Uriel: Who Is the Angel Who Taught Enoch the Stars?
The angel who taught Enoch the laws of the sun, moon and stars, and was later struck from the Church's list of approved angels.
Uriel, "God is my light," is not named in the Protestant Bible but is central in the Enoch books. In 1 Enoch's Astronomical Book he shows Enoch the courses of the sun, moon and stars.
Uriel, "God is my light," is not named in the Protestant Bible, but he is central in the Enoch books. 1 Enoch 20 lists him first among the holy angels who watch: "Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is over the world and over Tartarus." In chapter 9 he joins Michael, Raphael and Gabriel in looking down on the bloodshed caused by the giants and reporting it to heaven.
His biggest role is in the Astronomical Book, 1 Enoch 72–82, likely the oldest part of the whole collection. It opens as "the book of the courses of the luminaries of the heaven," which "Uriel the holy angel, who was with me, who is their guide, showed me." Uriel explains a calendar of 364 days, the gates through which the sun rises and sets, and the phases of the moon. The Qumran community used a 364-day calendar and argued with the Jerusalem Temple over it.
Uriel also appears in 2 Esdras (4 Ezra), a Jewish apocalypse from around 100 CE, where he answers Ezra's hard questions about suffering and justice with riddles and visions. In 1 Enoch 10 he is sent to warn Noah of the coming Flood, in some manuscripts. In 745 CE a church synod in Rome condemned a preacher who invoked a list of angels including Uriel, and Uriel dropped out of official Western devotion. He remained honored in Eastern churches, especially the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.
The oldest part of 1 Enoch is essentially an astronomy textbook, and it presents Uriel as the angel in charge of the lights of the sky.
Scholars see the Astronomical Book as a Jewish adaptation of Babylonian-style astronomy, framed as angelic revelation to give a disputed calendar divine authority.
