Religion Past and Present
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning†, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Jacob of Vitry
(249 words)
[German Version] (before 1170, probably in the area of Reims – May 1, 1240, Rome), studied in Paris, and was an Augustinian canon in Oigniès (1211–1216) and father confessor of the Beguine Mary of Oigniès. From 1213, he was active as a preacher against the Albigenses and for the Crusades. He became bishop of Akko in 1216 and participated in the fifth Crusade from 1218 to 1221. In 1226/1227, he was appointed auxiliary bishop in Liège, became cardinal bishop of Tusculum in 1229, and in 1240 was elected patriarch of Jerusalem, but not confirmed by the pope. His writings include:
Vita Mariae Oigni…
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Religion Past and Present
Jacobsen, Jens Peter
(109 words)
[German Version] (Apr 7, 1847, Thisted – Apr 30, 1885, Thisted), Danish writer. Jacobsen based his naturalistic writing and his emphatic atheism on Darwinism. His novels (
Fru Marie Grubbe, 1876; ET:
Marie Grubbe: A Lady of the Seventeenth Century, 1917, 21975);
Niels Lyhne, 1880; ET:
Niels Lyhne, 1919), short stories (
Pesten i Bergamo, 1882; ET: “The Plague of Bergamo,” in:
Mogens and Other Tales, 1921), and poetry tended toward impressionistic decadence and a melancholy picture of a world without God. He was an inspiration for European modernism, especiall…
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Religion Past and Present
Jacob's Ladder
(451 words)
[German Version] The dream in which the patriarch Jacob beholds the ladder that leads to heaven (Gen 28:11–15) is already given a typological interpretation in the New Testament (John 1:51) and in patristic literature (e.g. Aug.
Civ. XVI 38; CChr.SL 48, 543f.). In the artistic renderings of the subject, Jacob is depicted lying on the ground, while an inclined ladder carrying two or three angels and situated immediately next to him is shown leading upward. The oldest preserved representation is found in the synagogue of Dura-Europos (II; 245–256 ce), in which the angels' conspicuous…
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Religion Past and Present
Jacobson, Heinrich Friedrich
(110 words)
[German Version] Jun 8, 1804, Marienwerder – Mar 19, 1868, Königsberg [Kaliningrad]). Jacobson, of Jewish birth, was professor of both secular and ecclesiastical law at Königsberg from 1831 to his death. He wrote a treatise of Prussian law (
Der Preussische Staat, 1854), but his reputation rests primarily on his
Das Evangelische Kirchenrecht des preussischen Staates und seiner Provinzen (2 vols., 1864–1866) and his unfinished
Geschichte der Quellen des Kirchenrechts des Preussischen Staats (1837ff.). His works are characterized by positivistic legal particularism an…
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Religion Past and Present
Jacobson, Israel
(147 words)
[German Version] (Oct 17, 1768, Halberstadt – Sep 14, 1828, Berlin), came to Braunschweig as a young man. There he succeeded his father-in-law as the ducal
Kammeragent and regional rabbi for the Weser district in 1794/1795. In the Westphalian consistory of Israelites, ¶ established on the French model, Jacobson held the office of chairman from 1808. Influenced by Enlightenment ideas, Jacobson was involved early on in the modernization of Jewish school education. His ideas for reconfiguring synagogue worship, which he was able to realize …
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Religion Past and Present
Jacopone da Todi
(180 words)
[German Version] (c. 1230, Todi – 1306, Collazzone near Todi). Jacopone was initially a notary. After the sudden death of his wife, Vanna di Bernardino, he suffered a spiritual crisis. In 1278, he entered the order of the Minorites and sided with the Franciscan Rigorists (Spiritual Franciscans). Celestine V permitted the Spirituals to live in the congregation founded by the pope (Celestines) according to the Fransciscan Rule. After Celestine's abdication and the election of Boniface VIII, the Spir…
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Religion Past and Present
Jacquelot (Jaquelot), Isaac
(207 words)
[German Version] (Dec 16, 1647, Vassy – Oct 20, 1708, Berlin). Jacquelot succeeded his father as Protestant minister in Vassy; after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (France: III, 1; Huguenots), he took refuge in Heidelberg. In 1686 he became pastor of the French congregation in The Hague. His
Avis sur le tableau du socinianisme (1690) brought him into conflict with P. Jurieu, so that he withdrew to Basel. In 1702 he was called to Berlin by Frederick I; he served as court chaplain there until his death. In his writings, he argued with suc…
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Religion Past and Present
Jaeger, Lorenz
(204 words)
[German Version] (Sep 23, 1892, Halle an der Saale – Apr 1, 1975, Paderborn), since 1941 archbishop of Paderborn, was named cardinal in 1965, and retired from office in 1973. Jaeger's significance urging the Catholic Church's participation in the ecumenical movement is undisputed. Two institutions trace their foundation essentially to him. In 1946, together with W. Stählin, Jaeger initiated the Ökumenischer Arbeitskreis evangelischer und katholischer Theologen (ÖAK) and, in 1957, the Johann Adam M…
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Religion Past and Present
Jaeger, Werner Wilhelm
(255 words)
[German Version] (Jul 30, 1888, Lobberich – Oct 19, 1961, Boston), a classical philologist, studied philosophy and ancient philology beginning in 1907 in Marburg and Berlin, became an instructor in Berlin in 1914, and was professor in Basel (1914), Kiel (1915), and Berlin (1921). He was dismissed from the Prussian civil service in 1936 at his own request for political and family reasons and emigrated to the United States, where he was professor in Chicago (1937) and Harvard (from 1939). After defi…
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Religion Past and Present
Jaffa
(263 words)
[German Version] (Joppa, Yaffo or Yaffa el-'Atiqa), a coastal site, is situated on a promontory, on the southern part of the modern city of Tel Aviv-Yaffo in Israel. Jaffa is mentioned in ancient texts of the 2nd and 1st millennia bce. It was conquered in the 15th century bce and became an Egyptian stronghold mentioned in the Amarna Letters (Amarna, Tell el-Amarna) and Papyrus Anastasi I. Jaffa appears in an Akkadian text sent from Ugarit and found at Aphek. It was conquered in 701 bce by Sennacherib. Jaffa was in the (theoretical) boundary of the tribe of Dan (Josh 19:46; Trib…
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Religion Past and Present
Jäger, Johann Wolfgang
(303 words)
[German Version] (Mar 17, 1647, Stuttgart – Apr 11 [not: 2], 1720, Tübingen), Lutheran theologian, was the son of a Württemberg official. He studied in Tübingen, received the M.A. in 1669 and, from 1671, was tutor to two sons of the duke in Tübingen, whom he accompanied to Switzerland and Italy. As professor of philosophy in Tübingen (from 1678), he initially taught geography and Latin, then Greek, later ethics, and finally logic and metaphysics. He became professor of theology in 1690, received t…
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Religion Past and Present
Jainism
(1,341 words)
[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Missiology
I. History of Religions Jainism is a religion of India that appeared in the 5th century bce in the eastern Ganges basin in the region of the modern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, in the same religious and social environment as Buddhism. Its messenger Mahāvīra, a contemporary of the Buddha, received the honorific title
Jina (“Victor”), after which his followers call themselves Jains. Like Buddhism, Jainism rejected the authority of the Vedas, thus breaking with Brahmanism (Hinduism); it was there…
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Religion Past and Present
Jamaa
(509 words)
[German Version] Jamaa, Kiswahili for “family,” is a movement of renewal inside the Roman Catholic Church in the Belgian Congo (Congo, Democratic Republic) of the late 1950s. What made it unusual was not only its location inside a major “mission church,” but also the fact that it was generated from the encounter between European mission and African congregations. The origins of Jamaa lie in the ministry of P. Tempels, a Belgian Franciscan priest in North Katanga. Tempels (born 1906) had arrived in the Congo in 1933 and the first 13 years of his ministr…
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Religion Past and Present
Jamaica
(505 words)
[German Version] is the third largest of the Greater Antilles situated in the Caribbean with an area of 10,991 km2. Jamaica's population in 2000 was approx. 2.6 million, of whom 90% were of African origin and 7.3% Creoles; 5.5% belong to the Anglican Church, 55.8% belongs to other Protestant churches (see below), approx. 8% are Catholic, 5% Rastafari, 5% Hindu, and 2% of Chinese religion. In 1494 C. Columbus discovered the island, which was populated by the Arawak Indians. These almost completely disappeared during Spanish rule. In 1655 Jamaica became a Briti…
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Religion Past and Present
James, Brother of Jesus
(353 words)
[German Version] James maintained his distance from the earthly Jesus (Mark 3:21, 31–35; 6:1–6; John 7:5). The parallel synoptic accounts and John 2:1–12 already correct this. According to 1 Cor 15:7, James was a witness to Jesus' resurrection. It appears that this was the main reason why the mother and brothers of Jesus (Jesus, Brothers and Sisters of) joined the Christian community at an early stage (Acts 1:14). Paul already noticed him on his first visit to Jerusalem (Gal 1:19). At the council,…
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Religion Past and Present
James, Epistle of
(1,096 words)
[German Version] In the New Testament corpus of Epistles, James heads the seven “Catholic Epistles”; it presents itself as a letter to Christians in a non-Christian environment (“to the twelve tribes in the Diaspora”: 1:1). The author writes under the name of James, brother of Jesus, to claim for his work the authority of the Lord's brother, by virtue of the respect he enjoyed as a leading figure in the Jerusalem community. It is safe to assume that the epistle was written in the late 1st century (c. 80–100); its place of composition can hardly be identified. The structure, form, and conten…
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Religion Past and Present
James I
(169 words)
[German Version] (Stuart, of England; Jun 19, 1566, Edinburgh – Mar 27, 1625, London). In 1603, on the death of Elizabeth I, James VI of Scotland was crowned King James I of England. Opposed to Presbyterianism and the Church of Scotland 's political influence he attempted to impose episcopacy in Scotland. In England, James's ecclesiastical policies met with mixed success. At the Hampton Court Conference (1604) he exhibited considerable theological knowledge and authorized a new translation of the …
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Religion Past and Present
James, Liturgy of Saint
(281 words)
[German Version] James, Liturgy of Saint, is the indigenous eucharistic liturgy of the Holy Land, named after the Lord's brother, James, verifiable as the foundation for the fourth and fifth mystagogical catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem or John of Jerusalem; passages are also already evident in Eusebius of Caesarea and in the eucharistic prayer in Origen. In terms of content, the sequence, formulated strictly in accordance with salvation history, of
post-sanctus, words of institution, anamnesis, and epiclesis, and the extraordinary scope of the intercessions are n…
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Religion Past and Present
James of Voragine
(323 words)
[German Version] (1228/1229, Varazze near Genoa – Jul 13/14, 1298, Genoa). James became a Dominican (Dominicans) in 1244, sub prior in 1258, then prior in Genoa, Asti, Como, and Milan, and, at the age of 37, provincial prior of Lombardy (1267–1277, 1281–1287). In 1274, he participated in the Council of Lyon (Lyon, Councils of). James strove for the expansion of his order (founding a nunnery in Genoa and a convent in Fano). After the death of the fourth Master General John of Vercelli in 1283, Jame…
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Religion Past and Present
James, Son of Alpheus
(10 words)
[German Version] Twelve, The (Disciples)
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Religion Past and Present