Michael Ennis: The Missing Angels: A Problem in Patristic Exegesis of Genesis 1-2

The story in Genesis 1-2 was construed by many early Christian readers as providing a comprehensive account of the origin of the created order. This construction proved a fruitful site of exegesis: interpreters worked to categorize, under the Biblical six day schema, the creation of things not found on the surface-text of that brief story. Among the text’s most striking lacuna was its silence on the creation of angels – made especially sharp by the sudden appearance of the cherubim in Genesis 3.In this paper, I will analyze several exegetes’ answers to the interpretive question, “when in the six days were angels created?” The answer to this seemingly technical question of chronology, I will argue, is not a mere curiosity or idle speculation. Instead, by careful examination of the exegetical work of Augustine, Origen, and the later Alexandrian tradition on the Genesis creation story, I will demonstrate that when these thinkers place the creation of angels has important implications for the role of angels in their entire scheme of salvation.In addition to contributing to the relatively under-studied field of patristic angelology, this paper will also offer a case-study in the ways that patristic authors’ biblical exegesis and their accounts of the salvific economy mutually informed one another. By a comparison with the midrashic answers to the same interpretive question, this paper will also offer evidence of Christian and Jewish dialogue in late antiquity.