The Jews, the only people under the conduct of the Divinity Himself, did not at first give names to the angels whom God vouchsafed to send them; they borrowed the names given them by the Chaldæans when the Jewish nation was captive in Babylon; Michael and Gabriel are named for the first time by Daniel, a slave among those people. The Jew Tobit, who lived at Ninevah, knew the angel Raphael, who travelled with his son to assist him in recovering the money due to him from the Jew Gabaël. In the laws of the Jews, that is, in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, not the least mention is made of the existence of the angels--much less of the worship of them. Neither did the Sadducees believe in the angels. But in the histories of the Jews, they are much spoken of. The angels were corporeal; they had wings at their backs, as the Gentiles feigned that Mercury had at his heels; sometimes they concealed their wings under their clothing. How could they be without bodies, since they all ate and drank, and the inhabitants of Sodom wanted to commit the sin of pederasty with the angels who went to Lot's house? The ancient Jewish tradition, according to Ben Maimon, admits ten degrees, ten orders of angels: 1. The _chaios ecodesh_, pure, holy. 2. The _ofamin_, swift. 3. The _oralim_, strong. 4. The _chasmalim_, flames. 5. The _seraphim_, sparks. 6. The _malakim_, angels, messengers, deputies. 7. The _elohim_, gods or judges. 8. The _ben elohim_, sons of the gods. 9. The _cherubim_, images. 10. The _ychim_, animated. The story of the fall of the angels is not to be found in the books of Moses. The first testimony respecting it is that of Isaiah, who, apostrophizing the king of Babylon, exclaims, "Where is now the exacter of tributes? The pines and the cedars rejoice in his fall. How hast thou fallen from heaven, O Hellel, star of the morning?" It has been already observed that the word _Hellel_ has been rendered by the Latin word Lucifer; that afterwards, in an allegorical sense, the name of Lucifer was given to the prince of the angels, who made war in heaven; and that, at last, this word, signifying _Phosphorus_ and _Aurora_, has become the name of the devil. The Christian religion is founded on the fall of the angels. Those who revolted were precipitated from the spheres which they inhabited into hell, in the centre of the earth, and became devils. A devil, in the form of a serpent, tempted Eve, and damned mankind. Jesus came to redeem mankind, and to triumph over the devil, who tempts us still. Yet this fundamental tradition is to be found nowhere but in the apocryphal book of Enoch; and there it is in a form quite different from that of the received tradition. St. Augustine, in his 109th letter, does not hesitate to give slender and agile bodies to the good and bad angels. Pope Gregory I. has reduced to nine choirs--to nine hierarchies or orders--the ten choirs of angels acknowledged by the Jews.