An Archangel Found Only in One Tradition's Calendar

Selaphiel belongs to a group of additional archangels venerated in Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic tradition but absent from the Western Catholic and Protestant lists, which since the eighth century have generally recognized only the three archangels explicitly named in texts those churches accept as canonical scripture, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Selaphiel, associated in Orthodox devotion with prayer and often depicted with his head bowed and hands folded in an attitude of intercession, is not named in any text most Christian traditions treat as canonical scripture, and his standing rests instead on Eastern liturgical tradition and the annual Synaxis of the Archangels observed in the Orthodox calendar, which commemorates a larger group of named archangels than the Western tradition recognizes.

Some traditional accounts connect the name to Shealtiel, a figure named in the Hebrew Bible as the father of Zerubbabel, though this proposed connection reflects later devotional etymology rather than an explicit scriptural identification of Shealtiel as an angel. The clearest fact about Selaphiel is structural rather than biographical: his veneration marks a genuine and long standing difference between Eastern and Western Christian tradition over how many named archangels the Church recognizes and on what textual authority, a difference that has never been resolved into one shared list.