Good morning. Today we dedicate some attention to the figure of one of the three main angels named in the Old Testament and also in the New, at least the one we are dealing with, that is, Gabriel. So I would say that we start first of all from what the Encyclopedia of the Bible says about it, a Catholic encyclopedia where only teachers write.
Here, for example, Professor Arrabal under Gabriele writes exactly this. . .
Meanwhile in Hebrew Gabriel means "man of God", it literally means "power of an El", "power of an El" or "gever" that is "strong man of an El. And he says: in the Old Testament he appears only in the Book of Daniel. His appearance is that of a man - and then we see him - but it is understood that he has wings as a symbol of his spirituality.
He obeys the Lord in everything , then introduces himself to Daniele and it also explains the messianic meaning of the "seventy weeks", one of the most transcendent prophecies of the Old Testament. So, let's start from this. For the Canon of the Catholic Bible, the book is a prophetic book of Daniel is not even a prophetic book.
The Hebrew Bible is called Tanakh, that is, Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim, because it is divided into three sections: the Torah, which is the fundamental nucleus of the Old Testament i Nevi'im, which are the prophets, and then the Ketuvim, that is, the writings, let's say the least important part. Behold, Daniel is included in the Ketuvim. That is, he is not even considered a prophet.
But in the "prophecy of the seventy weeks" there is more, that is, the "prophecy (essentially) of the 490 years". On this text which is published in the United States and where rabbis, university professors, David Wolpe - who is the Senior Rabbi of the Los Angeles temple - write precisely about this prophecy, which is defined here as one of the most transcendent prophecies of the Old Testament , he says that here Daniel, seeing that the prediction of the freedom of the Jewish people from the Babylonian exile had in fact not yet been fulfilled, had not yet been realized despite the fact that the seventy years that would have been foreseen by Jeremiah, then What does Daniel do? - David Wolpe says - He revised the prophecy.
That is, Daniel reworked Jeremiah's prophecy, changing it from seventy years to seventy weeks of years. So, in other words, since the things expected or hoped for did not happen, they did nothing but lengthen the time. So this, which is defined here as one of the most transcendent prophecies of the Old Testament, according to the Senior Rabbi of the Los Angeles temple is actually a rehash, that is, a falsification.
But let's go back to Daniele. This is a first curiosity and now we see others. So at a certain point Daniel sees this angel, that is Gabriel, arriving.
And let's go to the Book of Daniel to chapter 8 where it says: "Now, while I, Daniel, was contemplating the vision - what I was seeing - and was looking for its meaning, behold, a human figure appeared before me. I heard the voice of a man by the river Ulai, who cried out and said, Gabriel, explain the vision to this man. " And Gabriele, in short, provides a series of explanations.
Then again, still in the Book of Daniel, in chapter 9 in verse 21 it says: "I was still speaking and praying, when Gabriel, whom I had seen in the previous vision - that is, in the meeting - came flying up to me, at the time of the evening offering". So "when Gabriel came flying to me". Let's take another Bible, again Daniel 9:21.
This is the Jerusalem Bible, where it says: "And while I was speaking and praying, Gabriel, whom I had seen before in a vision, flew quickly towards me : it was the time of the evening offering". Now, it says twice here that Gabriel, only Gabriel, flies towards Daniel. But let's see exactly what the Hebrew text says.
So here we see the Hebrew writing of verse 9 of the Book of Daniel. Here it says "ve haish gavriel" who arrives and arrives how? "muaf biaf".
And now let's see exactly what it means. "haish" means "the man" with the article. So "the man Gabriel" and "muaf biaf" means "being weary with toil.
" And now we see it in a dictionary of Hebrew etymology. This is the Ernest Klein dictionary of Hebrew etymology published by the University of Haifa where, under the entry, at the root "Yaf" - the verse of Daniel 9:21 that we have just read is quoted exactly - and where it is said that the expression " muaf biaf" probably means "toiled with toil. " So that's the meaning.
And now let's see how it is rendered in many other Bibles. Then we saw that in the meantime in Hebrew it is written "haish gavriel", that is, the man Gabriel. In the two Bibles we have read now, the term man is not taken into consideration at all, it is as if that word did not exist.
Because in both there is only "Gabriel" written, because they didn't translate the term "man". Because Gabriel must necessarily be an angel and, since he is an angel, he must necessarily be a spiritual, ethereal entity. But no, we have seen that in Hebrew it is written "haish", the man Gabriel and not "in human figure".
Because in the figure it means that it is something else, which presents itself in the figure. It says "man" there, and it's very clear, it's not an interpretation. But let's see how other Bibles behave, for example this French Bible.
Again in 9:21, here he says: "l'homme, Gabriel, - therefore here he recognizes the term man - and he says: "s'approcha de moi d'un vol rapide". So again he says "with rapid flight". And there we saw, and then we get into it, that in reality it was not a rapid flight but an action that involved effort, and we will see how.
Let's move on. This English Bible tells us exactly, again according to Daniel 9:21 : "the man Gabriel - that is, the man Gabriele, and here again we are talking about "fly". That is Gabriele arriving by flight.
Because they recognize that he is a man, but they make him fly. Which in itself could also be fine, because perhaps someone will remember that in the second video which is dedicated to flying cars, when I talked about the experiences lived by Zaccaria, he talks about flying women. So the fact that there we talk about flying women and here we talk about a flying man could be fine all things considered, unfortunately that in Hebrew there is no word "flying".
The King James Bible, still an English Bible, speaks of "The man Gabriel" in verse 9:21. That is, "the man Gabriele", but here too we talk about "fly", that is, the fact that he arrives flying, once again. What does the Holy Bible, published in Geneva by the Bible Society, say?
He says exactly: "that man, Gabriel, whom I had seen before, sent with rapid flight, approached me". So here too he recognizes that he is a man, but here too he says that Gabriele arrives flying. Interesting to see how there are different ways of approaching the Bible, as does this German Bible, both this one from the German Catholic Episcopal Conference and this one from Martin Luther.
Both recognize Gabriele as a man but both say that he arrives flying anyway. So here too we have the fact that they take into account that in Hebrew it is written "haish" but here too they speak of "flight". And then we come to the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, that is, the Bible of Jehovah's Witnesses, where verse 21 is rendered thus: "and while I yet spoke in prayer, why, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, having been made weary by weariness, he came to me.
" That is, the Bible of Jehovah's Witnesses finally recognizes that the man Gabriel arrives tired, having been made weary. Look, this translation is particularly correct. Forgive me if I use technical terminology for once, but we saw earlier that in Hebrew it is written "muaf biaf".
Now, "muaf" is a participle in the hophal form, which is the form that is defined as "passive causative". That is, it means that there is something or someone that has caused him to get tired and here this Bible recognizes precisely this aspect, that is, the precise form of the verb Hebrew "having been made weary. " That is, there is something that made him struggle and here it could be something or someone, perhaps who ordered him, precisely, as we read before, to go to Daniele and explain a whole series of things to him.
So, as you can see, we are really faced with a series of translations which, in some cases, even pretend that the term "man" isn't even there. In most cases they say that this Gabriel, since he is an angel, must necessarily arrive flying. Instead in Hebrew, in the etymology dictionary and, I must say, in the Bible of Jehovah's Witnesses, however, it is recognized that he arrives "being weary with labour", "being weary with labour" or "being weary with labour", not it matters.
The important thing is to understand that Gabriele is a man who can get tired, nothing to do with the etheric, spiritual, so-called angelic figure to which we are accustomed. And in fact, if we take this very interesting work by the Jesuit Jean Danielou, who is a Cardinal, university professor and academic in France, when he talks about the figure of Gabriel, and gives a very long analysis of it, obviously I'm not going to read it all , I read you the conclusions, starting for example from the analysis of Isaiah's ascension. He says that "it can be shown more explicitly that the angel of the Holy Spirit is precisely a transposition of the Jewish theme of Gabriel.
In reality - he says - in the ascension we see Gabriel exercising all the functions that are those of the angel of the Holy Spirit. , which allows us to conclude at the same time that the angel of the Holy Spirit of the ascension is a Christianization of the Jewish theme of Gabriel and that conversely it is precisely the Holy Spirit that must be recognized in the Gabriel of the books", precisely of the texts that he examines. And let's say, summarizing a little the analysis that he does of his texts, at a certain point he says that "the other uses of the expression, that is, of this identification that we talked about before, impose this interpretation, that is, this identification of the angel of the Holy Spirit with the Holy Spirit and of the Holy Spirit with Gabriel".
In fact he says: "the angel of the Holy Spirit is therefore Gabriel - and here the statement is very important - but since we have established that the angel of the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, we have here an assimilation of the angel Gabriel to the Holy Spirit in the episodes of the birth of Christ". And we remember the episodes of the birth of Christ very well but they are told in Luke in chapter 1 where, when Gabriel introduces himself to Mary, and says, when Mary says "But how is it possible that I become pregnant? ", he says: " the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
" Now, Gabriel, “gever of an El,” we saw before, means “power of God, power of a God, power of an El. ” We have just seen that in the Hebrew Bible Gabriel is defined as "ish", which undoubtedly means, this is not an interpretation, it means "man". That is, "male individual".
So here it is said, if we continue with logical reasoning from the statements deriving from the studies of the Jesuit Jean Danielou, that, since the Holy Spirit and Gabriel are actually the same thing, precisely in the events of the birth of Christ, and since Gabriel is a man, a cover Maria will be a male individual and she becomes pregnant. Therefore "the power of an El, the power of an El or a man who exercises power on behalf of an El" visits Mary just as the Elohim visited women from Abraham's family and these women became pregnant after the visit of the Elohim. Here we are, it seems, in the same situation: the man Gabriel, "power of an El", identified with the Holy Spirit, as the Gospel says here, covers Mary and Mary becomes pregnant.
I would say that there is no need for further explanation, but there is a lot to reflect on the way in which certain Bibles have tried, so to speak, to make us forget that Gabriel is a man and on how therefore this Gabriel is presented to us as ethereal, spiritual entity, when perhaps it was anything but. Bye, thanks and see you next time.
