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The eagle represents the sky, heavens, and the human spirit, paralleling the divine nature of Christ. [14] In their earliest appearances, the Evangelists were depicted in their human forms each with a scroll or a book to represent the Gospels. By the 5th century, images of the Evangelists evolved into their respective tetramorphs. [3]
These animals may have originally been seen as representing the highest forms of the various types of animals: man, as king of creation, as the image of the creator; the lion, as king of beasts of prey (meat-eating); the ox, as king of domesticated animals (grass-eating); the eagle, as king of birds. The symbols of the four Evangelists are here ...
The eagle is a figure of the sky, and believed by Christian scholars to be able to look straight into the sun. [1] It appears with other three beings as the tetramorph, interpreted in Christianity as symbols of the evangelists. The four beings appear as the living creatures in the Bible.
In the New Testament book of Revelation 4:6–8, four living beings (Greek: ζῷον, zōion) [5] are seen in John's vision. These appear as a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle, much as in Ezekiel but in a different order. They have six wings, whereas Ezekiel's four living creatures are described as having four. [5]
The abbreviation is not always a short form of the word used in the clue. For example: "Knight" for N (the symbol used in chess notation) Taking this one stage further, the clue word can hint at the word or words to be abbreviated rather than giving the word itself. For example: "About" for C or CA (for "circa"), or RE.
Alternatively, the eagle was believed to be the bird that flew highest in the sky and was therefore closest to heaven, and symbolised the carrying of the word of God to the four corners of the world. [3] The eagle is also the symbol of John the Apostle, and for this reason may have come to represent the inspiration of the gospels as a whole. [4]
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Eagles were particularly prominent in Roman culture. Many banners, coins and insignias from Rome feature eagles. In Roman religion, the eagle was both the symbol and the messenger of the Roman sky-god, Jupiter. When an emperor died, his body was burned in a funeral pyre and an eagle was released above his ashes to carry his soul to the heavens.