Saturday, August 30, 2008

Bible Paragraphs Mentioning Gabriel

Someone recently landed on this blog searching for "bible paragraphs mentioning Gabriel." I don't have anything specifically highlighting those, so I thought I'd make a quick note on it.

Gabriel is only mentioned in Daniel's vision in Daniel 8-9 and in the announcement of Jesus's birth to Mary in Luke 1. In Daniel, he's the one explaining to Daniel what his vision means. In Luke, he's the messenger giving Mary the news that she will be the mother of the Christ.

The specific verses are Dan 8:16 and 9:21 and Luke 1:19 and 1:26. The Bible only mentions two angels by name, if I'm remembering correctly, Gabriel and Michael.

Jewish literature from the Second Temple Period (between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament mostly) have a lot more to say about angels, so there might be more specifically about Gabriel there. I don't have time to look at those sources right now.

I'm sure that the inquiry was probably inspired by someone looking for background related to the "Gabriel's Vision" inscription. If you're looking just for biblical passages, there's not much.

2 comments:

  1. You say: "The Bible only mentions two angels by name, if I'm remembering correctly, Gabriel and Michael."

    It does, of course, depend whose Bible we're talking about. For those who base their canon on the Greek rather than Hebrew Old Testament, Tobit adds Raphael to the list.

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  2. Doug, thanks for the additional info. You're right. It all depends on the canon. I'm not as readily versed in apocryphal or deuterocanonical literature, so I didn't recall the Tobit example. I've read most of the deuterocanoncal books, but I don't study them as regularly. For what it's worth, I was including them in what I called "Jewish literature from the Second Temple Period."

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