Are there other named angels in Scripture?
Question 8013
The question of named angels has attracted enormous speculation across Christian history, producing elaborate catalogues of heavenly beings drawn from sources ranging from the Apocrypha to medieval mystical writing. The more important question for those who take Scripture as the final authority is simply what the biblical text itself actually names, and the answer is more restrained than popular tradition suggests.
What the Canon Provides
Within the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon, only two angels are named: Michael and Gabriel. Michael appears in Daniel 10 and 12, Jude 9, and Revelation 12. Gabriel appears in Daniel 8 and 9, and in Luke 1. These are the only angelic names that carry biblical authority, and they exhaust the canonical data on the subject.
Revelation 9:11 does assign a name to the angel of the bottomless pit, Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek, meaning “Destroyer.” He belongs to the category of fallen angels rather than holy ones, and the name functions as a descriptor of his nature and role rather than a personal name in the same sense as Michael or Gabriel. He is addressed separately elsewhere in this series of questions.
The Apocrypha and the Name Raphael
The Apocrypha introduces Raphael as a named angel. He appears in the book of Tobit as an angelic guide who eventually identifies himself as “one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One” (Tobit 12:15). Through this source, Raphael has entered popular Christian culture and is venerated alongside Michael and Gabriel in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as one of three archangels.
The Apocrypha, however, is not part of the inspired canon. These books were not included in the Hebrew Old Testament received by Jesus and the apostles. The New Testament nowhere cites them as authoritative Scripture. Their formal canonisation at the Council of Trent in 1546 was a Counter-Reformation response to Protestant challenges rather than a recognition of inherent divine authority. The Apocrypha has some value as historical background material for the Second Temple period, comparable to other non-canonical Jewish writings of the era; what it does not have is the authority to introduce names to the angelic order that Scripture itself does not provide. Raphael is not a biblical angel in the sense that Michael and Gabriel are biblical angels.
Pseudepigrapha and Further Elaboration
The pseudepigraphical book of 1 Enoch introduces a range of further named angels, including Uriel, Saraqael, Raguel, and others, along with extensive details about their functions and hierarchies. 1 Enoch carries no canonical authority whatsoever. The fact that Jude 14-15 quotes a passage from it as containing a true statement does not make 1 Enoch Scripture any more than Paul quoting Greek poets in Acts 17:28 and Titus 1:12 makes the works of Aratus or Epimenides part of the canon. An author can cite a source for a particular true statement without endorsing the whole work.
Why the Restraint Matters
The naming and veneration of angels has a history of drifting toward territory Scripture explicitly warns against. Colossians 2:18 contains a specific caution about the “worship of angels,” and the Colossian heresy appears to have involved precisely this kind of elaborate angelic speculation. The impulse to populate the heavenly order with a named cast of characters goes beyond what Scripture provides, and in going beyond it risks producing a devotional relationship with beings whose names come from human tradition rather than divine revelation.
There are more angels than we will ever name or number. Daniel 7:10 describes ten thousand times ten thousand standing before the Ancient of Days. God has told us what we need to know about the heavenly order. What he has not told us is not ours to supply.
So, now what?
The restraint of Scripture on the naming of angels is not an oversight. It is a boundary, and it is a wise one. The hunger to know more than the Bible tells us about the heavenly realm is understandable, but the answer is not to supplement Scripture with apocryphal or pseudepigraphical material. Those who want to know God’s messengers are best served by attending to the two he has named and to the one they serve, rather than by speculating about a larger named cast that exists only in human tradition.
“Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?” Hebrews 1:14