The following comes from Book 1, Chapter 4, 79-80 of the Ethiopic text, Maṣḥafa Berhān; note how Jesus identifies himself with the archangel Gabriel:
As Matthew, the evangelist, says [1:21]: “And behold she
will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people
from their sins.” Jesus, our savior, first told his name to his mother, the
twofold Virgin Mary, when he revealed to her in the likeness of Gabriel, the
archangel, and (who) said to her, “Behold you will conceive in your womb and
bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” The way in which he first
announced his name to his mother, appearing in the likeness of the archangel
Gabriel is told in the Maṣḥafa Kidān: ‘And he said to his disciples, ‘Do
you know how Gabriel came and announced to Mary the news?’ And we said ‘Yes, Lord’;
and at that moment he said to us, ‘In the likeness of [80] Gabriel, the
archangel, I appeared to Mary and spoke to her. And she laughed, but her heart
grasped it. I myself became a messenger to myself in the likeness of an angel.’”
Now he who destroys the name of our
Savior by reducing an alphabet from the name “Iyasus” will be cut off from the
congregation of the church, for he has destroyed the honorable name which must
not be destroyed. Regarding this Paul says in his epistle to the Philippians, “Therefore
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and
under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” Glory be
to God for ever and ever. Amen. (Ephraim Isaac, A New Text-Critical Introduction
to Maṣḥafa Berhān with a Translation of Book 1 [Leiden: Brill, 1973], 126)
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