In
religion and
theology,
revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of
truth or knowledge through communication with a
deity or other
supernatural entity or entities.
Some religions have
religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. For instance,
Orthodox Judaism holds that the
Torah was received from God on
biblical Mount Sinai, and
Muslims consider the
Qur'an to have been revealed word by word and letter by letter.
In
Hinduism some
Vedas are considered
, i.e. "not human compositions", and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called
śruti, i.e. "what is heard". Many Christians believe that the
Old and
New Testaments were
inspired by God. The 15,000 handwritten pages produced by the mystic
Maria Valtorta were represented as direct dictations from
Jesus, while she attributed
The Book of Azariah to her
guardian angel.
When a revelation is communicated by a supernatural entity that is reported as present during the communication, it is called a
vision. Some revelations go further in that direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity is reported. Some revelations are reported along with physical marks such as
stigmata and in rare cases, such as that of Saint
Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation. The
Roman Catholic concept of
interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient.
In the
Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which
God reveals knowledge of himself, his
will, and his
divine providence, to the world of human beings. Revelation from a supernatural source is of lesser importance in some other religious traditions, such as
Taoism and
Confucianism. In secondary usage, it refers to the resulting human knowledge about God,
prophecy, and other
divine things.