ASSESSMENT. — A relationship has been posited between the doctrine of the A. and that of the angels in the Old Testament, and the latter has been derived from the former. By some, the A. are designated in biblical terms as archangels or angels. Yet the differences are so notable as to suggest rather a contrast.
The A. appear as ethical abstractions in some way personified, which cannot be considered simply as hypostases of divine attributes, since they are also qualities of pious men. This conception differs from that of the angels, who possess a marked personality, and far from being abstractions, are distinct from God; for all these reasons they do not lend themselves to being conceived as His hypostases. On the other hand, they are distinct from men and cannot be regarded as concretizations of human virtues. Nor can the number seven, said to be identical in both doctrines, be adduced as evidence of derivation of one from the other; for the number seven is absent from the ancient Avesta, and in the recent Avesta it is not only inconstant but when found is the result of contrivance, the number being formed by the addition of Ahura-mazdah or Srao-ša, who do not belong to the group of the A. The number therefore is not original to the doctrine. Nor is it certain, on the other hand, that the number seven in the Old Testament (Tob. 12:15) should be taken as a real number rather than as an expression of an indeterminate quantity, as occurs in other biblical passages. If one were to attempt a comparison between the angels and their work and the A. and their function, no parallel whatsoever would be found, since the function of the two is radically different.