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
Shamanism
(3,693 words)
1. Shamanism, originally and exclusively a theme for anthropologists, religious scholars, medical professionals, colonizers, and Christian missionaries, has won more and more attention in Western industrial societies since the 1960s. Here it plays quite an important role in the quest for spirituality, in efforts to preserve the environment (‘nature-based spirituality’; → Environmentalism), in projects for fortifying women's rights, and even in alternative medicine. Neither scientific nor politic…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Shintô
(2,714 words)
1. The word-sign
Shintô (Jap., ‘Way of the Divinities’) consists of the signs for ‘divinity/ies’ (Sino-Jap.,
shin; Jap.,
kami) and ‘way’ (Sino-Jap.,
tô/dô; Chin.,
tao/dao; Jap.,
michi; → Daoism; Road/Path/Journey; Martial Arts), and designates the native religion of Japan, which, however, must not be regarded as a unitary religious system (→ China/Japan/Korea). Originally, only local cults existed, independent from one another. After the introduction of Buddhism in the sixth century, the designation Shintô was conceived as a counter-concept to
butsudô, ‘Way of the Buddha.’…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Shoah
(2,092 words)
1. Ever since the 1940s, the Hebrew word
shoah (‘catastrophe’), which is of biblical origin (Isa 10:3), has designated the persecution and murder of some six million European Jews carried out by German National Socialism. Connected to the article
ha- (
ha-shoah), it has come to epitomize the catastrophe of Jewish history. The choice of the term ‘Shoah’ implies a distancing from the expression prevailing since the end of the 1970s, ‘Holocaust.’1 Nevertheless, ‘Shoah’ and ‘Holocaust’ are becoming once more synonymous, the former predominating in the Hebraic linguisti…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Silk Road
(1,789 words)
The Region 1. The silk Road was a network of trade routes, reaching from → China, through Turkistan and → Iran, to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea, and first peaked in the first century CE. Chinese silk-ware and ironware, as well as Indian ivory, were merchandise much sought after in Rome. The silk route served not only as a trade connection, but also as a cultural bridge. Although in the easterly direction woolen goods, Alexandrian glass, coral, silver, and gold were transported, more important was…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Sin
(771 words)
The Concept-Symbol 1. From the religious viewpoint, sin designates the manifold forms of deviation from juridical, social, moral, and intra-religious norms. Connected with the conceptual address of sin, then, is the religious discourse upon the normative, the ritual, juridical, moral, and social construction of order and disorder. Interpretational work on the concept-symbol sin is bound up with ritual practices and procedures for the re-production of the
social order and the
religious salvific order, in the form of sanction and punishment, sacrifice and gift, confes…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Singing/Song
(1,472 words)
Concept 1. Singing is a form of → communication belonging to many highly developed species, including the human being. Extending the concept somewhat, and thus including melodic articulations such as crying out, cheering, a soothing murmur, and the like, it seems altogether plausible that the more abstractly codifying communication of → language has arisen precisely from these ‘song’ forms. While language must be passed on culturally, the voice ranks as the immediate—non-arbitrary if possible—exp…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion
Sinti/Roma
(2,092 words)
1. The Sinti and Roma were originally part of the population of India. In the time following the Sassanid conquests, they emigrated to the West from the region of the upper valley of the Indus. Some migrated to the northern coast of Africa, and to Europe, as far as Spain and Portugal. Others crossed the Black Sea region, and settled, for a considerable time, in Greece. From there, around 1300, they moved in family bands to Central Europe, and as far as Russia and Scandinavia. Byzantines and Euro…
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The Brill Dictionary of Religion