold Wrote: I always thought that "angel" is a rank; in Islam Satan was with the angels even though he was a Jinn -then became a demon when he rebelled against God-; I think that gender simply doesn't fit that rank; i.e if a creature climbed to such rank, male/female doesn't fit their new existence anymore.
Yes, the meaning of the word changed.
At first it was just "messenger," of any type. But as time went on and the types and ranks got categorized, the word took on two meanings.
So the nine levels of celestial beings are (from top to bottom) the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Confusingly enough, this hierarchy is called the nine levels of angels, but the bottom rank is called just "angels."
None of these has gender, because we get gender when we fall into materiality, and angels are pure mind with no matter. They have location but not extension, mass, weight, etc.
This is all the Christian view of course -- I don't know anything about the Muslim version! I have seen lovely pictures of Iblis looking jealously at Adam and Eve, which I guess led him to rebel....?
In this picture he's in the lower left corner with gray skin, making the Islamic art gesture for puzzlement or confusion -- index finger to lips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iblis#/med...alnama.jpg
Of course all the Christian stuff I've named is not in the Bible. The hierarchies and characteristics of angels is all defined later, and I don't know how much of it is considered dogma for Catholics. Do you know how much of the Iblis story is in the Koran, officially?
I tend to avoid believing in any kind of "Anthropomorphism" when it comes to religion.
As for the ranks of the angels, the Quran in contrast to your categorization gives this only verse about their "levels":
Quote:Sura 35, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 1 ) [All] praise is [due] to Allah, Creator of the heavens and the earth, [who] made the angels messengers having wings, two or three or four. He increases in creation what He wills. Indeed, Allah is over all things competent.
Then, these two wings, three wings and 4 wings creatures have different jobs, for example there are the "carriers of God's throne":
Quote:Sura 40, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 7 ) Those [angels] who carry the Throne and those around it exalt [Allah] with praise of their Lord and believe in Him and ask forgiveness for those who have believed, [saying], "Our Lord, You have encompassed all things in mercy and knowledge, so forgive those who have repented and followed Your way and protect them from the punishment of Hellfire.
Another job they do is punishing God's enemies:
Quote:Sura 8, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 50 ) And if you could but see when the angels take the souls of those who disbelieved... They are striking their faces and their backs and [saying], "Taste the punishment of the Burning Fire.
There are other verses that specifies some of them with their exact name:
Quote:Sura 2, The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 98 ) Whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and His messengers and Gabriel and Michael - then indeed, Allah is an enemy to the disbelievers.
So, I would say from these verses that "angels are celestial messengers who differ in jobs". Just that.
I won't go as far as categorizing them in ranks because the Quran doesn't provide enough data or exact data on such matter.
Quote:Also, can you tell me about Jinns? Are they always bad? I'm asking because daemons, called geniuses in Latin, were messenger spirits much like angels, but they could be either helpful or harmful. Socrates famously had a helpful daemon. But in English you can still express the idea of a mischievous, misleading daemon by saying "He has a genius for getting into trouble." That is, his genius -- guiding spirit -- leads him to get into fights in bars or something like that. Are Jinns like this?
As for the "Jinn", there is a whole Sura in the Quran that speaks just about them (Sura 72), I will use verses from it to demonstrate my belief about them:
Quote:Sura 72,The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 4 ) And that our foolish one has been saying about Allah an excessive transgression.
( 5 ) And we had thought that mankind and the jinn would never speak about Allah a lie.
Their foolish one is "Satan"; which is evident that many Jinn are actually against Satan.
Quote:Sura 72,The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 8 ) And we have sought [to reach] the heaven but found it filled with powerful guards and burning flames.
( 9 ) And we used to sit therein in positions for hearing, but whoever listens now will find a burning flame lying in wait for him.
The Jinn were space travelers way before humans even evolved in earth, they even had their own listening outposts in space (mankind has "satellites" that listen in space too nowadays). But the Jinn's satellites (or listening outposts) faced the same problem mankind's outposts face: destruction from comets.
Quote:Sura 72,The Quran:
https://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#...rans=en_sh
( 11 ) And among us are the righteous, and among us are [others] not so; we were [of] divided ways.
( 12 ) And we have become certain that we will never cause failure to Allah upon earth, nor can we escape Him by flight.
Some of the Jinn are righteous, others are bad. The ones who follow "Satan's" way are called "demons".
That's my personal faith about them. So I believe they are an ancient race that preceded humanity, some of them are good and some of them are bad, they had their own space programs and their own saints that were so high in rank (such as Satan), who rebelled against God and had a grudge against the new created being that will replace his race in life.
That's it about my belief about Jinn. They are neither smarter nor scary beings like Hollywood and so many Christians and Sunni-Shiite Muslims picture them: they are a race of creatures different from us.