Archangel Gabriel
Archangel Gabriel is an archangel with power to announce God's will to men. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran. The Abrahamic religions all recognize Gabriel as an angelic spirit. Many Christian traditions — including Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism — also revere Gabriel as a saint.
Etymology
"Gabriel" is a Hebrew name generally translated "strength of God," more accurately "my strength is in God," or "God is my strength." This connotes a "man of God."
Abilities
In the Hierarchy of angels, Gabriel rules over the choir of Angels. In angelic astrology, he is associated with Saturn and Mercury and the triplicities of Cancer, Pisces, and Scorpio. He may also rule over the sphere of the moon. Gabriel is connected to the element of water and the cardinal sign of north.
He rules over the demon Azazel.
Gabriel was mainly tasked with transmitting the scriptures from God to the prophets and messengers. He is also believed to have delivered punishment from God by leveling the entire Sodom city with a tip of his wing.
Judaism
In the Hebrew Bible, Gabriel appears to the prophet Daniel to explain his visions (Daniel 8:15–26, 9:21–27). These are the first instances of a named angel in the Bible. Gabriel's main function in Daniel is that of revealer, responsible for interpreting Daniel's visions, a role he continues to have in later traditions.
The archangel also appears in the Book of Enoch and other ancient Jewish writings not preserved in Hebrew. Alongside the Archangel Michael, Gabriel is described as the guardian angel of Israel, defending its people against the angels of the other nations.
Gabriel is not called an archangel in the canonical Bible. However, the intertestamental period (roughly 200 BC – 50 AD) produced a wealth of literature, much of it having an apocalyptic orientation. The names and ranks of angels and demons were greatly expanded in this literature, and each had particular duties and status before God. This was the period when Gabriel was first referred to as an archangel.
In 1 Enoch 9:1–3, Gabriel, along with Michael, Archangel Uriel and Suriel, "saw much blood being shed upon the earth" (9:1) and heard the souls of men cry, "Bring our cause before the Most High" (9:3). In 1 Enoch 10:1, the reply came from "the Most High, the Holy and Great One" who sent forth agents, including Gabriel. Gabriel is the fifth of the five angels who keep watch: "Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim" (1 Enoch 20:7).
In the Kabbalistic tradition, Gabriel is identified with the sephirah of Yesod. Gabriel also has a prominent role as one of God's archangels in the Kabbalah literature. There, Gabriel is portrayed as working in concert with Michael as part of God's court. Gabriel is not to be prayed to because only God can answer prayers and sends Gabriel as his agent.
According to Jewish mythology, in the Garden of Eden there is a tree of life or the "tree of souls" that blossoms and produces new souls, which fall into the Guf, the Treasury of Souls. Gabriel reaches into the treasury and takes out the first soul that comes into his hand. Then Lailah, the Angel of Conception, watches over the embryo until it is born.
Christianity
Gabriel's first appearance in the New Testament, concerns the annunciation of the birth of John the Baptist. John's father Zacharias, a priest of the course of Abia, (Luke 1:5–7) was childless because his wife Elisabeth was barren. An angel appears to Zacharias while he is ministering in the Temple, to announce the birth of his son. When Zacharias questions the angel, the angel gives his name as Gabriel.
After completing his required week of ministry, Zacharias returns to his home and his wife Elizabeth conceives. After she has completed five months of her pregnancy (Luke 1:21–25), Gabriel appears again, now to Mary, to announce the birth of Jesus. Gabriel only appears by name in those two passages in Luke. In the first passage the angel identified himself as Gabriel, but in the second it is Luke who identified him as Gabriel.
Gnostic Christianity paid special attention to angels as beings belonging to a pantheon of spiritual forces involved in the creation of the world. According to one ancient Gnostic manuscript, the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, Gabriel is a divine being and inhabitant of the Pleroma who existed prior to the Demiurge.
The feast of Saint Gabriel was included by Pope Benedict XV in the General Roman Calendar in 1921, for celebration on 24 March. In 1969 the day was officially transferred to 29 September for celebration in conjunction with the feast of the archangels St. Michael and St. Raphael.
Islam
Gabriel is venerated as one of the primary archangels and as the Angel of Revelation in Islam. He is primarily mentioned in the verses 2:97, 2:98, and 66:4 of the Quran, although the Quranic text doesn't explicitly refer to him as an angel. In the Quran, the archangel Gabriel appears named in 2:97 and 66:4, as well as in 2:98, where he is mentioned along with the archangel Michael.
Exegetical Quranic literature narrates that Muhammad saw the archangel Gabriel in his full angelic splendor only twice, the first time being when he received his first revelation. As the Bible portrays Gabriel as a celestial messenger sent to Daniel, Mary, and Zechariah, Islamic tradition holds that Gabriel was sent to numerous pre-Islamic Biblical prophets with revelation and divine injunctions, including Adam, whom Muslims believe was consoled by Gabriel some time after the Fall, too. He is known by many names in Islam, such as "keeper of holiness." In Hadith traditions, Jibril is said to have six hundred wings.
Gabriel's horn
A familiar image of Gabriel has him blowing a trumpet blast to announce the resurrection of the dead at the end of time. However, though the Bible mentions a trumpet blast preceding the resurrection of the dead, it never specifies Gabriel as the trumpeter.
Different passages state different things: the angels of the Son of Man (Matthew 24:31); the voice of the Son of God (John 5:25-29); God's trumpet (I Thessalonians 4:16); seven angels sounding a series of blasts (Revelation 8-11); or simply "a trumpet will sound" (I Corinthians 15:52). Likewise the early Christian Church Fathers do not mention Gabriel as a trumpeter; and in Jewish and Muslim traditions, Gabriel is again not identified as a trumpeter.
The earliest known identification of Gabriel as a trumpeter comes from the Hymn of the Armenian Saint Nerses Shnorhali, "for Protection in the Night."
The image of Gabriel's trumpet blast to announce the end of time became was taken up in Evangelical Christianity, where it became widespread, notably in Negro spirituals. An early example occurs in John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667).