Ancient Hebrew writings are texts written in Biblical Hebrew using the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet before the destruction of the Second Temple during the Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE).
The earliest known precursor to Hebrew, an inscription in the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, is the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon (11th–10th century BCE), if it can be considered Hebrew at that early a stage.
In Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other Abrahamic religions Gabriel (/ˈɡeɪbriəl/ GAY-bree-əl) is an archangel with the power to announce God's will to humankind as the messenger of God. He is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Quran.
In the Book of Daniel, Gabriel appears to the prophet Daniel to explain his visions. Gabriel also appears in the Jewish apocryphal First Book of Enoch (e.g., 1 Enoch 20:7–8) and other ancient Hebrew writings incompletely preserved or wholly lost in Hebrew. Alongside the archangel Michael, Gabriel is described as the guardian angel of the Israelites, defending them against the angels of the other peoples.
A dream vision or visio is a literary device in which a dream or vision is recounted as having revealed knowledge or a truth that is not available to the dreamer or visionary in a normal waking state. While dreams occur frequently throughout the history of literature, visionary literature as a genre began to flourish suddenly, and is especially characteristic of early medieval Europe. In both its ancient and medieval form, the dream vision is often felt to be of divine origin. The genre reemerged in the era of Romanticism, when dreams were regarded as creative gateways to imaginative possibilities beyond rational calculation.
This genre typically follows a structure whereby a narrator recounts their experience of falling asleep, dreaming, and waking, with the story often an allegory. The dream, which forms the subject of the poem, is prompted by events in their waking life that are referred to early in the poem. The ‘vision’ addresses these waking concerns through the possibilities of the imaginative landscapes offered by the dream-state. In the course of the dream, the narrator, often with the aid of a guide, is offered perspectives that provide potential resolutions to their waking concerns. The poem concludes with the narrator waking, determined to record the dream – thus producing the poem. The dream-vision convention was widely used in European, Old Russian, medieval Latin, Muslim, Gnostic, Hebrew, and other literatures.