The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1995 page)

(1455–1522)
.
Gentile
defender of Jewish scholarship. Reuchlin's
De Rudimentis Hebraicis
(1506) was a pioneering attempt at an understanding of Judaism by a Christian scholar. He also studied the
kabbalah
, and his
De Arte Cabalistica
(1517), which was dedicated to the pope, did much to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism to Christian readers.

 
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(d. 1583).
Jewish adventurer who evoked
messianic
expectation. At the age of about 40, he appeared in Venice in 1523 and was received by the pope in 1524. He visited Portugal in 1525, where he was greeted as the herald of the messianic age by the
Marranos
, but was subsequently imprisoned. After shipwreck off the coast of France, he returned to Italy where he was again imprisoned in 1532. Although inspiring messianic fervour, he himself stressed he was merely a military commander trying to raise an alliance against the Muslims and recapture
Erez Israel
for the Jews.

 
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(Lat.,
revelare
, ‘to unveil’). The disclosure or communication of truths which would not otherwise be known, at least in the same way. A distinction is often made between, on the one hand, ‘natural revelation’ or ‘general revelation’, whereby such truths are discerned within the natural order (either by reason or by conviction that absolute value, especially beauty, has invaded a contingent moment or object or circumstance); and on the other hand, special or supernatural revelation, which comes from a source other than that of the human recipient, usually God. The method of supernatural revelation is variously understood, ranging from direct dictation (in which the limitations of a human author are overridden) to concursive activity (in which the source is God, or the
Holy Spirit
, working with the human author—a view which, in the Jewish and Christian case, recognizes the contingency of the words produced, but raises difficulties for traditional claims of inerrancy in revealed words).
Muslims hold a strong doctrine of revelation, believing that ‘the mother of the book’ (umm al-Kit
b) is with God in heaven. The
Qur’
n
, therefore, is sent down to prophets as they and their circumstances can bear it—and consummately so through Mu
ammad, whose recipient community preserved it without corruption or loss. The major terms for ‘revelation’ are tanz
l and
wa
y
.
Whereas in W. religions revelation is usually related to particular persons and occasions, in Hinduism the concept is more subtle and diffused. The
Veda
is believed to have no human author, and in some sense is revealed—the exact sense is not agreed.
abda
(sound) is a source of knowledge with many different aspects. Within the context of sound,
anubh
ti
(direct experience of
Brahman
) arises from meditation on texts from the
Upani
ads
as they are
heard
—not simply as they are read in silence. But this experience is possible only because the Upani
ads themselves arise from the Vedas which are the constant (or in some views eternal) revelation of the truth about
dharma
and Brahman. In
Ved
nta
, the Vedas are no more real than anything else (
m
y
), but they serve to point beyond themselves to what is real, much as a picture points to that which it endeavours to portray.