Thrones and Chariot of God

[Wawe]

Hello everyone!

I would like to ask anyone for Colossians 1:16 where St. Paul mentioned “Thrones” are these angelic beings are the same as the “merkabah/merkavah” of Ezek.1:4-28; 10:9-22; cf. Ps.132:7?

Please enlighten me.

God bless!

 

[FCEGM]

Hello everyone!

I would like to ask anyone for Colossians 1:16 where St. Paul mentioned “Thrones” are these angelic beings are the same as the “merkabah/merkavah” of Ezek.1:4-28; 10:9-22; cf. Ps.132:7?

Please enlighten me.

God bless!

According to McKenzie’s Dictionary of the Bible:

. . .thrones are an order of angels; the title appears in Enoch and the Testament of Levi (apocryphal books) and probably is derived from popular Jewish belief.

And this is from Xavier Leon-Dufour’s Dictionary of Biblical Theology:

The NT [in describing the angels] draws both from the sacred books and from contemporary Jewish tradition. So the NT enumerates the archangels (1 Th. 4:16; Jude 9), the cherubim (heb. 9:5), the thrones, dominations, principalities, and powers (Co. 1:16) to which else is added the virtues (Eph. 1:21). This hierarchy, the degrees of which vary in expression, does not have the character of a fixed teaching, but of a secondary element, and one with rather fluctuating outlines. But as in the OT, the essential of the thought is from elsewhere, reorganized here around the revelation of Jesus Christ.