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Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer gives Sammael twelve wings and has him ride the serpent in Eden. The Apocalypse of Abraham echoes this angel behind the temptation but places the twelve wings on the serpentlike figure itself and identifies him as Azazel.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Apocalypse of Abraham 23:7
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
4 And I looked into the picture, and my eyes ran to the side of the Garden of Eden. 5 And I saw there a man very great in height and fearful in breadth, incomparable in aspect, embracing a woman, who likewise approximated to the aspect and shape of the man. 6 And they were standing under a tree of (the Garden of) Eden, and the fruit of this tree was like the appearance of a bunch of grapes of the vine, 7 and behind the tree was standing as it were a serpent in form, having hands and feet like a man's, and wings on its shoulders, six on the right side and six on the left, 8 and they were holding the grapes of the tree in their hands, and both were eating it whom I had seen embracing.
Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 13:2
Rabbinic
Sammael was the great prince in heaven; the Chajjôth had four wings and the Seraphim had six wings, and Sammael had twelve wings. What did Sammael do? He took his band and descended and saw all the creatures which the Holy One, blessed be He, had created in His world and he found among them none so skilled to do evil as the serpent, as it is said, "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field" (Gen. 3:1). Its appearance was something like that of the camel, and he mounted and rode upon it. The Torah began to cry aloud, saying, Why, O Sammael! now that the world is created, is it the time to rebel against the Omnipresent?
Date: 630-1030 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... 23:7. a serpent in form, but having . . . wings on its shoulders: six on the right side and six on the
left Sammael (Satan), often identified with a serpent, had 12 wings according to Pirke R. El. 13. ...”
Kulik, Alexander
"Apocalypse of Abraham" in Louis H. Feldman, James L. Kugel, and Lawrence H. Schiffman (eds.) Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture
(p. 1471) The Jewish Publication Society, 2013
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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