God Fearing Atheist

I recall someone (John Meier, I think) saying that angels were believed to have bodies composed of rarefied substances like, e.g., fire. Does anyone know of any ancient sources that speak to the composition of angels or other supernatural beings?

John Kesler

Page 75 of James Kugel's Traditions of the Bible speaks to this issue.

mountainman

"When the Yogi has full power over his body
composed of the elements of earth, water, fire, air, and ether,
then he obtains a new body of spiritual fire
which is beyond illness, old age, and death".

Krishna Yajur Veda, Svetasvatara Upanishad 2.12,
The Poems of Tukaram (p.88)

GakuseiDon

Yes, there is a few. They believed that the world consisted of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. Demons were composed of air and fire, or something like it. Some proposed a fifth element: aether, which existed above the firmament and in which the gods were composed and/or breathed. But fire (and air also) was the spiritual substance, as indicated by the fact that it went straight up, and some believed that the heavens were filled with fire for that fact.

Some references:

Tatian: Address to the Greeks

But none of the demons possess flesh; their structure is spiritual, like that of fire or air.

Minucius Felix

These impure spirits, therefore--the demons--as is shown by the Magi, by the philosophers, and by Plato, consecrated under statues and images, lurk there, and by their afflatus attain the authority as of a present deity; while in the meantime they are breathed into the prophets, while they dwell in the shrines, while sometimes they animate the fibres of the entrails, control the flights of birds, direct the lots, are the cause of oracles involved in many falsehoods.

Plutarch

He affirms that our soul is nothing but air; it is that which constitutes and preserves; the whole world is invested with spirit and air. For spirit and air are synonymous.

Also Philostratus wrote:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/aeon_faq.htm

And they allowed Apollonius to ask questions;
and he asked them of what they thought the cosmos was composed;
but they replied:

"Of elements."

"Are there then four" he asked.

"Not four," said Iarchas, "but five."

"And how can there be a fifth," said Apollonius,
"alongside of water and air and earth and fire ?"

"There is the ether", replied the other,
"which we must regard as the stuff of which gods are made;
for just as all mortal creatures inhale tbe air,
so do immortal and divine natures inhale the ether."

God Fearing Atheist

Thanks JK and Don. Very helpful.

mountainman

From the Nag Hammadi Library there is The Concept of Our Great Power translated by Frederik Wisse which commences as follows ...

The Perception of Understanding
The Concept of the Great Power

He who will know our great Power will become invisible,
and fire will not be able to consume him.
But it will purge and destroy all of your possessions.
For everyone in whom my form will appear will be saved,
from (the age of) seven days up to one hundred and twenty years.

Iskander

What are angels made of?
"Sugar and spice and all things nice
That's what angels are made of!" :devil3: