How is it that this progression or these levels of understanding of angelic beings made sense to the early Christians if Paul depicted Jesus in the earliest writings as a human-like angel (a pagan concept?), and later in the Gospels he also seemed somewhat human at first, then by the time of John he was seen as semi or fully divine, and then later on as equal to the high God? They seem to me to be reflections of pagan notions, to the original religious teachings of the pagan converts. Likewise, the church's later, more regimented doctrines seem to have their origins in paganism. At a fundamental level, the Trinity, archangels, angels, saints, and heavenly ancestors took the place of the pagan gods. I think Paul was just saying that the Galatians treated him like a “messenger of God, as Jesus Christ”, where “aggelos” can refer to simply a messenger, an envoy, a human “messenger of God."
