1. The Ordinary Forms:
There is not much additional to be learned concerning the nature and processes of revelation, from the terms currently employed in Scripture to express the idea. These terms are ordinarily the common words for disclosing, making known, making manifest, applied with more or less heightened significance to supernatural acts or effects in kind. In the English Bible (the King James Version) the verb "reveal" occurs about 51 times, of which 22 are in the Old Testament and 29 in the New Testament. In the Old Testament the word is always the rendering of a Hebrew term galah, or its Aramaic equivalent gelah, the root meaning of which appears to be "nakedness." When applied to revelation, it seems to hint at the removal of obstacles to perception or the uncovering of objects to perception. In the New Testament the word "reveal" is always (with the single exception of Lu 2:35) the rendering of a Greek term apokalupto (but in 2Th 1:7; 1Pe 4:13 the corresponding noun apokalupsis), which has a very similar basal significance with its Hebrew parallel. As this Hebrew word formed no substantive in this sense, the noun "revelation" does not occur in the English Old Testament, the idea being expressed, however, by other Hebrew terms variously rendered. It occurs in the English New Testament, on the other hand, about a dozen times, and always as the rendering of the substantive corresponding to the verb rendered "reveal" (apokalupsis). On the face of the English Bible, the terms "reveal," "revelation" bear therefore uniformly the general sense of "disclose," "disclosure." The idea is found in the Bible, however, much more frequently than the terms "reveal" "revelation" in English Versions of the Bible. Indeed, the Hebrew and Greek terms exclusively so rendered occur more frequently in this sense than in this rendering in the English Bible. And by their side there stand various other terms which express in one way or another the general conception.
In the New Testament the verb phaneroo, with the general sense of making manifest, manifesting, is the most common of these. It differs from apokalupto as the more general and external term from the more special and inward. Other terms also are occasionally used: epiphaneia, "manifestation" (2Th 2:8; 1Ti 6:14; 2Ti 1:10; 4:1; Tit 2:13; compare epiphaino, Tit 2:11; 3:4); deiknuo (Re 1:1; 17:1; 22:1,6,8; compare Ac 9:16; 1Ti 4:15); exegomai (Joh 1:18), of which, however, only one perhaps--chrematizo (Mt 2:12,22; Lu 2:20; Ac 10:22; Heb 8:5; 11:7; 12:25); p chrematismos (Ro 11:4)--calls for particular notice as in a special way, according to its usage, expressing the idea of a divine communication.
In the Old Testament, the common Hebrew verb for "seeing" (ra'ah) is used in its appropriate stems, with God as the subject, for "appearing," "showing": "the Lord appeared unto .... "; "the word which the Lord showed me." And from this verb not only is an active substantive formed which supplied the more ancient designation of the official organ of revelation: ro'eh, "seer"; but also objective substantives, mar'ah, and mar'eh, which were used to designate the thing seen in a revelation--the "vision." By the side of these terms there were others in use, derived from a root which supplies to the Aramaic its common word for "seeing," but in Hebrew has a somewhat more pregnant meaning, chazah. Its active derivative, chozeh, was a designation of a prophet which remained in occasional use, alternating with the more customary nabhi', long after ro'eh, had become practically obsolete; and its passive derivatives chazon, chizzayon, chazuth, machazeh provided the ordinary terms for the substance of the revelation or "vision." The distinction between the two sets of terms, derived respectively from ra'ah and chazah, while not to be unduly pressed, seems to lie in the direction that the former suggests external manifestations and the latter internal revelations. The ro'eh is he to whom divine manifestations, the chozeh he to whom divine communications, have been vouchsafed; the mar'eh is an appearance, the chazon and its companions a vision. It may be of interest to observe that mar'ah is the term employed in Nu 12:6, while it is chazon which commonly occurs in the headings of the written prophecies to indicate their revelatory character. From this it may possibly be inferred that in the former passage it is the mode, in the latter the contents of the revelation that is emphasized. Perhaps a like distinction may be traced between the chazon of Da 8:15 and the mar'eh of the next verse. The ordinary verb for "knowing," yadha`, expressing in its causative stems the idea of making known, informing, is also very naturally employed, with God as its subject, in the sense of revealing, and that, in accordance with the natural sense of the word, with a tendency to pregnancy of implication, of revealing effectively, of not merely uncovering to observation, but making to know. Accordingly, it is paralleled riot merely with galah (Ps 98:2: `The Lord hath made known his salvation; his righteousness hath he displayed in the sight of the nation'), but also with such terms as lamadh (Ps 25:4: `Make known to me thy ways, O Lord: teach me thy paths'). This verb yadha` forms no substantive in the sense of "revelation" (compare da`ath, Nu 24:16; Ps 19:3).
2. "Word of Yahweh" and "Torah":
The most common vehicles of the idea of "revelation" in the Old Testament are, however, two expressions which are yet to be mentioned. These are the phrase, "word of Yahweh," and the term commonly but inadequately rendered in the English Versions of the Bible by "law." The former (debhar Yahweh, varied to debhar 'Elohim or debhar ha-'Elohim; compare ne'um Yahweh, massa' Yahweh) occurs scores of times and is at once the simplest and the most colorless designation of a divine communication. By the latter (torah), the proper meaning of which is "instruction," a strong implication of authoritativeness is conveyed; and, in this sense, it becomes what may be called the technical designation of a specifically divine communication. The two are not infrequently brought together, as in Isa 1:10: "Hear the word of Yahweh, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law (margin "teaching") of our God, ye people of Gomorrah"; or Isa 2:3 margin; Mic 4:2: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law (margin "instruction"), and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem." Both terms are used for any divine communication of whatever extent; and both came to be employed to express the entire body of divine revelation, conceived as a unitary whole. In this comprehensive usage, the emphasis of the one came to fall more on the graciousness, and of the other more on the authoritativeness of this body of divine revelation; and both passed into the New Testament with these implications. "The word of God," or simply "the word," comes thus to mean in the New Testament just the gospel, "the word of the proclamation of redemption, that is, all that which God has to say to man, and causes to be said" looking to his salvation. It expresses, in a word, precisely what we technically speak of as God's redemptive revelation. "The law," on the other hand, means in this New Testament use, just the whole body of the authoritative instruction which God has given men. It expresses, in other words, what we commonly speak of as God's supernatural revelation. The two things, of course, are the same: God's authoritative revelation is His gracious revelation; God's redemptive revelation is His supernatural revelation. The two terms merely look at the one aggregate of revelation from two aspects, and each emphasizes its own aspect of this one aggregated revelation.
Now, this aggregated revelation lay before the men of the New Testament in a written form, and it was impossible to speak freely of it without consciousness of and at least occasional reference to its written form. Accordingly we hear of a Word of God that is written, (Joh 15:25; 1Co 15:54), and the Divine Word is naturally contrasted with mere tradition, as if its written form were of its very idea (Mr 7:10); indeed, the written body of revelation--with an emphasis on its written form--is designated expressly `the prophetic word' (2Pe 1:19).
3. "The Scriptures":
More distinctly still, "the Law" comes to be thought of as a written, not exactly, code, but body of Divinely authoritative instructions. The phrase, "It is written in your law" (Joh 10:34; 15:25; Ro 3:19; 1Co 14:21), acquires the precise sense of, "It is set forth in your authoritative Scriptures, all the content of which is `law,' that is, divine instruction." Thus, "the Word of God," "the Law," came to mean just the written body of revelation, what we call, and what the New Testament writers called, in the same high sense which we give the term, "the Scriptures." These "Scriptures" are thus identified with the revelation of God, conceived as a well-defined corpus, and two conceptions rise before us which have had a determining part to play in the history of Christianity--the conception of an authoritative Canon of Scripture, and the conception of this Canon of Scripture as just the Word of God written. The former conception was thrown into prominence in opposition to the Gnostic heresies in the earliest age of the church, and gave rise to a richly varied mode of speech concerning the Scriptures, emphasizing their authority in legal language, which goes back to and rests on the Biblical. usage of "Law." The latter it was left to the Reformation to do justice to in its struggle against, on the one side, the Romish depression of the Scriptures in favor of the traditions of the church, and on the other side the Enthusiasts' supercession of them in the interests of the "inner Word." When Tertullian, on the one hand, speaks of the Scriptures as an "Instrument," a legal document, his terminology has an express warrant in the Scriptures' own usage of torah, "law," to designate their entire content. And when John Gerhard argues that "between the Word of God and Sacred Scripture, taken in a material sense, there is no real difference," he is only declaring plainly what is definitely implied in the New Testament use of "the Word of God" with the written revelation in mind. What is important to recognize is that the Scriptures themselves represent the Scriptures as not merely containing here and there the record of revelations--"words of God," toroth--given by God, but as themselves, in all their extent, a revelation, an authoritative body of gracious instructions from God; or, since they alone, of all the revelations which God may have given, are extant--rather as the Revelation, the only "Word of God" accessible to men, in all their parts "law," that is, authoritative instruction from God.
LITERATURE.
Herman Witsius, "De Prophetis et Prophetia" in Miscell. Sacr., I, Leiden, 1736, 1-318; G. F. Oehler, Theology of the Old Testament, English translation, Edinburgh, 1874, I, part I (and the appropriate sections in other Biblical Theologies); H. Bavinck, Gereformeerde Dogmatiek(2), I, Kampen, 1906, 290-406 (and the appropriate sections in other dogmatic treatises); H. Voigt, Fundamentaldogmatik, Gotha, 1874, 173 ff; A. Kuyper, Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology, English translation, New York, 1898, Division III, Chapter ii; A. E. Krauss, Die Lehre von der Offenbarung, Gotha, 1868; C. F. Fritzsche, De revelationis notione biblica, Leipzig, 1828; E. W. Hengstenberg, The Christology of the O T, ET2, Edinburgh, 1868, IV, Appendix 6, pp. 396-444; E. Konig, Per Offenbarungsbegriff des Altes Testament, Leipzig, 1882; A. B. Davidson, Old Testament Prophecy, 1903; W. J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise, New York, 1905; James Orr, The Christian View of God and the World, 1893, as per Index, "Revelation," and Revelation and Inspiration, London and New York, 1910. Also: T. Christlieb, Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, English translation, New York, 1874; G. P. Fisher, The Nature and Method of Revelation, New York, 1890; C. M. Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 1889; J. Quirmbach, Die Lehre des h. Paulus von der naturlichen Gotteserkenntnis, etc., Freiburg, 1906.
Benjamin B. Warfield