The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (819 page)

 
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Fusion of horizons
(the relating of past text to present circumstance, thereby creating new meaning in lived experience)
:

see
HERMENEUTICS
.

 
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(Jap., ‘not falling back’; Skt.,
avinivartan
ya
). The stage in Buddhism of not falling back to a lower state.

 
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(
c.
1020–
c.
1057).
Jewish Spanish poet and philosopher. Solomon ibn Gabirol was the author of many Hebrew poems. Many of his religious poems have been preserved in the
Sephardi
and
Ashkenazi
prayer
books and in
Karaite
liturgy
; he was regarded as the outstanding poet of his time. In addition, two philosophical treatises survive:
Mekor
ayyim
(The Source of Life) is a discussion of the principles of matter and form; and
Tikkun Middot ha-Nefesh
(The Improvement of the Moral Qualities) is concerned with ethics.

 
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(Heb., ‘God is my warrior’). An archangel. He and Michael are the only angels named in the Jewish Bible (Daniel 8. 16; 9. 21; 10. 13; 12. 1; Raphael is mentioned in the
apocrypha
, Tobit).
In Islam, Gabriel is Jibr
l or Jibr
’
l. He is one of the
angels
(
mal
’ika
), named three times in the
Qur’
n
(2. 97, 98; 66. 4), once as the being who ‘brought [the Qur’
n] down to your heart’ (2. 97). Jibr
l has thus been identified as the one who transmitted the message.