A friend asked me this question and i didnt quite know how to anser her. Why did the church exclude some of the books from the old testament when making the official canon. Also, why does the church only recognise Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael as named Archangels when there were previous books of the old testament as well as writings from saints that named more than just those 3?
Let me answer number 2. I think the reason is more because all the sources, Jewish or Christian, only agree on the names of those three angels. While the number of high-ranking angels was fixed to seven even at an early period, there was much conflict about the names of four angels. Group A, for example, might have thought angel A was one of the seven, while Group B did not believe he was one of the seven and accept angel B, while Group C might reject both suggestions and believe in angel C, while Group D might believe that angels A, B, and C were all part of the seven, and so on.
Everyone, meanwhile, pretty much agreed on the names Michael, Gabriel, as well as Raphael. Not to mention that later Christians found that they were the only angels whose names were explicitly mentioned in canonical books.
Let me quote a reply I wrote just a while ago (from a thread
on St. Raphael):
The whole science of angelology developed during the Exile and in post-exilic Judaism, when there was apparently a serious interest in the up-to-then still rather vague idea of the anonymous messengers of God that fleetingly appear in older texts. As a result, certain angels came to take on a more particular significance and developed unique personalities and roles, even names (the 3rd century rabbi Simeon ben Lakish once said that all the specific names for the angels were brought back by the Jews from Babylon). These angels were generally believed to have rank amongst the heavenly host: thus, they are known as ‘arch-angels’.
What’s interesting is, many Jewish sources from this period and afterwards - aside from Tobit, you also have the Dead Sea Scrolls, rabbinic and Kabbalistic tradition, the Book of Enoch, the
Life of Adam and Eve (aka Apocalypse of Moses), as well as a number of amulets and talismans - give the number of these high-ranking messengers as seven. Most agree on the names of at least three: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. This was one of the things that we Christians have inherited from our Jewish forebears.
There is some confusion about the rest, as many sources do not agree on their names: you have angels like Uriel, Sariel, Raguel, Remiel, Zadkiel, Jophiel, Haniel or Chamuel in Jewish tradition; later Christian sources expand the list of candidates further by giving other names such as Phanuel, Simiel, Zarachiel, Barachiel, Jegudiel/Judiel, etc. (!!) So at least we can safely say that most people already called one of the seven ‘Raphael’ from the earliest days.
