The purpose of this dissertation was to assess the nature and character of the Islamic Jibril by using biblically derived criteria for identifying spiritual beings and by comparing the Islamic Jibril with the biblical Gabriel. My hypothesis held that the Islamic Jibril is different from the Gabriel of the Bible. The identity of this particular figure is significant for both Christians and Muslims because of his essential role in transmitting God’s revelation in both religions. The design of this project assessed the accounts that describe the appearances, behaviors, messages, personalities, and statuses of both Gabriel and Jibril.
Gabriel and Jibril transmit revelation to human prophets in biblical and Islamic texts. Muslims assert that the figures of Gabriel and Jibril represent the same figure;
however, Christians question the validity of Islamic claims regarding Jibril’s identity. Thus far, these questions have received minimal academic exploration. This project sought to answer the question, “Are the representations of Gabriel and Jibril different?” If the Islamic claims of Jibril’s status as an angel of God are false, then the correlation between the angelologies of the Bible and the Qur’an will be further distanced providing Christians additional opportunity to point toward the uniqueness of the Bible, its messengers, and the God who is its author as they bear witness to the “faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
Summary of the Research Establishment of BIISB
This project established a BIISB based on qualitative data analysis and the application of grounded theory. I selected twenty-three terms for data analysis, the analysis forming an angelic taxonomy. I examined an additional fifteen terms that relate to spiritual beings in general. I imported biblical references related to these terms into Atlas.ti qualitative research software. Of the 2,867 references collected, I coded 1,084 references using initial, selective, and theoretical coding. Based on the analysis, twenty- seven principles emerged for identifying spiritual beings. Of these twenty-seven principles, fourteen denote the characteristics of angels, and thirteen denote the characteristics of non-angels.
Exegetical Analysis
Both Gabriel and Jibril were examined independently through exegetical analysis. Five scriptural texts were examined regarding the biblical Gabriel (Dan 8:15–
27, 9:20–27; Matt 1:18–25; Luke 1:5–25, 1:26–38). I inspected specific terms and themes for salient information regarding Gabriel’s appearance, behavior, message, personality, and status. Finally, BIISB principles were applied to Gabriel based on the textual analysis.
I examined two surahs in the Qur’an (Q2.96–97, Q66.4), multiple accounts from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim’s hadith collections, and portions of Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad in reference to Jibril. I inspected specific terms and themes for salient information regarding Jibril’s appearance, behavior, message, personality, and status. Finally, I applied the BIISB principles to Jibril based on the textual analysis.
Application of BIISB
Using the BIISB based on qualitative data analysis, the current research applied fourteen principles for identifying angelic beings and thirteen principles for identifying non-angelic beings to Gabriel and Jibril for comparison.
This application yielded the following results. The biblical Gabriel
demonstrated 90 percent of the angelic characteristics and zero percent of the non-angelic characteristics used in the BIISB. The Islamic Jibril demonstrated 80 percent of the angelic characteristics and 70 percent of the non-angelic characteristics in the BIISB.
The application of textual comparative analysis to Gabriel and Jibril revealed that, while the figures shared multiple qualitative similarities, they also had noticeable qualitative disparities between them. Gabriel and Jibril’s similarities include verbal communication, self-identification, subservience to God, and transmission of revelation.
Their differences include ongoing transmission, response to human fear, location of appearance, aggression and violence, content of revelation, physical and spiritual appearance, and posture.
Conclusion of the Research
Based on the critical analysis provided by the BIISB and a thorough comparison of the representataions of Gabriel and Jibril, the apparent dissimilarities displayed by these two representations are irreconcilable. Jibril’s embodiment of non-angelic qualities, coupled with the stark contrast of his message, does not coincide with the descriptions of the biblical Gabriel or the content of his messages. After thorough examination, I believe that the Islamic representation of Jibril is different from the spiritual being described in the Bible as Gabriel.
Implications of Research Biblical Demonology
The rise in occult activities recorded in the 1960s through the early 1990s necessitated strong Christian response. During that approximately thirty-year period, numerous books and articles were published regarding spiritual warfare, the occult, and
even demonology.1 Unfortunately, there has been little serious Christian engagement of these topics during the past twenty years. The need for critical assessment, theory, and application of biblical demonology is essential to meet the rising interest in cultural animism, occult practice,2 new religious movements3 associated with New Age spiritualism and Asian mysticism,4 and America’s cherished pluralistic embrace of the world’s
religions.5
The rise of the internet in the 1990s precipitated an increase in the availability of occult and demonological information to the general public. A 2019, general Google query of the term “demonology” resulted in 4,390,000 references. The top-ranking results are discussions or reviews of Christian books published in the eighteenth century, Catholic positions on demonic possession and exorcism, and secular paranormal researchers discussing demoniacal phenomena. A general Amazon book query for the term
1 See Anderson, The Bondage Breaker; Neil T. Anderson, Victory Over the Darkness (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2000); Arnold, 3 Crucial Questions; Bubeck, The Adversary. Dickason, Demon Possession & the Christian; Kurt E. Koch, Occult Bondage and Deliverance (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1971)
; Felicitas D. Goodman, The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005) ; Felicitas D. Goodman, How about Demons? Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); Kurt E. Koch, Demonology: Past and Present (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1973);
MacArthur, How to Meet the Enemy; Murphy, The Handbook for Spiritual Warfare; Agrippa von
Nettesheim and Heinrich Cornelius, Occult Philosophy or Magic (New York: AMS Press, 1982); Stephen F. Noll, Angels of Light, Powers of Darkness: Thinking Biblically about Angels, Satan & Principalities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998); Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich, Possession and Exorcism:
Among Primitive Races, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times (New York: Causeway Books, 1974); Philpott, A Manual of Demonology and the Occult; Kurt D. Singer, They Are Possessed:
Masterpieces of Exorcism (London: W. H. Allen, 1976); Unger, Demons in the World Today; Unger, What Demons Can Do; Unger, Biblical Demonology.
2 Mitch Horowitz summarizes historic occult influence on the cultural and religious development of American. Mitch Horowitz, Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation (New York: Bantam, 2009).
3 New religious movements have had a constant presence in the formation of American cultural and religious life since the colonial period. See Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 209–26.
4 The increasing influence of Asian mysticism is evident from the rising American interest in meditation, yoga, and other pseudo-religious applications of Asian religion and philosophy. See Andrea R.
Jain, Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 20–41.
5 See D. A. Carson, The Gagging of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 18–19.
“demonology” resulted in over 5,000 results. Non-Christian professionals have written the top-ranking books, including The Dictionary of Demons: Names of the Damned; The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology; The Black Arts: A Concise History of
Witchcraft, Demonology, Astrology, and Other Mystical Practices through the Ages; The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft & Demonology; The False Hierarch of Demons: Illustrated English Translation of Pseudomonarchia Daemonum; and Demonology: Of King James I. All of these resources fall outside the boundaries of Christian theology of demonology based upon the Bible. American culture is engaging more with the prospect of supernatural realities and the concept of spirits.6
Christian researchers must meet this interest with clear theological teaching about the nature of demons, angels, and the spiritual realm. This dissertation provides a modest step in that direction. The principles developed from qualitative data analysis might assist in examining spiritual beings outside of the Christian faith. Additionally, this research might reawaken the wider academic Christian community to the ongoing need for thoughtful Christian engagement of demonology.
Christian Engagement of World Religions
While the Christian study of world religions is certainly a focus of Christian academia, the interplay between spiritualism or demonology and the Christian examination
6 Stafford Betty addresses the issue of demonic possession as related to the field of psychiatry.
See Stafford Betty, “Why We Should Take ‘Demonic Possession’ Seriously,” Huffpost.Com, January 16, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-we-should-take-demonic-possession-seriously_b_
587d6daee4b0a7ab06ed2c6a. Betty’s article is a summary of an academic article, published in the Journal of Religion: Stafford Betty, “The Growing Evidence for “Demonic Possession”: What Should Psychiatry’s Response Be?” Journal of Religion and Health 44, no. 1 (2005): 13–30. Mike Mariani summaries the increasing request of Catholic exorcisms in the United States. See Mike Mariani, “American Exorcism,”
The Atlantic, December 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/catholic-exorcisms- on-the-rise/573943/.
of world religions is not.7 Richard Gallagher, writing about his twenty-five-year history of working with demonologists and exorcists, notes,
One of the major aims of demons is to confuse human beings, and throughout history they have repeatedly feigned being dead souls or angels, or, perhaps, the deities of pagan religions. Evil spirits take delight stimulating superstitious and frightful beliefs in people about their nature, which is why they try to obfuscate their diabolic
identities. Such obfuscation is also an attempt to create havoc with our belief systems.
Demons disguise their aims sometimes by faking what may otherwise be supposed to be what are known as “private revelations.”8
Gallagher agrees with the apostle Paul (1 Cor 10:20-21; 2 Cor 11:14) that the demonic beings might masquerade as angelic or divine figures. Gerald McDermott’s God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights from the Bible and the Early Church is an attempt to engage this topic.9 McDermott discusses the theme of
particularity with relationship to God’s choice of Israel and the church, the concept of divine council in relationship to the “Lord of Hosts,” and early church theologians’
perspectives on the world’s religions in relationship to spiritual beings. McDermott’s project was met with mixed praise in academia. Glenn Krieder, in a review published by the Criswell Theological Review, writes, “McDermott’s work is insightful and practical, it helps us to reach out to those other religions and to be used by God to help them reach out and find the God who wants to be found by them. This book is highly recommended for students and Christian leaders and should be required reading for missionaries and
7 One notable exception to the academic negligence of the overlap between the study of world religions and biblical demonology is Daniel Strange’s Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of World Religions. Strange states that some scholars, like Christopher Wright, disregard the importance of demons in the overarching story of the Bible, but from Strange’s perspective, texts such as Deut 32:17 and 1 Cor 10:20 cannot be ignored. He remarks, “In constructing a theology of religions, therefore, it would be remiss not to include some reference to the role of the demonic, especially in an academic environment when an antithetical approach to the religious Other is extremely countercultural.” Daniel Strange, Their Rock is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of World Religions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 262.
8 Richard Gallagher, Demonic Foes: My Twenty-Five Years as a Psychiatrist Investigating Possessions, Diabolic Attacks, and the Paranormal (New York: HarperOne, 2020), 95-96.
9 Gerald R. McDermott, God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights from the Bible and the Early Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007).
evangelists.”10Scott Horrell, pointing to other less celebrative responses to McDermott’s books, writes, “Not all will agree with some of the particulars of biblical and patristic interpretation or the author’s practical directives. But as a committed evangelical McDermott helps believers see how they can interact significantly with people in other religious systems.”11
McDermott’s work and the response to his research signal the need for further engagement by Christian theologians. The principles established in this dissertation will, hopefully, further expose the need for more serious biblical angelological and
demonological research in relation to Christians’ studies of world religions. Additionally, the research completed in this work will enable me to examine other spiritual beings discussed in texts used by the world’s religions.
Christian Apologetics
As noted, Christian apologetics against Islam began soon after the religion’s inception.12 While apologetics has some value with regard to evangelism and church planting efforts, it is a critical field of study that could benefit from the conclusions of this project. Numerous articles and books have refuted the claims of Islam from a
Christian perspective. Limited examination has focused on the spiritual beings associated with the inspiration of Islam’s primary scriptures.
The methodology used in this dissertation could benefit Christian apologists wishing to highlight the disparity between the biblical Gabriel and the Islamic Jibril.
10 Glenn R. Kreider, “God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights from the Bible and the Early Church,” Criswell Theological Review 6, no. 1 (2008): 115.
11 J. Scott Horrell, “God’s Rivals: Why Has God Allowed Different Religions? Insights from the Bible and the Early Church,” Bibliotheca Sacra 165, no. 660 (October 2008): 486–87.
12 Apologetic engagement of the world’s religions has been a constant academic effort over the last 2,000 years. Scott Bridger provides a summary of Christian apologetic efforts toward Islam and Christian apologetic usuage of Qur’anic texts from the medieval to the contemporary period. Additionally, he proposes a proper method for Christian theologizing in Islamic milieus. See Scott Bridger, Christian Exegesis of the Qur’an: A Critical Analysis of the Apologetic Use of the Qur’an in Select Medieval in Contemporary Arabic Texts (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015), 65–160.
Additionally, the conclusions herein give academic credibility to the Christian intuition that the Jibril presented in Muslim sources is different from the figure described as Gabriel in the Bible.
Missions Engagement
The priority of the Christian faith is making disciples of all people from every tribe, religion, language, and social demographic. During the past twenty-five years, missiologists have narrowed the target of greatest priority to the 10/40 window, in which the Islamic faith is dominant.13 The conclusions made in this project could serve
missionaries in their discipleship of believers from a Muslim background and give them information that could be helpful in explaining the differences between the Islamic faith and the Christian faith.
The credibility of the Qur’an is essential to Islamic theology. This research project questions the spiritual identity of the figure responsible for disseminating the Qur’anic revelation to Muhammad (i.e., Jibril). Potentially, the conclusions of this project might assist missionaries serving among Muslims as they share the true message of Gabriel from the Bible.
Limitations of the Research
First, as noted in chapter 1, my Arabic proficiency limited a thorough
examination of Islamic sources in Arabic. Engaging Islamic sources through translations limited this study in some respects; however, the selected volumes were editions
translated by Islamic scholars. While the major themes and terms regarding Jibril were obvious through English translation, additional research in Arabic would elicit syntactical and etymological nuances not discussed in this project.
13 Luis Bush coined the term “10/40 window” in the early 2000s. He is a Christian missiologist and founder of Transform World, an international missions agency. Luis Bush, “10/40 Window: Do You Need to be Stirred to Action?” Missions Mobilizer, accessed on January 4, 2020, http://home.snu.edu/
~hculbert/1040.htm.
Second, my delimitation of research of select sources within the Islamic tradition truncated a comprehensive examination of all accounts related to Jibril. I examined The Qur’an: A New Annotated Translation, translated by Arthur J. Droge14; selected English translations of Sunni hadith;15 and Alfred Guillaume’s English translation of The Life of Muhammad.16 Further research could include the study of all hadith collections from every stream of Islamic tradition. I chose to restrict hadith research to the two most widely accepted Sunni collections.
Recommendations for Further Research Wider Hadith Jibril Research
This project examined a narrow selection of Sunni hadith, although the majority of Muslims consider the chosen selections to be the pinnacle hadith traditions. As Burton notes,
Apart from the Book of God, no more lavish praise has been heaped on any writing in Arabic than the praise which for 1,000 years has accompanied mention of the twin pinnacles of the musannaf type of work. They tend to be spoken of as “second only to the Holy Qur’an’ in terms of authority, as the repositories of the record of the sayings and doings of the Prophet.”17
However, additional hadith collections, such as Sunan An–Nasâ’i, Sunan Abu Dawud, Jāmi’ At–Tirmidhi, Sunan Ibn Mâjah, could be examined to gain a wider perspective on the Jibril traditions available. Given the fact that the Islamic sources examined in this dissertation are the most highly esteemed Hadith collections, I do not believe that the
14 Arthur J. Droge, The Qur’an: A New Annotated Translation (Bristol, CT: Equinox, 2013).
15 Abul Hussain Muslim ibn Al-Hajjaj, English Translation of Sahih Muslim, trans. Nasiruddin Al-Khattab, vol. 1–7 (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 2007). Muhammad ibn Ismail Bukhari, Sahih Al- Bukhari, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan, vols. 1–9 (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 1997).
16 Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, trans.
Alfred Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1982).
17 John Burton, An Introduction to the Hadith (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 123.
additional sources would challenge the conclusions of this project, but they could amplify the differences found between Gabriel and Jibril.
Christian Assessment of Jibril as the “Spirit of God”
The interpretation of claims that Jibril should be understood as the “Spirit of God” revealed in the Qur’an should be assessed from a Christian perspective. An examination of these texts in the Qur’an was outside the parameters of this study, but it could prove insightful for further development on the topic of Gabriel and Jibril. This study would require research from sources in Arabic to establish syntactical and etymological conclusions.
Christian Assessment of Islamic Supernatural Worldview
The Islamic supernatural worldview is complex. A thorough examination of each reference to angels—jinn, Iblis, and other spiritual beings—was outside the narrow parameters of this project; however, further research could contrast the Christian
understanding of the supernatural world and the Islamic supernatural world. Islam’s strict monotheism and deterministic theological perspective places spiritual beings in a narrow category of function in relationship to Allah. The Christian understanding of the
supernatural realm displays a more hierarchal function regarding spiritual beings and does not necessarily support the idea of determinism. While spiritual beings in both traditions share particular qualities, the differences between them would serve Christian practitioners in the work of highlighting the differences between Islam and Christianity. Further research could assist missionaries in engaging folk Islam’s tendency toward syncretistic animism.
Application of BIISB to Other Religious Figures
The world’s religions describe numerous spiritual beings. Further research could establish the BIISB as a helpful tool in examining various figures who supposedly