Gabriel

• 1. Introduction

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  In Hadith traditions, the angel Jibril is said to have six hundred wings. Jibril is the Islamic name for Gabriel, an archangel known across Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other Abrahamic religions. In some cultures he is called Cebrail. His task is to announce God's will to humankind, and three sacred texts mention him: the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. Yet each tradition remembers a different Gabriel. To one he is an interpreter of visions, to another a bearer of birth announcements, to another a carrier of revelation and a fighter beside a prophet. How did one messenger take on so many roles? Why do rival calendars celebrate him on so many days? And why do so many people picture him holding a trumpet, when the Bible never hands him one?

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• 2. Daniel and Enoch

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  The Book of Daniel is the only book in the Hebrew Bible that names Gabriel outright. There he appears to the prophet Daniel to explain his visions, in passages from chapters 8 and 9. This book also holds the first named angels in the Hebrew Bible. Gabriel's main function there is that of revealer, interpreting what Daniel sees, and later traditions keep that role for him. In Daniel's final vision, an angel appears who is not named but is likely Gabriel again. He speaks of receiving help from Michael in a battle against the prince of Persia. Many scholars infer that Gabriel is the messenger throughout chapters 10-12, delivering Daniel's last apocalyptic revelations. The Babylonian Talmud goes further. In Yoma 77a it reads the unnamed "man clothed with linen" in chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Ezekiel as Gabriel.

  The title archangel appears in neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament. It first attaches to Gabriel in Jewish writings from the Second Temple period, which ran from 516 BC to 70 AD. Much of that literature was apocalyptic. It greatly expanded the names and ranks of angels and demons, and gave each a particular duty and status before God.

  The Book of Enoch mentions Gabriel often. In it, Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel complain to God about two leaders of the fallen angels, Azazel and Samyaza. These two had revealed eternal secrets and sins to mankind. They had also defiled themselves with women who gave birth to giant offspring. God decides to destroy the Earth and its inhabitants, sparing only Noah. He sends Gabriel and the other archangels to cast the fallen angels into darkness until the day of their judgment. Chapter 20 lists Gabriel among seven holy angels who watch: Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqâêl, Gabriel and Remiel. Chapter 40 names four presences standing on the four sides of God: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Phanuel. The last mention comes in chapter 71: "And that Head of Days came with Michael and Gabriel, Raphael and Phanuel, thousands and ten thousands of angels without number." Most Jewish and Christian church bodies do not treat Enoch as canonical scripture. The Ethiopian Jewish community and the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches do include it in their biblical canon.

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• 3. Thrones and Souls

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  Rabbinic Judaism gives Gabriel a precise seat: the left side of God's throne. Michael, who ranks above him, stands at the right. Together with Uriel and Raphael, they occupy the four sides of the throne and act as guardian angels of the four parts of the Earth. Michael and Gabriel often work as a pair. Michael is mainly occupied in heaven, while Gabriel, as God's messenger, typically carries out God's will on earth. Like every angel he has wings, but otherwise he takes the form of a man. Tradition links him to gold, the color of fire. Alongside Michael he is also guardian angel of Israel, defending the Israelites against the angels of other nations.

  Shimon ben Lakish, an amora of the third century, drew a conclusion about the names themselves. He held that Michael, Raphael and Gabriel came out of the Babylonian exile, a view recorded in Genesis Rabbah 48:9.

  In Kabbalah literature, Gabriel serves in God's court alongside Michael and is identified with the sefira of Yesod. One rule follows from his position as an agent. He is not to be prayed to, because only God can answer prayers, and God sends Gabriel on his behalf.

  Jewish mythology gives him a quieter task too. In the Garden of Eden stands a tree of life, called the tree of souls, which blossoms and produces new souls. These fall into the Guf, the treasury of souls. Gabriel reaches into that treasury and takes out the first soul that comes into his hand.

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• 4. The Annunciation

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  Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, had no children because his wife Elizabeth was barren. In the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, an angel appears to him to announce that a son will be born. When Zechariah questions the angel, the angel identifies himself as Gabriel. Later in the same chapter Gabriel appears to Mary, mother of Jesus, to announce that she will conceive and bear a son through a virgin birth. Here the difference is subtle. In the first passage the angel names himself, but in the second it is the author of Luke who names him. Only two other angels are named in the New Testament: Michael and Abaddon.

  The name itself drew commentary. In Hebrew it joins gever, meaning "man", with El, meaning "God" or "mighty one". That yields "man of God". Proclus of Constantinople, in his first homily, argued that this meaning prefigured Jesus, whose birth Gabriel announced, being both man and God. Saint Bernard, who lived from 1090 to 1153, read the name as "the strength of God". In his four homilies on the Missus Est, he saw in it the strength of Christ and the strength God gives to timorous people. He wrote: "Therefore it was an opportune choice that designated Gabriel for the work he had to accomplish, or rather, because he was to accomplish it therefore he was called Gabriel."

  Gabriel appears more often in early Christian pseudepigraphic texts than in the canonical Bible. He is mentioned in infancy gospels, including chapter 7 of the Nativity Gospel of Mary and chapter 9 of the Protevangelium of James. Apocalyptic works such as the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra and the Second Book of Enoch name him as well. In Gnosticism, a manuscript called the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit makes him a divine being living in the pleroma that existed before the demiurge. The Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic text dated to 280 AD, refers to him in chapter 17. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds that Gabriel lived a mortal life as the prophet Noah, with Noah as his mortal name and Gabriel as his heavenly name. Many branches of Christianity revere him as a saint, including Eastern Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church, Lutheranism and Anglicanism. Those churches do not agree on which day to honor him.

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• 5. Feast Days

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  Many sources dating between 1588 and 1921 place the feast of Saint Gabriel the Archangel on the 18th of March. The writer Elizabeth Drayson mentions this date for 1588 in her 2013 book The Lead Books of Granada. A Spanish work first published in 1608, Flos sanctorum by Alonso de Villegas, gives the same day, and a newer edition appeared in 1794. So does the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in 1886. One source from 1856 stands apart, placing the feast on the 7th of April for reasons unknown, though a note in it admits the day is normally the 18th of March.

  Pope Benedict XV added the feast to the General Roman Calendar in 1921, for the 24th of March. In 1969 it was officially moved to the 29th of September, to be celebrated with the archangels Michael and Raphael. That date is known as Michaelmas. The Catholic Church, the Church of England, the Lutheran churches, the Anglican Communion and the Western Orthodox churches all observe it.

  The Eastern Orthodox Church, and Eastern Catholic Churches following the Byzantine Rite, celebrate the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers on the 8th of November. For churches using the Julian Calendar, that day currently falls on the 21st of November in the Gregorian Calendar, a gap of 13 days. Eastern Orthodox believers also honor Gabriel on two more days. The 26th of March, a Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel, celebrates his role in the Annunciation. The 13th of July celebrates all the appearances and miracles attributed to him. That feast began on Mount Athos in the 9th century. According to the account, Gabriel appeared in a cell near Karyes and wrote the hymn to the Theotokos, "It is truly meet...", with his finger on a stone tablet. The account places this under Emperor Basil II and Empress Constantina Porphyrogenitus, while Nicholas Chrysoverges was Patriarch of Constantinople.

  The Coptic Orthodox Church celebrates on 13 Paoni, 22 Koiak and 26 Paoni. A medieval Coptic work, the Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel, ties 22 Koiak to the day Gabriel was given the rank of archangel in heaven. The Ethiopian Church marks his feast on the 18th of December in the Ethiopian calendar. A sizeable number of believers make a pilgrimage that day to churches dedicated to Saint Gabriel in Kulubi and Wonkshet.

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• 6. The Trumpet Myth

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  The Bible mentions a trumpet blast before the resurrection of the dead, but it never says who blows it. Matthew 24:31 gives the angels of the Son of Man. John 5:25-29 speaks of the voice of the Son of God. First Thessalonians 4:16 calls it God's trumpet, and Revelation 8-11 describes seven angels sounding a series of blasts. First Corinthians 15:52 says only that a trumpet will sound. The early Christian Church Fathers do not name Gabriel as trumpeter, and neither do Jewish or Muslim traditions.

  The earliest known identification comes from the "Hymn for Protection in the Night", attributed to the Armenian Saint Nerses IV the Gracious, who lived from 1102 to 1173. It asks: "The sound of Gabriel's trumpet on the last night, make us worthy to hear, and to stand on your right hand among the sheep with lanterns of inextinguishable light." A Armenian manuscript from 1455 shows Gabriel sounding his trumpet as the dead climb out of their graves.

  John Milton gave the image a famous English form in Paradise Lost, published in 1667. There the Son gives a signal, and the angel "blew His trumpet, heard in Oreb since perhaps When God descended". Whether Milton knew the Armenian works is unclear, though they presumably share a common source. The image later spread widely through evangelical Christianity, notably in African American spirituals.

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• 7. Angel of Revelation

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  On the day Muhammad received his first revelation, he saw Gabriel in full angelic splendor. According to tafsir, the Quranic exegetical literature, he saw him that way only twice. Islam reveres Jibril as one of the primary archangels and as the Angel of Revelation. The Quran names him in several places, once alongside Michael, though its text does not call him an angel. Muslims believe the first five verses of Al-Alaq, the 96th chapter, were the first words Gabriel delivered to Muhammad. When Muhammad was asked which angel brings the holy scriptures, he told the Jews it was Gabriel. Among his many names is "keeper of holiness".

  Islamic tradition gives him a long career before Muhammad. He carried revelation and divine instructions to earlier prophets, including Adam, whom he consoled after the Fall. Muslims believe he told Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist and told Mary of the coming birth of Jesus. He was also one of three angels who informed Abraham of the birth of Isaac. In the Hadith of Gabriel, he questions Muhammad on the core tenets of Islam. One hadith, narrated by Abu Dharr al-Ghifari and compiled by al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi, says he can regulate human feeling, including happiness and sadness. Another tradition says he leveled the city of Sodom with the tip of his wing. The tree of souls, in this tradition, is the Sidrat al-Muntaha, identified as a Ziziphus spina-christi.

  Gabriel is also a warrior. He is said to have helped Muhammad against an ifrit during the Night Journey. At the Battle of Badr, various hadiths say Gabriel, Michael, Raphael and thousands of angels came disguised as Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, a Companion and bodyguard of the Prophet. Islamic belief counts this as Zubayr's honor. At the Battle of Uhud, Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas saw two unidentified warriors in white protecting Muhammad. Muhammad later said they were Jibril and Michael, according to Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri. Hadiths also place Gabriel beside Muhammad at the Battle of Hunayn, and he is said to have fought Iblis when Iblis tempted Jesus. Ibn Barrajan regarded Gabriel as created from fire, like Iblis, which sets him symbolically against the devils' leader. Scholars still debate whether the Holy Spirit in the Quran means Gabriel.

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• 8. Beyond Three Faiths

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  The Yazidis worship seven archangels, including Jabra'il, who is Gabriel, and Mikha'il, who is Michael. The others are Rapha'il, Dedra'il, Azra'il, Shamka'il and Azazil. They are emanations from God, entrusted with the world. The Yazidis associate Gabriel with Tawûsî Melek, the Peacock Angel. Yarsanism shares elements with Yazidism, including the incarnation of the archangel Gabriel as Pir Benjamin. The Mandaeans identify Gabriel with Ptahil, an uthra honored as the Fourth Life. In their account, Ptahil creates the poorly made material world with the help of Ruha, a sinful and fallen female ruler of the World of Darkness.

  Artists have had wide latitude with Gabriel, since angels are described as pure spirits with no defined form. Amelia R. Brown compares Byzantine angel images with the conventions used to depict court eunuchs, who wore a white tunic decorated with gold. She suggests Byzantine artists drew on that look, consciously or not. Some recent popular works on angels consider Gabriel female or androgynous. Painters most often show him at the Annunciation. In 2008, a 16th-century drawing by Lucas van Leyden of the Netherlands was discovered. George R. Goldner of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art suggested it was a sketch for a stained glass window. He said: "The fact that the archangel is an ordinary-looking person and not an idealized boy is typical of the artist."

  The Military Order of Saint Gabriel honors contributions to the U.S. Army Public Affairs community. Its medallion shows Gabriel sounding a trumpet. In the shooter game Ultrakill, Gabriel is the main antagonist and narrative protagonist. The television series Supernatural casts Richard Speight Jr. as the youngest archangel, who poses as a trickster and then as Loki to hide from Heaven. In Good Omens, Jon Hamm plays Gabriel, an antagonist in the first season and a main protagonist in the second. In Baltimore's Little Italy, a statue of Saint Gabriel has been carried through the streets in an annual end-of-summer procession for over 80 years.

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