Revelation, the name of one of the sacred books of the New Testament, containing revelations concerning several important doctrines of Christianity. The word is Greek, and derived from ἀποκαλύπτω, I reveal or discover.

This book, according to Irenæus, was written about the year 96 of Christ, in the island of Patmos, whither St John had been banished by the Emperor Domitian. But Sir Isaac Newton places the writing of it earlier, viz., in the time of Nero. Some attribute this book to the arch-heretic Cerinthus; but the ancients unanimously ascribed it to John, the son of Zebedee, and brother of James, whom the Greek fathers called the Divine, by way of eminence, to distinguish him from the other evangelists. This book has not at all times been esteemed canonical. There were many churches in Greece, as St Jerome informs us, which did not receive it; neither is it in the catalogue of canonical books prepared by the council of Laodicea, nor in that of St Cyril of Jerusalem: but Justin, Irenæus, Origen, Cyprian, Clemens of Alexandria, Tertullian, and all the fathers of the fourth, fifth, and the following centuries, quote the Revelation as a book then acknowledged to be canonical. The Alogians, Marcionites, Cerdonians, and Luther himself, rejected this book; but the Protestants have forsaken Luther in this particular; and Beza has strongly maintained, against his objections, that the Apocalypse is authentic and canonical.

There have been several other works published under the title of Apocalypse. Sozomen mentions a book used in the churches of Palestine, called the Apocalypse or Revelation of St Peter. He also mentions an Apocalypse of St Paul, which the Copts retain to this day. Eusebius also speaks of both these Apocalypses. St Epiphanius mentions an Apocalypse of Adam; Nicephorus, an Apocalypse of Esdras; Gratian and Cedrenus, an Apocalypse of Moses, another of St Thomas, and another of St Stephen; St Jerome, an Apocalypse of Elias. Porphyry, in his life of Plotinus, makes mention of the Apocalypse or Revelations of Zoroaster, Zostrian, Nicothous, Allogenes, &c.