Seraph

• 1. Introduction

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  A seraph is a heavenly being first described in Ancient Judaism, and its name means burning. Yet the Hebrew Bible uses that very word for something that crawls on the ground: a serpent. How does a snake become a flaming attendant at the throne of God? The idea began in Judaism, then took root in Christianity and Islam as well. A single vision in the Book of Isaiah went on to shape theology, literature and art. This documentary follows the seraph from its ancient origins through three faiths, and on to unlikely modern homes such as video games, a K-pop group and university emblems. Along the way it asks what these beings were meant to look like, who ranked them and how, and why scholars still disagree about what they are.

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• 2. Serpent Origins

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  Seven times in all, the Hebrew Bible uses saraph as a noun. Twice it appears in the Book of Numbers, once in Deuteronomy, and four times in Isaiah. Almost every time, it means a serpent. Scholars do not agree on why a word for burning would name a snake. One proposal points to the fiery colors of a certain species. Another points to the burning sensation left by a venomous bite. The plural seraphim occurs in both Numbers and Isaiah, but only Isaiah uses it for angelic beings. Later, Isaiah returns to the singular saraph for a fiery flying serpent, in line with the rest of the Bible.

  Egyptian art may explain the image. A growing consensus holds that the motifs used for seraphs in Hyksos-era Canaan came from the Egyptian uraeus. In Egypt, the uraeus symbolized sovereignty, royalty, divinity and divine authority, and later art often gave it wings.

  In the early monarchic period of Israel and Judah, Egyptian symbols were borrowed on a large scale. Personal seals belonging to people from commoners to royalty carry the winged sun, the ankh, the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, scarabs and the uraeus cobra. Those cobras often have four wings, where the Egyptian standard gave only two. A Judean seal from the 8th century BCE shows flying asps with human characteristics, matching the beings Isaiah met when he was commissioned as a prophet.

  Whether such images show the seraphim angels or the fiery flying serpent is still debated. A serpent also clashes with Isaiah's vision, which gave the seraphim heads, legs and arms. Some scholars suggest the covered feet are really genitals, because the Hebrew Bible often uses the word feet as a euphemism for the penis.

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• 3. Isaiah's Vision

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  Isaiah Chapter 6 places the prophet inside an idealized version of Solomon's Temple. There he sees the Lord seated on a high throne, with the train of his robe filling the temple. This is the only passage in the Hebrew Bible where the word seraphim describes celestial beings.

  Above the throne stand the seraphim, each with six wings. The text says: "with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly." They call to one another: "Holy, holy, holy, is YHWH of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory." That triple cry of holiness shaped later theology. Its influence shows up often in works about angels, heaven and apotheosis.

  Then one seraph acts. It takes a live coal from the altar and touches the prophet's lips, a ritual purification. The seraph says: "Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged." The text presents these winged beings as burning with a fiery passion for doing God's good work.

  Yet at least one Hebrew scholar argues that the Bible itself never gives seraphim the status of angels. In that view, only later sources such as De Coelesti Hierarchia and Summa Theologiae treat them as a division of the divine messengers.

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• 4. Beyond Isaiah

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  The Book of Enoch, written in the 2nd century BC, names seraphim together with cherubim as the heavenly creatures standing closest to the throne of God. In some non-biblical sources, they are called the Akyəst, a word meaning serpents or dragons. It is also an alternate term for Hell.

  The Second Book of Enoch adds two more classes of celestial beings beside them: the phoenixes and the chalkydri. The Greek word chalkydri joins the words for brass or copper and for water-serpent. It therefore means something like brazen hydras or copper serpents. Both classes are called flying elements of the sun. They live in either the 4th or the 7th heaven, have twelve wings, and burst into song at sunrise.

  In the Book of Revelation, chapter 4, living creatures stand forever in God's presence and praise him. Their chant runs: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." The account differs a little from Isaiah's. There are four living creatures, each with six wings, and they are "full of eyes around and within" in the NKJV translation.

  These beings also appear in a Gnostic text titled On the Origin of the World.

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• 5. Jewish Ranks

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  In the 12th century, the scholar Maimonides placed the seraphim in the fifth of ten ranks in his account of the Jewish angelic hierarchy. Kabbalah gives them a more dramatic role. There they are the higher angels of the World of Beriah, the first created realm, which stands for divine understanding.

  The seraphim grasp how far they are from the absolute divinity of Atziluth. That awareness makes them continually burn up in self-nullification. Through this burning they ascend to God, then return to their place.

  Below them, in the World of Yetzirah, are the Hayot angels of Ezekiel's vision. This realm stands for archetypal creation and divine emotions. The Hayot serve God with self-aware, instinctive emotions, and their faces are those of a lion, an ox and an eagle.

  Seraphim remain part of the angelarchy of modern Orthodox Judaism. Isaiah's vision is repeated several times in daily Jewish services, including the Kedushah prayer within the repetition of the Amidah. Conservative Judaism keeps the traditional doctrines and mentions angels in its liturgy, though literal belief in angels is by no means universal. Reform and Reconstructionist Jews generally read images of angels as symbols.

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• 6. Christian Fire

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  Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, writing in his Celestial Hierarchy, drew on Isaiah to fix the fiery nature of seraphim in the medieval imagination. In his view, they helped God maintain perfect order and were not limited to chanting the trisagion. Following a hint from Rabbinic tradition, he explained the name as meaning "those who kindle or make hot." Medieval theology then placed them in the highest choir of the angelic hierarchy, as caretakers of God's throne.

  Origen took a bolder step in On First Principles. He reasoned that nothing but God can wholly know the beginnings of all things and the ends of the universe. The seraphim of Isaiah, he wrote, are the physical representation of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and God's knowledge is revealed to them. Origen was later criticized and branded a heretic by the Chalcedonian Church at the Second Council of Constantinople. His idea about the seraphim nonetheless echoed in other early Christian literature.

  Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, said the name comes from an excess of charity, expressed as ardor or fire. He found three qualities in fire. Its movement is upward and continuous, so the seraphim are borne inflexibly toward God. Its heat is sharp and penetrating, rousing and cleansing those beneath them. Its brightness is an inextinguishable light that also enlightens others.

  Bonaventure, a Franciscan theologian and contemporary of Aquinas, turned the six wings of the seraph into an analogy in his mystical work The Journey of the Mind to God. Christian theology came to picture seraphim as beings of pure light in direct communication with God.

  In 1487, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola gave the seraphim a human purpose in his Oration on the Dignity of Man. He wrote that they "burn with the fire of charity," and urged readers to be "impatient of any second place." If we burn with love for the Creator only, he promised, his consuming fire will transform us into the flaming likeness of the Seraphim.

  The name even passed to living people. Seraphim of Sarov received it on entering the Sarov monastery. It later inspired Eugene Dennis Rose, a former student of Alan Watts, to adopt it on entering Orthodox monasticism. He became known as Fr Seraphim Rose.

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• 7. Islamic Throne Bearers

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  In Islamic writings, seraphim are spelled sarāfiyun. One hadith from Al-Tirmidhi describes a conversation between Muhammad and God during the Night Journey about what lies between the Heavens and the Earth. It is often read as a reference to the exalted assembly disputing the creation of Adam in Surah Ṣād.

  The Bearers of the Throne, called ḥamlat al-arsh, are comparable to the seraphim. Tradition gives them six wings and four faces. The Quran offers no description of their features. Islamic traditions often portray them in animal forms, resembling an eagle, a bull, a lion and a human.

  A different hadith, transmitted in At-Targhib wat-Tarhib by al-Mundhiri, describes throne bearers shaped like a rooster. Their feet rest on the earth while their nape supports the Throne of God in the highest sky. Modern scholars from Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, and from institutes in Yemen and Mauritania, have agreed on the soundness of this hadith. They quote the commentary of Ibn Abi al-Izz, who supported the narrative.

  Their place in the hierarchy is not always clear, and their role is sometimes swapped with the cherubim. The Book of the Wonders of Creation and the peculiarities of Existing Things ranks these angels highest, followed by the spirit, the archangels and then the cherubim. They are entrusted with continuous worship, and unlike the messenger angels they stay in the heavenly realm.

  Al-Razi identifies the seraphim with the angels circling the throne beside the cherubim, praising God without pause. Ibn Kathir instead identifies them with those who carry the throne, the highest order of angels.

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• 8. Modern Seraphs

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  One manuscript holds a letter nobody would expect: a Cyrillic O with ten eyes. This multiocular O appears in the Old Church Slavonic phrase serafimi mnogoočitii, meaning "many-eyed seraphim." Some fonts load a version with seven eyes, which was the formerly prescribed number.

  Music has long borrowed the name. Handel's oratorio Samson, catalogued as HWV 57, includes the soprano aria "Let the bright seraphim." In 1977, a character named Seraph, the first Jewish superhero, debuted in Super Friends number 7. E. Nelson Bridwell, Ramona Fradon and Bob Smith created him. In 2022, the five-member K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM debuted from HYBE and Source Music, with a name partly inspired by the seraphim.

  Video games use seraphs as aliens, villains and special moves. In Supreme Commander, the Seraphim are an alien faction whose assault on humanity drives the Forged Alliance expansion. In Monster Train, the villain Seraph the Traitor is a six-winged ruler of Heaven who betrays a covenant with Hell. In Street Fighter, the character Gill unleashes six wings with his Seraphic Wing move. In Street Fighter III it is the strongest move in the game and can knock out an opponent in one hit unless blocked.

  Television and film use them too. In Supernatural, the angel Castiel is brought back as a Seraph after he dies. In the second and third Matrix films, Seraph is an exile program who acts as guardian angel to the Oracle. The manga and anime series Seraph of the End, written by Takaya Kagami in 2012, features several seraphs.

  Schools and universities have adopted the figure as well. The University of Pisa and Sapienza University of Rome both feature a seraph in their logos. Several Catholic schools in the United States use one as a mascot, including Koinonia Academy in Plainfield, New Jersey. In Sri Lanka, Kingswood College in Randles Hill, Kandy, also claims the seraph as its mascot.

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