Cherubim are the first heavenly beings named in the Bible, Genesis 3:24, stationed east of Eden with the fiery ever-turning sword. The word likely borrows from Akkadian karibu, one who blesses, an intercessory being, cousin to the lamassu, the winged bull-lions guarding Assyrian gates. Ezekiel gives the full anatomy: four faces, human, lion, ox, eagle, four wings, burnished bronze, and in chapter 10 the ox-face is simply called the face of the cherub. They bear the throne; they are the throne's chassis.
The infant cherub is a hostile takeover: Renaissance and Baroque art merged the biblical cherub with the Greco-Roman putto, Cupid's chubby entourage, until the most terrifying guardian in scripture became a Valentine's mascot. Nothing in any canonical text suggests infancy, cuteness, or romance. The swap was so complete that modern English cherubic means adorably plump.
The claim, popularized in our own century: Ezekiel's account, wheels, fire, bronze, noise, movement in any direction without turning, reads like a technology report by a witness with no technical vocabulary, the throne vehicle as craft. Verdict: the description is genuinely strange, and Von Däniken built a career on it, but the text calls them living creatures and names them cherubim, fitting the region's known guardian-beast iconography. The weirdness is real; the spacecraft is the modern reader's culture doing exactly what Ezekiel's did, describing the unknown with the familiar.
How did a four-faced guardian become a naked toddler with a bow?