Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Gabriel
The angel who explains visions and announces births, named four times in the Bible.
Daniel 8:16, in every translation this tool compares.
Named four times in the whole Bible, twice to Daniel and twice in Luke's opening chapter. His work is explaining and announcing, not fighting. Scripture never calls him an archangel, though nearly everyone assumes it does.
Named four times, twice to Daniel and twice in Luke's opening chapter, and he interprets and announces. Scripture never calls him an archangel. DDD's Collins prefers "God is my hero" or "my warrior" to the more common "man of God" for the name, arguing from Eblaite personal names, and Daniel's "the man Gabriel" (8:15; 9:21) is likely a play on the gever, "man," inside the name. Gabriel and Michael are the only two angels named in the Hebrew Bible; Raphael is the third named angel in the wider canon, in Tobit.
H1403, G1043, 4 occ
1 Enoch 9-10 gives him a standing role among the four who intercede. He appears in the oldest four-archangel list (1 Enoch 9:1, with Michael, Raphael, and Sariel) and in the seven of 1 Enoch 20 (with Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, and Remiel). In 2 Enoch 24:1 he sits at God's left hand, and Aramaic incantation bowls from Babylonia sometimes invoke his name ahead of Michael's. The Targumim later credit him with leading Joseph to his brothers (on Genesis 37:15), helping Michael bury Moses (on Deuteronomy 34:6), and destroying Sennacherib's army (on 2 Chronicles 32:21).
- Daniel 8:16
- Daniel 9:21
- Luke 1:19
- Luke 1:26
- J. J. Collins, DDD s.v. "Gabriel," 338
