phonegap run android fails

Question

Ii am new to phonegap and running it in iOS simulator is working nicely (from my Mac). However, when I try to

phonegap run android

I get the following error

UP-TO-DATE

:transformClassesWithDexForDebug
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/android/dx/command/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:637)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:621)
    at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)


Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: com/android/dx/command/Main : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:637)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:621)

    at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141)

    at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)

    at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)

    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)

    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)

    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)

    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)

    at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)

    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)




FAILED



FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.




* What went wrong:

Execution failed for task ':transformClassesWithDexForDebug'.

> 
com.android.ide.common.process.ProcessException: org.gradle.process.internal.ExecException: Process 'command '/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java'' finished with non-zero exit value 1



* Try:

Run with 
--stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info
 or 
--debug
 option to get more log output.



BUILD FAILED




Total time: 3.155 secs

Error: Error code 1 for command: /Users/myFilePath/platforms/android/gradlew with args: cdvBuildDebug,-b,/Users/myFilePath/platforms/android/build.gradle,-Dorg.gradle.daemon=true,-Pandroid.useDeprecatedNdk=true

This is after I have manually added the ANDROID_HOME path through terminal. I am on MacOSX 10.11 and have installed android SDK.