Gabriel is barely in the Bible yet became heaven's best-known messenger
Only one book of the Hebrew Bible names Gabriel, and neither it nor the New Testament ever calls him an archangel. The promotion came from apocalyptic writings of the Second Temple era, and from there the messenger went on to announce births in Luke and deliver revelations to Muhammad.
His Hebrew name joins geber, meaning man, with El, meaning God or mighty one, and is usually rendered as God is my strength, though man of God is another reading. In the Book of Daniel, the earliest place in the Hebrew Bible where angels carry names, Gabriel explains the prophet's visions, and many scholars think he is also the unnamed figure who brings Daniel's last revelations. The Babylonian Talmud goes further and identifies him with the man clothed in linen in Ezekiel. A third-century rabbi, Shimon ben Lakish, held that the names Michael, Raphael and Gabriel were picked up during the Babylonian exile.
Between 516 BC and 70 AD a flood of Jewish literature expanded the ranks and duties of angels, and here Gabriel first becomes an archangel. The Book of Enoch, canonical only for Ethiopian Jews and the Ethiopian and Eritrean Tewahedo churches, has him among four presences standing on the sides of God. Rabbinic tradition places Michael at God's right and Gabriel, ranked lower, at the left, working mostly on earth and linked to the colour of gold. One Jewish legend even has him drawing each new soul from a treasury called the Guf.
In Luke he tells the elderly Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth will bear John the Baptist, and then announces to Mary that she will bear Jesus. Muslims hold that the first five verses of chapter 96 of the Quran, Al-Alaq, were the opening revelation Gabriel carried to Muhammad. Latter-day Saints go their own way, teaching that Gabriel lived on earth as the prophet Noah.
Even his feast has wandered. Sources from 1588 to 1921 place it on 18 March. Pope Benedict XV put it into the General Roman Calendar for 24 March in 1921, and in 1969 it moved to 29 September, shared with Michael and Raphael. Eastern Orthodox churches honour him on 26 March and 13 July as well as at the November feast of all the archangels.
Source: Gabriel
