The Brill Dictionary of Religion
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Kocku von Stuckrad
The impressively comprehensive Brill Dictionary of Religion (BDR) Online addresses religion as an element of daily life and public discourse, is richly illustrated and with more than 500 entries, the Brill Dictionary of Religion Online is a multi-media reference source on the many and various forms of religious commitment. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online addresses the different theologies and doctrinal declarations of the official institutionalized religions and gives equal weight and consideration to a multiplicity of other religious phenomena. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online helps map out and define the networks and connections created by various religions in contemporary societies, and provides models for understanding these complex phenomena.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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The impressively comprehensive Brill Dictionary of Religion (BDR) Online addresses religion as an element of daily life and public discourse, is richly illustrated and with more than 500 entries, the Brill Dictionary of Religion Online is a multi-media reference source on the many and various forms of religious commitment. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online addresses the different theologies and doctrinal declarations of the official institutionalized religions and gives equal weight and consideration to a multiplicity of other religious phenomena. The Brill Dictionary of Religion Online helps map out and define the networks and connections created by various religions in contemporary societies, and provides models for understanding these complex phenomena.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Paganism/Neopaganism
(1,536 words)
Paganism ‘Paganism’ is a term historically applied to any and all religions outside the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and in particular to the polytheistic religions indigenous to Europe (→ Heathen). In the twentieth century, various species of revived, reconstructed, and invented paganism have gained adherents throughout Europe and North America. In recent religious studies—and sometimes on the borderline between religious practice and historical research—attempts have…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Pagan Religions and Paganism: The Pre-Christian Religions of Ancient Europe and the Mediterranean Regions, and Their Reception [Time Chart]
(1,689 words)
Era 1: Late Antiquity: Paganism as formation of reaction to Christendom 253–268 Under the influence of his mentor Plotinus, Emperor Gallienus fosters Greek philosophy and the Mysteries of Eleusis Egypto-Greek philosopher Plotinus (205–270) develops the Platonic teaching to the religio-philosophical system of “Neoplatonism.” 361–363 (reg.) Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (Julian the Apostate) After a personal, philosophically grounded conversion, Julian fosters the Greco-Roman religion at the cost of Christianity (reconstruction of temples), lec…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Pain
(1,794 words)
1. Bodily pain, occasioned by corporeal injury, represents a total, holistic reaction calculated to protect the health of the organism. Persons can feel pain from birth onward. Further, within a multifaceted process of learning and integration during individual development, a person becomes heir to the ability to bear, and, precisely, to process or manage, repeated painful physical experiences (of fright or fear, shame and embarrassment, guilt, disappointment, illness, timidity). As fundamental …
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Palestine/Israel
(2,102 words)
History 1. Palestine/Israel is the designation for that part of the Near East that today makes up the territory of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Autonomous Region. Beginning in the fourteenth century BCE, Israelite nomads wandered into the region. According to biblical narrative—which is not attested by archeological evidence—the ‘twelve tribes of Israel’ were bound together in a sacred alliance that reverenced the god YHWH. Simultaneously, the seafaring people of the ‘Philistines’ sett…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Palestine/Israel (Near East/Eastern Mediterranean): Time Chart
(1,578 words)
Era 1: Emergence of the three monotheistic religions 1st millenium BCE Emergence of Jewish religion 1st millenium CE Emergence of Christianity 7th millenium CE Emergence of Islam
Era 2: Crusades and Ottoman Empire end of 11th until end of 13th cent. Crusades At the Synod of Clermont, Pope Urban II summons Christians to war with Islam. With the purpose of delivering the Holy Land from Islamic rule, masses of persons set out in the direction of the East. Capture of Jerusalem: 1099. By 1270, six more Crusades. 1453 Fall of Constantinople In consequence: dismantling of Muslim rule in the …
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Pantheism
(802 words)
Two Scientists 1. “That conviction of reason—bound up with deep feeling—that is revealed in the experiential world, forms my concept of God. Thus, it can also be designated, in the customary manner of expression, as pantheistic (Spinoza).” So wrote Albert Einstein in 1934, thereby inserting his ‘relation to the world’—that, in another connection, he also designated as ‘cosmic piety’—into the tradition of Jewish philosopher Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677).1 Spinoza's formulation,
sive deus sive natura (Lat., ‘god or nature’) had delivered for subsequent times the patter…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Papacy
(1,168 words)
Title and Claim 1. The pope (from Gk.,
papas, ‘father’) is the spiritual and secular sovereign of the Catholic Church, with his seat in Rome: he is plenipotentiary of doctrine, ordination, and leadership, including the power of sanction. His full title reads: “Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles [Peter], Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province [of the Church], Sovereign of Vatican City State.”1 The title contains claims meant to provide sacred a…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Parapsychology
(1,250 words)
What Does Parapsychology Seek? 1. It is the aim of parapsychology to investigate, by means of academic scientific methodology, phenomena not to be reconciled with scientific images of the world known and acknowledged up until now. Here parapsychology recognizes the fundamental scientific premises that a phenomenon can be regarded as having been demonstrated only when it is inter-subjectively verifiable and experimentally repeatable. The results of parapsychological research have thus far been unable…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Peace
(1,403 words)
Current Situation 1. On the level of the individual human being, peace means harmony with oneself, one's fellow human beings, the environment, or with God—a harmony that can be attained by way of efforts like that of meditation, observance of divine directives, or reflection on the conditions of a nonviolent cohabitation. This peace is regarded as the prerequisite for outer peace. While Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religion surmise the cause of the lack of peace in a false or faulty relationship…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Penance/Penitent
(1,272 words)
Concept 1. When someone inflicts harm on another, the injured party may demand compensation for the injury. The injury must be ‘repented.’ In case of conflict, one appeals to a judge, to establish the seriousness of the injury and the degree of guilt attaching to it. Especially with a murder, for example, an injury can be ‘condignly’ compensated only by the death of a member of the opposing party; still, the ‘capital’ punishment (from Lat.,
caput, ‘head’) can be replaced with a money payment, the ‘mulet’ for homicide. But before the compensation—the re-balancing betwee…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Perception/Sensory System
(6,155 words)
1. “On Sundays, my father takes me to Mass, and when the ladies sing Hosanna I think I won't get out of there in a thousand years. Hosanna, Hosanna, they screech, without letup, and nobody can put the brakes on them, not the Chief of Police or anybody […] The beautiful things about Mass are: all the lamps are lit, and all the flowers smell wonderful […] The bad things about Mass are: you have to kneel too long, it lasts too long at Easter […]”1 No one's tastes are the same, and so neither are their sense impressions. The Neapolitan grammar-school girl describes Sunday Mass in her…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion