Who Is Archangel Gabriel, the Messenger of Revelation?

Where does Gabriel appear in Daniel and Luke?

Gabriel is named in four passages: two in the Book of Daniel and two in the first chapter of Luke. In each one he speaks, and in three of them the person he speaks to is frightened or perplexed.

The two books use him differently. In Daniel he explains a vision the prophet has already seen, and the explanation concerns empires. In Luke he announces events that have not happened yet, and the news concerns two households. Luke also sets the scenes side by side: Zechariah's question earns a punishment, while Mary's question is answered, and Mary's scene, the Annunciation, is the one that Christian feasts and prayers keep returning to.

The Bible gives Gabriel's name in these four scenes and nowhere else, so every other appearance credited to him is a later identification of an unnamed angel.

Why do 1 Enoch and the Talmud make Gabriel an angel of judgment?

Jewish writings after Daniel give Gabriel a harder task than announcing births: he carries out judgment. In 1 Enoch, God sends him against the children of the Watchers with orders to "send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle" (10:9). The Babylonian Talmud gives him the same kind of work and an element of his own: Gabriel is the ministering angel of fire.

Two details in these stories run against Christian expectations. In the Talmud's account of Abraham's visitors, the angel who announces a birth is Michael, who tells Sarah she will bear Isaac, and Gabriel's errand is the destruction of Sodom (Bava Metzia 86b). The Talmud also ranks Gabriel below Michael: when the three visitors walk together, Michael is in the middle with Gabriel on his right (Yoma 37a).

Hugh Pope's 1909 article in the Catholic Encyclopedia names the reversal directly. In Christian tradition, he wrote, "Gabriel is ever the angel of mercy while Michael is rather the angel of judgment," whereas the Jewish sources dwelt on Gabriel's power and treated him as the angel of judgment. A reader who meets Gabriel as a gentle bringer of good news in one source and as the destroyer of Sodom in another is reading two traditions, both of which cite the same angel.

Who is Jibril in Islam?

In Islam, Gabriel is Jibril, the Arabic form of the name, and the angel who brought the Qur'an to Muhammad. The Qur'an names him three times. Surah al-Baqarah says he "revealed this Quran to your heart by Allah's Will" (2:97), and the next verse names him beside Michael among those whose enemies are God's enemies (2:98). Surah at-Tahrim lists Gabriel first among the Prophet's supporters, ahead of the righteous believers and the angels (66:4).

Other verses describe the same angel by title. Surah ash-Shu'ara says the revelation was brought down by "the trustworthy spirit" (26:193), and Surah Maryam has God send His spirit to Mary "as a man, perfectly formed" to announce a son (19:17); translators and commentators identify both with Gabriel.

The hadith supply the scenes. In Sahih al-Bukhari 3, an angel comes to Muhammad in the cave of Hira and commands him to read, and Khadija's cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal identifies the visitor as the keeper of secrets whom God sent to Moses, understood as Gabriel. In the Hadith of Gabriel (Sahih Muslim 8, narrated by Umar), a stranger in very white clothes asks Muhammad to define islam, iman, ihsan and the Hour. After he leaves, Muhammad tells his companions, "He was Gabriel. He came to you in order to instruct you in matters of religion."

Jibril and the Gabriel of Luke share a name, a messenger's job, and an announcement to Mary. Their defining work differs. In Islam it is carrying the Qur'an to Muhammad, and the son announced in Surah Maryam is a prophet who calls himself "a servant of Allah" (19:30), while Luke's angel says the child "will be called Son of God" (1:35).

Where do Gabriel's lily and trumpet come from?

Luke describes nothing in Gabriel's hands. The lily and the trumpet were added by painters and hymn writers long after the Gospel, and each has a traceable source.

The one element taken from scripture is Gabriel's greeting in Luke 1:28, which painters wrote into the picture as text. The lily comes from Italian Annunciation painting. In Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi's Annunciation of 1333, now in the Uffizi, a vase of lilies stands between Gabriel and Mary, and his greeting, AVE GRATIA PLENA DOMINUS TECUM, runs in raised gold across the panel. The Uffizi reads those lilies as "a symbol of the Son of God and the purity of the Virgin Mary." In Leonardo da Vinci's Annunciation, painted around 1472 to 1475, Gabriel kneels and holds the lily out himself.

The trumpet is later and has no biblical anchor. First Thessalonians 4:16 joins "the archangel's call" to "the sound of God's trumpet" without naming the archangel, and Revelation 8:2 gives trumpets to "the seven angels who stand before God" without naming any of them. According to Victoria Emily Jones of Art & Theology, the Armenian church first assigned the last trumpet to Gabriel in the twelfth century, and John Milton did the same in Paradise Lost; the image then passed into African American spirituals.

Can you pray to Gabriel, and why does the Hail Mary quote him?

Catholic and Orthodox Christians do, asking Gabriel to pray for them before God. Jewish and Islamic teaching direct prayer to God alone.

The Catholic Catechism says the Church "celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly (St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels)" and invokes the angels' assistance in its liturgy (CCC 335). The Hail Mary begins with Gabriel's words to Mary in Luke 1:28, and the Catechism says so directly: "the greeting of the angel Gabriel opens this prayer" (CCC 2676). A traditional Catholic prayer to Gabriel asks him to "intercede for us at the throne of divine Mercy," so that "as thou didst announce to Mary the mystery of the Incarnation," those praying may share its benefits. The request is for his prayers before God, tied to the job he performed in Luke.

Orthodox hymnody addresses him the same way. The troparion for July 13 reads: "Gabriel, commander of the heavenly hosts, we who are unworthy beseech you, by your prayers encompass us beneath the wings of your immaterial glory."

The Jerusalem Talmud records the opposite instruction, in God's voice: a person in trouble "should cry neither to Michael nor to Gabriel, rather he should cry to Me and I shall answer him immediately" (Berakhot 9:1). Islam holds a similar line. The Qur'an has God say, "Call upon Me, I will respond to you" (40:60), and Muslims honor Jibril through belief in the angels, one of the articles of faith that Gabriel himself asks Muhammad to define in the Hadith of Gabriel.