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How did angels come to get halos? I don't think the Bible, Qu'ran, or Torah says anything about them.

But now, when we say "angels," we think of winged humans with halos on top of them.

So where did they come from?

yannis
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bleh
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  • Are angels depicted with halos in Islam and Judaism? – yannis Feb 02 '16 at 07:26
  • @Yannis. http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/UoEsha~4~4~64024~102972:Chronolgy-of-Ancient-Nations,-f-141?sort=work_creator_details%2Cwork_shelfmark%2Cwork_source_page_no%2Cwork_title&qvq=sort:work_creator_details%2Cwork_shelfmark%2Cwork_source_page_no%2Cwork_title;lc:UoEsha~4~4&mi=16&trs=693 – fdb Feb 02 '16 at 10:58

2 Answers2

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I seem to recall it's actually related to visual iconography, not anything from a text. Divine beings were said to have a glow around them showing their divinity, and people drawing or painting had various ways to represent that. As painting styles changed, so did styles of the glow, eventually becoming first a disk behind the head and then the floating golden frisbee we currently see.

Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
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  • Could be related to the sun disk that Egyptian gods Ra and Hathor wear above their heads, e.g. in the pictore in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor – mrcasals Feb 09 '16 at 10:23
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Though I'm not making a citation to literature or art, I think that there is a historical prevalence to calling these kind of 'heavenly' phenomena as "halos" — which should reinforce their conceptual relationship with the light auras of divinely-related beings.

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New Alexandria
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