What exactly is a Revelation?

Alif Lam Ra. These are the verses of the Book that makes (things) manifest. Surely We have revealed it-- an Arabic Quran-- that you may understand...

A speaker from among them said: Do not slay Yusuf, and cast him down into the bottom of the pit if you must do (it), (so that) some of the travellers may pick him up. - Sura 12, Yusef*

In today's world, the Book of Revelations occupies a position of gospel truth. And yes, it is the gospel truth by gum!

The Gospel Truth is one of my favorite ad libs. It is applicable in the secular world as well as the sacred. "She said he's leaving his wife! It is the gospel truth!"

A gospel is actually something well known and called in Islam, a Hadith. Hadiths are comments related by eye witnesses of certain important historical events that occurred during the lifetime of the last prophet and messenger, Mohamed, SA. They are NOT the actual statements of the prophet but rather, they are what several "reporters" remember him having said. Those are studied to the nth degree and compared. The "isnad" refers to the legitimacy of the reporters when taken together as a "whole".

Therefore, you can consider the Gospels in the New Testament as a set of hadith with basically the same "isnad" or chain of authority. Many chains of authority are not addressed in all Bibles and are considered Gnostic texts. Some Bibles include one chain of reporters and completely neglect another chain. This is the case of what we hold so dear in this "Western" society when we refer to the New Testament and in particular, the gospel according to John which is partly comprised of the Book of Revelations. In contrast, the Quran is in the "words" of the prophet himself or rather, as relayed to him by a messenger known as Gibreel, the angel or in Arabic, "malaik". The hadith and the Quran are to each other as the New Testament is to ?....a heretofore unknown quantity known as the Injeel, an actual book that was transcribed by the apostle Jesus (Isa) himself, May Allah be pleased with all of his servants and apostles. It may have only been an oral tradition like the Quran originally was and like the Zabur originally was (Psalms). We don't have that book (the Injeel) in our possession. We do have the Quran which is the only place in which the Injeel is actually mentioned. Whatever the case...it isn't here. The Quran is and is resistant to change. As well, Islam itself is the most and best "documented" life of a prophet that we have. And we(muslims) have a fantastic amount of information at that.

What about the Gospels?

According to the Princeton based non-theologian (per her admission to me in a letter) expert Elaine Pagels, the testament of John is what was used to coerce early Christians to observe and abide by the concept of the Trinity and more importantly, the God-hood of Jesus Christ (Isa, SA). It was a case of confess allegiance to the Creed of John or off with your head, exile, excommunication, etc.

It is very much like the case of Sunni and Shia Islam in which Shia are considered heretics because they hold that the Divine Right resides in what is known as the Ahl Bayt (close family members of Mohamed himself, SA).

Back to the question though because I believe it to be a very important one.

What is a Revelation? Why is revelation important? What ISN'T revelation?

Revelation isn't a liar. It is a true word that can be relied upon to decifer what it actually is. It isn't even mystical and requires no experience in linguistics or etymology to understand. Revelation means to reveal something. Something that wasn't known before and the only way a person can know about it it to have it revealed to them in some manner. Scientific progress is based on Revelation you know.

Take Chlamydia for instance. When I was a teenager, we were taught all about VD. You had Syphilis and Gonorrhea. That was it. It was called VD. Later on however, we discovered some other little demons that wreak havoc on human beings. Chlamydia now is what is called an endemic disease. Everyone's got it! Or rather, one in four young women have it. We didn't know about Chlamydia or its harmful sequalae until I was just a nursing school student. I remember back then the little kits that were developed to detect Chlamydia and how uncommon it was to have to perform a Chlamydia screen on a suspect case. Therefore, knowledge about Chlamydia was REVEALED and has proven to be a very important little thing. The little bugger was there all along and causing alot of women to get cervical cancer. We just didn't "know" about it until twenty five or so years ago. We came a bit closer in other words, to the speed of light.

The Book of Revelations however isn't a revelation of anything we can identify today as being "useful" to our spiritual progress. That is because of what it ISN'T. What is it then?

It is a Prophecy. A prophecy given by a person or persons who claimed they had access to future information. For whatever reason, that person has a curiously UNSEMITIC name, John.

That in itself proves alot about the mish mash known as the Book of Revelations. It has of course, caused alot of spiritual damage and continues to do so.

Armageddon and all of that. I always have to laugh at my old inside joke you know. What kind of people think about Armageddon and discuss it as if they are going to remain behind to discuss the stats of the game? Dear me.

A real revelation is something that is necessary for human beings to get closer to the pure Truth.
Truth is what it is. It isn't something else you know or otherwise, it wouldn't be "truth". It is a finite point on a spectrum and is limited to "our knowledge" of something. That can work two ways you know.

One, we know about any given number of things that we question. For instance the size of the universe or the amount of mass in comparison to the total quantity of "gravity". This knowledge in itself revealed to scientists that we didn't know what we thought we knew. It resulted in the theory of Black Holes which is intermingled with quantum mechanics and the goal of discovering what is called a Grand Unification Theory. It has led to whole other ballparks of estimation which are being called the Many Worlds theories. When I listen to astrophysicists blab on about the Many Worlds theories and Membranes...I get a bit of the old Galileo You Are An Absolute Idiot Syndrome. But that's just me. Calling a membrane a "brane" is quite misleading when you first "hear" about it on a History Channel docu drama:

http://www.fraterdeus.com/cda/archive/2006/09/04/many-worlds-and-slinky-consciousness

(Slinky. I'll say. Rather courageous if you ask me!)

Two, our knowledge being limited to only those things that we can somehow "sense" (eyes, ears, telescopes)...tells us that Truth in our context is FINITE. Truth is Finite in the sense that the Speed of Light is finite. The fact that we cannot achieve the speed of light in a laboratory setting is the limit. It does not mean that truth itself is finite. Truth itself cannot be known to be either finite or infinite.

Truth exists in a ratio to knowledge. A five year old is much further from the Theory of Relativity than me at forty-six years of age. I am much further from it than a mathematician at Stanford. Allah of course, who created the whole shebang....well. We cannot comprehend that. Just like we cannot comprehend a speed of anything faster than the speed of light.

The amount of knowledge possessed by any given observer of "the world" is limited by several things. Those things are age, chemical-physiological fitness (dependent on heredity, nutrition, etc), socio-economic factors, etc. etc. etc.

It is also limited by Free Will. If a person chooses NOT to know about something, they have in effect limited themselves because...well...because of a lot of reasons. One of those might be social norms that say a person is crazy to try to know something. Another very important one in our highly and so called "intelligent" Age, is the notion that a person "already" knows something and it is beneath them to investigate such simplistic ideas like "religion".

When it comes to Religion however, the human race was given some special insights about a whole lot of things. The Quran is chock full of Revelation. The real kind. Not the kind that is confused in the New Testament with prophecy and is actually hadith i.e. gospel (third person accounts). It is the case that Allah wanted to reveal some data that if it remained hidden, would result in a failure to fully inform his potential followers of key points that would lead to their utter spiritual demise. In medicine, this is akin to Informed Consent (submission).

In the following chapters, I will discuss some of those key points and provide actual excerpts, proofs and rationale.

...to be continued.

*Yusef was one of twelve brothers who was taken as a child and hidden in a well by his eleven brothers. One of his brothers cautioned the others to not kill him as was their initial intent. The Sura Yusef is one of the few examples in the Quran where an entire story is revealed from beginning to end. It begins with a dream that Yusef had when very young and that was related to his father, the prophet Jacob (Yaqoub) who cautioned him to not reveal it to anyone else. Yusef was capable of the 'interpretation of dreams'. It was his special gift and plays a key role in the revelation of a thief, his brothers' crimes against him, the loyal brother and sage old man, the accusation of a rape by the women of the village which included the king's own wife who remained patient and constant towards Yusef until the end of the story even though she secreted information about his imprisonment which was due to the women's need to conceal the fact that they hoped to seduce the wonderfully charismatic dream reader. It is clearly about the nature of Revelation itself.

So he began with their sacks before the sack of his brother, then he brought it out from his brother's sack. Thus did We plan for the sake of Yusuf; it was not (lawful) that he should take his brother under the king's law unless Allah pleased; We raise the degrees of whomsoever We please, and above every one possessed of knowledge is the All-knowing one. - Yusef, Sura 12

Suggested Reading: Language, Truth and Logos and Sura Twelve