XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: giles@poetic.com   
      
   Steve Hayes wrote:   
   > On Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:41:12 -0500, Weland  wrote:   
   >   
   >> Steve Hayes wrote:   
   >   
   >>> The book to read is "The celestial hierarchy" by ("Pseudo") Dionysius the   
   >>> Areopagite.   
   >> That's one, though he's rather late in the game of ordering the angelic   
   >> ranks.  In fact, I was a bit late in naming the third century CE   
   >> (Pseudo-Dionysius is fifth or sixth century CE), since even NT texts   
   >> display this motif, drawing on older traditions yet.   
   >>   
   >> Though late, Pseudo-D was influential in later ages.  But I only meant   
   >> to give a few facts, not a dissertation on the history and development   
   >> of angelology in Judaism and Christianity in the ancient and medieval   
   >> worlds in comparison/contrast to Near Eastern and Greco-Roman divine   
   >> pantheons.   
   >   
   > But that's the one that probably influenced Tolkien, and the other Inklings.   
   >   
   >   
      
   Maybe,maybe not.  The tradition is widespread and is transmitted through   
     religious texts, even into modern Christianity, as well as literary   
   texts.  This is one of those ideas that is so ubiquitous that to nail   
   down a single source as the single source, or the most likely, or even   
   probably, is going to require a lot of detailed study that may yield no   
   fruit in the end anyway and will depend on detecting specific details in   
   the tradition that can be found nowhere else save Ps-Dionysius and the   
   Inklings.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)