Armored vultures and Cherubim

In my last post, "How is an armadillo like a griffon vulture in the Crimea?" vultures are connected, by way of armadillos, with armored knights. This reminded me of two cartoon characters I used to draw as a child: Victor the Vulture and Sylvester the Snake. None of the cartoons have survived, but they were drawn in the style of Walt Kelly's Pogo. Victor wore a visored helmet like a medieval knight's, a baldric, and a scabbard; and Sylvester would ride inside the scabbard as if he were a sword, with his head sticking out where the hilt would be. There was a running gag that Sylvester liked to eat apples, which he swallowed whole, and when he and Victor were on a mission, he would always end up finding some apples and getting distracted by them.

The idea of a vulture wearing armor like a knight is a pretty unusual one, I think.

In recent syncs, the vulture (particularly the genus known as "griffon vultures") has been interchangeable with the griffin, and particularly the griffin in The Tinleys, which lives at the top of a mountain and turns out to have godlike powers. In Russian (the vultures in the syncs have been Russian/Ukrainian), the word for "vulture" also means "griffin."

I had always assumed that griffin was related to the French griffe, "claw," but apparently not. Etymonline suggests a more surprising connection:

Klein suggests a Semitic source, "through the medium of the Hittites," and cites Hebrew kerubh "a winged angel," Akkadian karibu, epithet of the bull-colossus (see cherub).

So griffin may be related to the biblical word Cherubim. Just as a griffin's role is typically to protect treasure, the biblical Cherubim protect the Tree of Life:

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life (Gen. 3:24).

Victor the Vulture wears a sword belt, but instead of a sword it contains a snake that like to eat apples -- a pretty obvious link to the Garden of Eden story. The snake is even called Sylvester, meaning "forest dweller." The griffin in The Tinleys lives at the top of "the biggest, steepest, most dangerous mountain around." Ezekiel places the Cherub and the Garden of Eden on a mountaintop:

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God . . . . Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire (Ezek. 28:13-14).

In Nephi's vision, too, the Tree of Life is seen on "an exceedingly high mountain, which I never had before seen, and upon which I never had before set my foot" (1 Ne. 11:1).