Biblically Accurate Angels / Be Not Afraid

About

Biblically Accurate Angels refers to jokes about how spiritual messengers and attendants of God are described in the Christian Bible versus how they are typically portrayed in Western art. In Western art, angels are typically presented as gentle human-like creatures with wings, but descriptions of angels in the Bible paint them as looking far more terrifying, oftentimes with forms unlike anything seen on Earth.

Origin

On October 19th, 2010, Cracked published a listicle highlighting various strange depictions of angels in the Bible.^[5] One of the earliest known popular internet posts to talk about the vast difference was posted March 6th, 2016 by Tumblr user revelation19.^[1] In the post, the user pointed out depictions of angels as described in Ezekiel 1 (shown below, left), Ezekiel 10 (shown below, center) and Daniel 10 (shown below, right) among others. The post gained over 420,000 notes in four years as people commented on how terrifying the depictions appeared.

Spread

The Tumblr thread was reposted to several social media hubs over the following years, including Imgur^[2] and Reddit.^[3] The idea of terrifying biblical angels did not begin growing into a popular meme until 2020, however. On July 3rd, 2020, Redditor CSGoose posted a Swole Doge edit mocking the difference between angels in the bible and angels in art to /r/me_irl,^[4] gaining over 43,000 points (shown below, left). On July 27th, 2020, Twitter user @aggressivepet^[6] posted art of a biblically accurate angel gaining over 11,000 retweets and 67,000 likes (shown below, right).

On July 29th, Shen posted a comic featuring a biblically accurate angel, gaining over 9,900 retweets and 72,000 likes on Twitter^[7] in less than 24 hours (shown below, left). In the replies, user @9_1_13_God^[8] posted a Virgin vs. Chad edit making fun of art angels, gaining over 160 retweets and 1,900 likes (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References