Quote:
Originally Posted by Timotheist
If I understand your lengthy post right, you say the Bible withholds information from us because of our fall.
That’s a new one.
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I don't see that as new at all. The NT has this, explicitly. Jesus didn't trust people because he knew what was in them, crooked perversity because of the fall. So he spoke in parables to the crowds, but privately to his disciples he spoke openly. And it repeatedly - repeatedly - says that the disciples could not understand. So, do you think the Corinthians or Galatians then understood Paul, if the Twelve didn't understand Jesus? I truly doubt it.
There is a public-facing teaching because of the fall, deliberately obscure, and a private interpretation to the befuddled disciples. How much of that private interpretation made it into black-and-white? Do you think all of it? I don't. The written word is exoteric, public. The private oral testimony, the esoteric teaching, is mostly lost. It is clearly evidenced by the references, but references to what?
What is the "chasm that no man can cross" a reference to? What does Paul mean by "being transformed by the Lord Spirit"? These are not pulled from air, but reference something now lost to words.
Why was there a 400-odd year gap in the scripture, between prophets and gospels? Because God had nothing to say? Or because people couldn't hear? I suspect the latter.
Either a) there was no teaching on the origin of the angels, or b) it has been lost. Or, if you prefer, you can make up c) your version of Rudyard Kipling. "How the Leopard got his spots". Connect it to some irrelevant verse. Voila, you are a Bible teacher. Anyone can do it, and many do.
In my lengthy post, I mention the seven first-created angels. Did you read this, and if so, do you think it's true? It may be, it may not be. How are we to tell, for sure? There isn't a sufficiently clear record, any more (assuming there was). There are traces, hints, but of what, truly? There isn't enough (for me, anyway) to make a definitive declaration.
If you want to see scholarly references on the Seven Archangels v/v the Great Angel, there are sources like Chapter 5, "The Principal Named Angels" in Charles Geischen's
Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence, from Brill (1998). But it's thin reading.