angelophany
Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The visible manifestation of an angel or angels.
This word comes from the Greek ‘angelos,’ messenger, envoy, one that announces, plus ‘phantasma,’ image, phantom, apparition; mere image, unreality.
Examples
“The stories of almsgiving, burial of the dead, angelophany, exorcism, marriage of Sara with Tobias the younger, cure of the elder Tobias - all these incidents were taken for granted as fact-narrative; nor was there ever any question of likening them to the tales of 'The Arabian Nights' and the 'Fables of Aesop.”
“In fact, we have to do here, not with a spiritual duplicate of a material and terrestrial self, but with an ordinary angelophany similar to those so frequently referred to in the Old and New Testaments and stated therein to be 'messengers of the Lord.”
Thomas James Thorburn, The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels
“There is no theophany or angelophany without wings. What are these winged celestials, but foreshadowings of the ultimate capabilities of man?”
William Conant Church, 'The Galaxy: A Magazine of Entertaining Reading'
