[aron]

Also, I'm not interested in new formulations like the Mormons. I say this because I noticed that they have some teachings like that Jesus and Satan were brothers, pre-incarnation, etc. Mormon teachings have a lot of "angel/Spirit" formulations. But I am only interested in stuff that emerged in the first two centuries. Book of Mormon is like 1824 or something. So I am completely disinterested. That goes for pseudo-Dyonisius' "Angelic Hierarchies" which seems to have showed up around the 4th or 5th century CE. Too far removed from the scripture writings. But Origen and Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria can be useful, because they had access to oral traditions as well as texts and textual variants which can be informative. So I am trying to see what they were talking about, back then. The oldest commentaries occasionally shed brilliant light.

There is a fair amount of interesting scholarly work being done, some of which is insightful, some not very much so. And I don't take Origen or Clement of Alexandria or Irenaeus as "gospel", either. Clement, for example, says that "their angels always behold the Father in heaven" is equivalent to the seven angels who stand before the throne. I totally disagree: only 7 angels are designated as before the throne, but many, many angels can see God. So I don't receive any writing uncritically. I just mine them for ideas. But I'm simply not interested in medieval Merkabah mysticism or New Age angelology or what not. I am trying to access the original writings, as much as possible, and attempt to understand what was meant. What did the Roman Centurion mean, and why did Jesus marvel so, and why did Luke put in these details of "I tell this one come, and he comes, and this one go, and he goes, and this one, do this, and he does it. You just speak the word..." It seems to me that Lee ignored this because it wasn't convenient to his formulations.