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The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Uriel, Sariel, Phanuel
Angels named in 1 Enoch that readers go looking for in the Bible and never find.
People go hunting for these names in the Bible and never find them. They come from 1 Enoch, which lists named archangels with assigned jobs. The names move around between manuscripts, which suggests they work as slots to be filled rather than as fixed individuals.
Named archangels in 1 Enoch's lists, each with an assigned domain. They are in Enoch's lists and nowhere in the Bible. DDD's Mach notes that the name Uriel is itself disputed between a Hebrew root (light) and an Aramaic one (fire), and that the three names behave as interchangeable slots more than fixed individuals across the manuscripts: Phanuel replaces Uriel as the fourth archangel in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 37-71), and elsewhere Uriel and Sariel swap outright. Uriel's own portfolio is astronomical. He guides the heavenly luminaries (1 Enoch 72:1; 79:6; 82:7) and explains why the stars' actual courses drift from the ideal Enochic calendar, tying the drift to human sin. He also shows Enoch the place prepared for the punishment of the fallen stars and Watchers (1 Enoch 18:14-19:2; 21:5-6,9), and in the Life of Adam and Eve he buries Adam together with Michael.
1 Enoch 9:1; 20:1-8; 40:9; 72-82 (Uriel as astronomical revealer); 4 Ezra (2 Esdras) 4:1; 10:28, where Uriel is Ezra's revealing angel throughout.
- Nickelsburg, *1 Enoch: A Commentary* (Hermeneia)
- M. Mach, DDD s.v. "Uriel," 885-886 —
