A bright idea. Epiphany, in as many words, inasmuch as it's used by the average english-speaker. Really means something is revealed; these uses meet in a "the wool has been pulled away from over my eyes" sense.
Revelation by Robert Frost (1913) We make ourselves a place apart Behind light words that tease and flout, But oh, the agitated hear Till someone really find us out. 'Tis pity if the case require (Or so we say) that in the end We speak the literal to inspire The understanding of a friend. But so with all, from babes that play At hid-and-seek to God afar, So all who hide too well away Must speak and tell us where they are.
A crosshair is dragged over the field in question and the password is displayed in the Revelation window.
The Arabic term 'Wahy' means revelation, and within Islam Wahy specifically refers to the revelation of the Holy Qur'an to the Prophet Muhammad. In the year 611 (using the Christian calendar) AD in the grotto of Hira, the angel Jibra'il appeared to Muhammad during the month of Ramadan. That night is known as Lailat-al-Qadr, or "The Night of Destiny." The rest of the words of Allah then followed over a period of 23 years.
In this sentence, Barth is trying to give us a deeper meaning for a word that, for Christians, is typically used interchangeably with the word `Scripture.' Revelation is construed as being the Bible, and Barth, far from denying this, rather wants to give a stronger definition, a definition that tells more about what this thing is. In calling Revelation God's self-offering and self-manifestation, Barth is describing not only the Bible, but rather God's action also in orienting us towards himself, through scripture, but also through manifest action in our lives. Barth uses the example of getting hit in the head with a stone to describe this action. In using this example, Barth wishes to say that God's action in this manner is shocking, surprising. God, in a manner of speaking, can thrust His way into our lives, and demand that we take notice. This is an action of grace. That is to say, humans are totally dependent on God for knowledge of God. There is no way for humans to obtain any real knowledge of God through their own devices, and God's self-offering to humanity, His self-manifestation through events of history, through scripture, and particularly through Jesus Christ, is the only conduit for information, communication between God and humanity. God gives Himself to humanity because it is the only way for humanity to be reconciled to Him.
Human religion, Barth says, is a series of systematized attempts to draw ourselves closer to God, or to draw God closer to us, or perhaps even to get God to do what we want. These attempts do nothing of the kind, however, and are merely useless artifices that in fact stand opposed to God's self-offering. These constructs exist to perform an unperformable task, and thereby stand opposed to God's action because implicit in that action is the idea that humanity is helpless to reach God without God's complete intervention. Religion, however, implicitly asserts an ability on humanity's part to reach God through correct practice. The clash here tells us, Barth says, that religion, in conflict with revelation, can only be untrue. There is no such thing as `true religion,' if one talks of any religion as having any kind of truth innate to itself. Rather a religion can only become true in the same way a sinner can be justified. This is from the outside, by God's self-offering. It is through the deed God has done, the reconciling of humanity to himself, that religion receives truth. Religion is called to new life and sanctified by this self-offering. It is judged, condemned, pardoned and conformed to revelation as a sinner is to Christ. Revelation transforms religion into something new. It conforms religion to its truth.
The word revelation is etymologically linked to the word apocalypse. The former descends from the Latin revelatio, while the latter comes from the Greek apokalupsis. Both terms literally mean "unveiling" or "uncovering". Both words were used in the classical world in a mundane sense to refer to the pulling back of physical curtains or veils, and in a mystical sense to the revealing of divine mysteries.
In contemporary English, the meanings of these two words have diverged somewhat.
Revelation in the New Testament
We know that many popular apocalyptic works circulated in late antiquity, but only one of these, the Revelation of St. John, eventually made it into the canon of the New Testament. Even that book was controversial. As late as the fourth century, a church historian could observe that the Book of Revelation is "by some accepted among the canonical books but by others rejected" (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3.25). Furthermore, some Christian sects wanted to include other apocalyptic books in the canon along with John's. The most popular of these was the so-called Apocalypse of Peter, which no longer survives in its entirety.
Today the final book of the New Testament is usually known in English as Revelation, Revelations, or The Revelation to St. John, though some older translations render the title as Apocalypse. The author identifies himself as a man named John who is living on a rocky island called Patmos, off the western coast of what is now called Turkey. Some early church traditions maintain that this is the same man who wrote the Gospel of John, but this is very unlikely for a number of reasons.
The word "revelation" can, of course, be interpreted in a more general way. Christians believe that the entire Bible is (and describes) God's revealing of himself to humanity, and further, that Jesus as the word of God was the purest divine revelation that humanity has experienced. Be that as it may, I will spend the rest of this node discussing the specific book of the Bible that is known as Revelation.
Revelation In Context
The Book of Revelation has much in common with other apocalyptic works from the Second Temple period. It is fiercely eschatological, and describes the end of the world in graphic and lurid detail. It is filled with bizarre symbolic events, gruesome monsters, repetition of sacred numbers (especially four, seven, twelve, and multiples of these), and nasty predictions about what will happen to unbelievers when God returns to establish his kingdom on earth. Unlike the rest of the New Testament, Revelation is a violent and militant book: Jesus is no longer a gentle teacher or a suffering prophet, but rather, a sovereign king backed up by legions of angelic armies.
Some of Revelation's specific images were inspired by Daniel, the only apocalyptic book in the canon of the Hebrew Bible. For instance, the elaborate portrait of beasts with multiple heads and horns in Revelation 13 is an intentional parallel to the beasts of Daniel 7. Traditionally Christians have read these books side-by-side, figuring that the prophecies in the later book pick up where the prophecies in the earlier book left off.
All that being said, there are some aspects of Revelation that are unusual even by the standards of ancient apocalyptic. For instance, the first half of the book is written in an epistolary style -- that's a fancy way of saying that it's structured as a series of letters. This demonstrates that by the time Revelation was written (probably around 90 CE), the epistle, or letter, was considered a valid scriptural form. We probably have Paul of Tarsus to thank for this. It certainly was not the case in either Jewish or Greco-Roman religion before the middle of the first century.
Another unusual element of Revelation is that an author of no especial importance names himself. Most surviving apocalypses are written pseudonymously; they are usually ascribed to famous Jewish prophets and patriarchs (e.g., the Assumption of Moses, the Book of Enoch) or Christian disciples (like the aforementioned Apocalypse of Peter). John of Patmos, however, makes no grand claims for himself. He simply identifies himself as "a servant" of Jesus Christ who was granted a series of visions by angels.
So what does it all mean?
For two thousand years now, many Christians, and some non-Christians, have been trying to decode this book. The sorts of people who write headlines in the Weekly World News trumpeting the "discovery" that the letters in Saddam Hussein's name (or Osama bin Laden's, or Adolf Hitler's, or whichever dictator du jour you may prefer) add up to 666, or the rural evangelical preachers who equate the Whore of Babylon with the Roman Catholic Church, or the authors of lousy screenplays in which various heretics save the world through the "right" interpretation of Revelation while corrupt religious organizations try to stop them -- all these have one thing in common: they treat Revelation as a cipher, in which every element neatly maps onto some simple reality. It is assumed that, upon the discovery of the correct "key," the book will all make perfect sense.
Personally, I think this is a boring way of reading any text, and it's an especially boring way to read a text as rich and as fascinating as Revelation. If you want to match up the beasts in Revelation with contemporary world leaders, more power to you, but I think I'll sit out this round.
Further Reading:
Though much of the material in the online Catholic Encyclopedia is out of date, and though it is possessed of a strong Catholic bias, many of its articles are quite good. The article on Revelation can be found in the "Apocalypse" entry at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01594b.htm.
An entertaining, semi-scholarly overview of apocalyptic themes in world literature can be found in Yuri Rubinsky and Ian Wiseman's A History of the End of the World. Sadly this book is out of print, but many libraries will have a copy.
Rev`e*la"tion (?), n. [F. r'ev'elation, L. revelatio. See Reveal.]
1.
The act of revealing, disclosing, or discovering to others what was before unknown to them.
2.
That which is revealed.
3. Theol. (a)
The act of revealing divine truth.
That which is revealed by God to man; esp., the Bible.
By revelation he made known unto me the mystery, as I wrote afore in few words. Eph. iii. 3.
4.
Specifically, the last book of the sacred canon, containing the prophecies of St. John; the Apocalypse.
© Webster 1913.
printable version chaos
Everything2 Help
