Gabriel is an archangel whose name means "God is my strength" and who is one of the most beloved of all members of the heavenly host. Gabriel is also one of the highest ranked of all angels and is only one of two (or three) actually named angels in the entire Bible, with Michael and Raphael.
Gabriel appears four times in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament he explains the dreams of Daniel and is described thusly: "The man Gabriel, who I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice" (Daniel 9:21). In the New Testament he foretells the birth of John the Baptist and, most famous of all, makes the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, for which he is termed the Angel of Annunciaton.
Among the Jews, Gabriel's power and strength-as implied by his very name-were frequently noted in legends and tales. He has been called the angel of power of God and also the angel of judgment angel he will supposedly appear on the last day and blow the final trumpet that will call all of the living and the dead to come forth and face the final, irrevocable judgment of the Lord. A number of collossal achievemtns have additionally been attributed to him, some of which are also credited to otherwise nameless angels (or angels of destruction), such as the obliteration of Sodom and Gomorrah, the massacre of the Assyrian army of 185,000, the wrestling episode with Jacob, and the burial of Moses.
Elsewhere in Jewish lore he is reputed to be the angel of justice and one of the archangels, as noted in the First Book of Enoch, where he is declared the guardian of the Garden of Eden and chief of the angelic choir of the cherubim, a post that would rank him among the foremost of all angels in the celestial hierarchy. He is declared in the Third Book of Enoch to be a prince of heaven, in charge of the sixth heaven, although other sources state his realm to be the first heaven.
Regardless, he stands ever at the side of God and is the prime minister or chief minister of heaven. This is supposedly proven by the old Babylonian legend that states that Gabriel once fell out of favor and was replaced for several weeks by Dubbiel. His absence made possible the cruel oppression of the Jewish people by the Persians (whose patron angel Dubbiel happened to be), but after making a brilliant suggestion about some matter, Gabriel was restored to his position and permitted to enter once more beyond the heanvely curtain that surrounds the throne of God.
Among Christians, Gabriel is honored for his role in the Annunciation and is foremost of all angelic messengers. The special veneration of the angel, however, probably dates to around the tenth century. He was a figure of high repute during the Middle Ages and was even mentioned by St. Joan of Arc as one of the heanvely visitors who gave her the courage and inspiration to visit the king of France and so begin the momentous events that culminated in her rescue of Orléans in 1431 from the English during the Hundred Years' War.
Christian art has made Gabriel on of its favorite subjects, especially as concerns his role in the Annuncation, with works by such masters as da Vinci, Barbieri, Martini, and Raphael. Gabriel's symbol is the lily, and there is a tradition that he is the angel of birth, carefully spending the nine months of pregnancy watching over each unborn child and instructing it on the necessary knowledge of heaven that is an inherent part of all people. Just before birth, though, he touches the baby on the upper lip to make it unable to remember all of the information about heaven until it retruns to the spiritual state at death, the sign of Gabriel's touch is the cleft just below the nose.
On the basis of this close involvement with conception and birth, some scholars have suggested that this angel is actually female. Unfortunately, this ignores the wide writings of theologians that angels are entirely spiritual creatures devoid of gender, referred to in the masculine purely for a common, albeit somewhat sexist, ground for reference.
Known in the Arabic as Jibril, Gabrile has a prominent role in Islamic teachings, for he is believed to have dictated the entire Qur'an, surah by surah, to Muhammad and is called the angel of truth and the chief of the four favored angels. He supposedly had the honor of carrying Muhammad to paradise, transporting him there on Al-Borak. This magical beast had the face of a man but the cheeks of a horse, the wings of an eagle, a body of radiant light, the voice of a man, and eyes like stars. In Paradise Lost, Gabriel is the guardian of the eartly Paradise who dispatches angels across the world to hunt for Satan when the evil one descends to earth and begins the temptation of Adam and Eve.