Warning: This article may be triggering as it touches on the subjects of torture and sexual abuse.

Background

Often, the prevailing imagery surrounding a distant event has since been distorted, sanitized, or cleaned up, so that current beliefs about the event may be inaccurate or incomplete. We can find examples in several spheres of life, including church history. For example, what many churchgoers today believe about angels, or what Jesus or even Satan looked like, has been shaped more by other factors along the way, so that the beliefs, measured against what first-century Palestinians held, are dissimilar. The idea that angels, a term popularly used to refer to essentially all heavenly beings except God, are winged creatures derived from European literature, not the Bible. To be sure, the Bible does speak of heavenly beings like cherubs with wings, but biblical angels are not winged beings. On this platform, we have already addressed the origins of the ahistorical White Jesus in previous blog posts. We also considered the complexities surrounding the identity of Satan, especially among Yoruba-speaking believers. The present article is another instance of correcting a distorted historical event.