Religion Past and Present
Get access
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
| Help us improve our service |
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
Kaas, Ludwig
(183 words)
[German Version] (May 23, 1881, Trier – Apr 25, 1952, Rome, Vatican City), is one of the most controversial figures of German political Catholicism. Much influenced by his studies in Rome, and from 1920 a close confidant of Eugenio Pacelli, the later Pope Pius XII, he entered politics as a Centrist member in the Weimar National Assembly in 1919. He was a member of the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933, and chair of the Center Party (Parties: III) from 1928 to 1933. Probably in ignorance of the totalitar…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kaʿba
(204 words)
[German Version] (
Kaʿaba; Arab. for “cube”). A stone construction measuring 12×10×15 m in the center of the great mosque in Mecca (II). A hall was built above it around 700 ce, and in the 8th century (there were further extensions later) a courtyard and colonnade were added; inside there is a windowless room with three columns. The story that it was built by an Egyptian Christian carpenter is dubious and may reflect the later Islamic tendency to downplay the possible accomplishments of pre-Islamic times. The Kaʿba has a simp…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kabasilas
(321 words)
[German Version]
1. Neilos Metropolitan of Thessalonica 1361–1363 (baptismal name: Nikolaos; end of the 13th cent., Thessalonica – 1363, Thessalonica), was the uncle of the more famous theologian Nikolaos Kabasilas (2.). After the synod of 1341, he changed from a fervent admirer of Thomas Aquinas (
Summa theologica;
Summa contra Gentiles, in the translation by his student D. Cydones) to a polemical adherent of Palamism which radically rejected the scholastic method (on the major points:
filioque , papal primacy), and, consequently, was also elected…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kabbalah
(1,981 words)
[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Jewish Kabbalah – III. Christian Kabbalah
I. Philosophy of Religion Since c. 1200, Kabbalah has been the designation for Jewish mysticism (III, 2). According to the name, the term Kabbalah means “reception” or “tradition”: the reception of an orally transmitted, esoteric knowledge concerning the “secrets of Scripture” (
rasin de oraita;
sitre tora). The material that can be considered Kabbalah can be described in terms of (a) the philosophy of religion or phenomenology, or (b) history. A phenomenologica…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kabīr
(257 words)
[German Version] (born in the first half of the 15th cent.?) was a poet-saint from northern India. He was born into an Islamized lower Hindu caste of weavers in which the Tantric tradition (Tantrism) of the Nāthyogīs was cultivated. His activities are linked with Benares and Magahar (near Gorakhpur). Kabīr is considered the most significant poet of the Sant- Bhakti. A monistic ontology and the emphasis on human mortality and their being in need of mercy justified his claim of egalitarian access to…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kabisch, Richard
(324 words)
[German Version] (May 21, 1868, Kemnitz near Greifswald – Oct 30, 1914, Flanders). The son of a Pomeranian pastor, he studied German language and literature as well as history from 1885, and then Protestant theology in Greifswald and Bonn. In 1889, he completed his doctorate and became curate in Saarbrücken. In 1891, he was appointed director of a Latin school in Altenkirchen, in 1892 he became lecturer in the seminary, and from 1903 to 1910 he was the director of the seminaries in Uetersen, Holstein, and later Prenzlau. In 1910, he became royal senior executive officer (
Regierungsrat) in …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kadesh-Barnea
(327 words)
[German Version] An oasis in northern Sinai, on the southern border of Canaan (Num 34:4; Ezek 47:19; 48:48) and a station on the way from Egypt to Beer-Sheba and from the coast of Philistia to the Gulf of Eilat. Its name is derived from the West Semitic root
qdš (“holy”); the meaning of the second element (“Barnea”) is unknown. It is also known by the names En-mishpat (Gen 14:7) and “waters of Meribah”/ “Meribath kadesh”. According to the biblical tradition, Kadesh played an important role in the early history of Israel. After the departure f…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kafka, Franz
(1,412 words)
[German Version] (Aug 3, 1883, Prague – Jun 3, 1924, Kierling near Vienna). The son of Hermann Kafka and Julie Kafka (
née Löwy), Franz Kafka grew up in a middle-class Prague family of assimilated Jews; his father's shop sold fashion accessories. He studied law at the Charles University in Prague, graduating in 1906. His earliest extant writings date from this period – letters describing his first job with the insurance firm Assicurazioni Generali in 1908, then his employment with the Workers' Accident Insurance Inst…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kaftan
(720 words)
[German Version]
1. Theodor Christian Heinrich Mar 18, 1847, Loit near Apenrade, North Schleswig – Nov 26, 1932, Baden-Baden). Rooted in the cultural and religious milieu of North Schleswig and marked by the German-Danish border conflict at an early age, Kaftan studied theology in Erlangen, Berlin, and Kiel, began working as a home tutor and assistant preacher, and became pastor of the Danish congregation in Apenrade in 1873. In 1880, Kaftan moved to Schleswig, where he became a senior ¶ executive officer and school inspector. He was appointed provost in Tondern in 1884 and…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kagawa Toyohiko
(284 words)
[German Version] (Jul 10, 1888, Kobe – Apr 23, 1960, Tokyo). Kagawa was baptized by an American missionary in 1904. In 1909 he began his own missionary work in the slums of Kobe, where he preached the gospel to people suffering from the dehumanizing results of poverty. In 1917, after studying at Princeton University and Theological Seminary, he led workers' and peasants' movements to establish human rights, with a view to putting the redemptive love of Christ into practice. In 1923, at the time of…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kähler, Martin
(1,222 words)
[German Version] (Jan 6, 1835, Neuhausen, near Königsberg (Kaliningrad) – Sep 7, 1912, Freudenstadt). Kähler, the son of a Lutheran pastor, grew up in Neuhausen, near Königsberg, and after 1841 in Preussisch Holland (Pasłęk). At his father's request, he began to study law at Königsberg but soon shifted to theology. In 1853 he went to Heidelberg, where R. Rothe awakened his interest in systematics. He continued his studies in Halle with Julius Müller and F. Tholuck, who encouraged and heavily influ…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kahl, Wilhelm
(205 words)
[German Version] (Jun 17, 1849, Kleinheubach – May 14, 1932 Berlin), professor of church, civil and criminal law in Rostock (1879–1881), Erlangen (1883–1888), Bonn (1888–1895), and Berlin (after 1895). His scholarly work initially included church law, beginning with a monograph on the important
Temporaliensperre [1876, Suspension of temporalities] which was important in the
Kulturkampf . His principal work on church law is the
Lehrsystem des Kirchenrechts und der Kirchenpolitik [1894, System of church law and church politics], whose separately published first se…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kahnis, Karl Friedrich August
(160 words)
[German Version] (Dec 22, 1814, Greiz, Vogtland – Jun 20, 1888, Leipzig). Kahnis became associate professor in Breslau (Warcław) in 1844 and professor of dogmatics in Leipzig in 1850. He emerged as a proponent of a moderate Lutheran confessionalism which is evident from his major work
Die lutherische Dogmatik historisch-genetisch dargestellt [Lutheran dogmatics presented historically and genetically] (3 vols., 1861–1868; 2 vols., 21874/1875). His theology emphasizes Scripture and confession. In opposition to K.I. Nitzsch, he was critical of union (Unions, …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kaïris, Theophilos
(191 words)
[German Version] (Oct 19, 1784, Andros – Jan 9, 1853, Syros), Greek Orthodox priest monk and a philosopher of the Enlightenment. He studied philosophy and natural science in Pisa and Paris, where he formed a friendship with A. Korais. He was headmaster in Smyrna and Kydonia, and took part in the Greek War of Independence (from 1821). He founded an orphanage on ¶ the island of Andros (1835), where he taught his scientific and theophilanthropic ideas. The political turmoils of his times, the spiritual and sociocultural controversies sparked off by the Enlight…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kairology
(432 words)
[German Version] The Greek term καιρός/
kairós refers to the quality of a time: what it is good for (in contrast to χρόνος/
chrónos [Chronology], which also means “time” in Gk, but points to the quantitative aspect of time: to the time someone needs to do something). The quality of a time cannot be measured like the time of day, but can only be deduced through experience and intuition, by interpreting the “signs of the time”: as the moment at which it is time for something, the right time or the fruitful moment. The i…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kaiser, Georg
(264 words)
[German Version] (Nov 25, 1878, Magdeburg – Jun 4, 1945, Ascona), wrote more than 70 dramas and is considered one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century. He was one of the most staged authors of the 1920s and an important representative of Berlin's literary intellectualism, but sank into oblivion after 1933. From a thematic and formal point of view, Kaiser's dramas are strongly influenced by Expressionism. In his two-part drama
Gas (1918/1920), he denounces the exploitation and functionalization forced upon the human being by modernism and industrializa…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kaiserswerth
(444 words)
[German Version] Kaiserswerth, now part of the city of Düsseldorf, is well known in church and diaconal circles for the oldest deaconess institute there, which was founded in 1836 by T. and F. Fliedner (Diakonia center). This cradle of the “female diakonia” became the world center for motherhouses and associations on the Fliedner model. Today's “Kaiserswerther Diakonie” in Düs-¶ seldorf with a total of 2,136 workers (as of October 1999) includes the motherhouse and its retirement homes with 175 deaconesses (166 of them retired), 112 diaconal sisters and…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kalands Brethren
(214 words)
[German Version] (
fratres calendarii). In the late Middle Ages, Kalands Brethren were religious brotherhoods (II, 1;
fraternitates), widespread especially in ¶ lower Saxony, membership in which was generally reserved for priests. One can divide the widely varied, guild-like alliances, named Kalands Brethren since the 13th century (after their worship assemblies on the calends of each month), into parish Kalands Brethren, Kalands Brethren founded by the nobility, and – only in northern Germany – the “Sedes Kalands Br…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Káldi, György
(129 words)
[German Version] (Feb 4, 1573, Tyrnau [Hung. Nagyszombat; today Trnava, Slovakia] – Oct 30, 1634, Pressburg [Hung. Pozsony; today Bratislava, Slovakia]), Hungarian Jesuit. Káldi studied in Vienna, then as a priest in Rome, where he joined the Jesuits. He was master of novices in Brünn and, from 1616 to 1624, exercised functions in Tyrnau, Graz, Vienna, and Pressburg, where he became the first rector of the college founded by P. Pázmány. Káldi translated the entire Bible into Hungarian (Szent Biblia, 1626; Bible translations: II, 3.b.γ), possibly profiting from the preliminary w…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kālī
(312 words)
[German Version] “The black” goddess, who is venerated throughout India (III, 1) but especially in Bengal, is attested since the 6th century ce. She is widely known in her main form: disheveled hair, fangs, tongue hanging out, blood-smeared lips, naked and haggard in appearance, with a garland of skulls and a skirt made of cut-off human arms, standing on the inert Śiva. Usually four-armed, she holds a sword in her upper left hand, in the lower one the severed head of a demon. She is frequently regarded as the personi…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kalischer, Zvi Hirsch
(213 words)
[German Version] (1795, Lissa, Posen [today Leszno, Poland] – 1874, Thorn, East Prussia [today Toruń, Poland]). Kalischer was rabbi of Thorn from 1824 until his death and one of the first to advocate the return of the Jews to Palestine. Having already authored books on Halakhah and the philosophy of religion, he only became famous with the publication of
Derishat Zion (1862), in which he summoned orthodox Judaism (Orthodoxy: III) to return to Zion. The redemption of Israel would not come about as a divine miracle, but as a result of human efforts, namely…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kálmáncsehi Sánta, Márton
(172 words)
[German Version] (c. 1500 – Dec 20[?], 1557, Debrecen, Hungary). Initially a Catholic priest, he later became one of the first Reformed pastors and bishops of Hungary as well as a hymn writer. Following studies in Cracow (1523–1525), he became canon, headmaster (1538), and elected member of the Humanist circle in Weißenburg (Transylvania). He joined the Reformation after a dispute over issues of faith, becoming pastor in Mezötúr, then in Sátoraljaújhely. He was preacher in Debrecen (1551/1552) onl…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kalonymus
(192 words)
[German Version] Kalonymus, one of the most prominent Jewish families into which important personalities were born between the 9th and 13th centuries. Their descendants exerted great influence on Jewish culture in Italy, Germany, and the Provence. Originally perhaps from southern Italy, the earliest mention of this family occurs in the
Chronicle of Achimaaz (11th cent.). According to widespread tradition, part of the family was brought to Mainz from Italy by Charlemagne and rose to become the leading family of the Rhineland from the 9th century o…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kalpa
(76 words)
[German Version] designates, in Indian cosmology, the basic cycle of an era (II), i.e. a day in the life of the creator god Brahmā (Brahman), who lives 100 years. This day is composed of sub-cycles (
yugas, mahāyugas, manvantaras) and lasts 4,320,000 earth years until the dis-¶ solution (
pralaya) of the universe and the equally long night, which is followed by a new creation. Catharina Kiehnle Bibliography A.L. Basham,
The Wonder that was India, 1967, 1998, 320–322.
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kalthoff, Albert
(294 words)
[German Version] (Mar 5, 1850, Barmen – May 11, 1906, Bremen). Kalthoff studied Protestant theology in Berlin, gained his Dr.phil. in Halle in 1874, and obtained his first preaching post in Berlin in the same year. In 1875, he assumed the pastorate in the Brandenburg village of Nickern. Kalthoff became widely known through his dismissal from office in 1878, after he rejected in a public self-indictment the authority of the Prussian Evangelical High Consistory to issue directives on all questions o…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kami
(255 words)
[German Version] is a Japanese term for anything that inspires awe on account of its exceptional properties. This may refer to deities, spirits, humans, animals, plants, or landscapes. The origins of the word, which is written with the Chinese character
shen (“spirit, god, genius, soul, nerves,” etc.), are unclear. According to a popular etymology, kami is related to “above,” “high,” “towering” (
kami). Some postulate a connection with
kakurimi (“that which is hidden”),
kakuri mitama (“hidden spirit”),
kagami (“mirror”),
akami (“luminous appearance”),
kashikomi (“awe”) etc. T…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kam, Joseph
(177 words)
[German Version] (Sep 1769, 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands – Jul 18, 1833, Ambon, Ambon Island) was the first, and for many years the most influential Dutch Protestant missionary in the eastern part of the Dutch East Indies (Moluccas) after the demise of the Dutch East India Company and the transfer of its territories to Dutch sovereignty (Jan 1, 1800). He received his training in Rotterdam (with the Dutch Missionary Society), Zeist (Herrnhut; Bohemian and Moravian Brethren), and Gosport, England, …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kammin
(203 words)
[German Version] is a city on the Dievenow in Pomerania; since 1176 an episcopal seat, first founded in Wolin in 1140 following the missionary journeys of Otto of Bamberg. The diocese received broad independence (Exemption) since it was subject to the Holy See in Rome, but not to the archdioceses of Gniezno or Magdeburg. In the 13th/14th centuries, the diocese, initially restricted to the territories subject to the dukes ¶ of Pomerania, expanded to the west (Mecklenburg) and southeast (Uckermark, Neumark). In 1248, the bishops of Kammin gained sovereignty over an …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kandinsky, Wassily
(216 words)
[German Version] (Dec 4, 1866, Moscow – Dec 13, 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris). After studying law, Kandinsky moved to Munich and took up the study of art in 1896. Along with Gabriele Münter (1877–1962), he often worked in Murnau am Staffelsee in upper Bavaria until 1914. In 1909, he co-founded the
Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich; in 1911, he co-founded the Blauer Reiter group with F. Marc; he got to know P. Klee; in 1914 he returned to Moscow. In 1917 Kandinsky married Nina Andreevskaya. After the October Revolution, he was entrusted wit…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kant, Immanuel
(3,007 words)
[German Version] I. Theoretical Philosophy – II. Practical Philosophy – III. Esthetics and Nature Teleology (Apr 22, 1724, Königsberg – Feb 12, 1804, Königsberg), German philosopher whose thought on the critique of reason marks the high point of the Enlightenment and the origin of German Idealism. Kant saw ¶ his epoch as the “real age of criticism, to which everything must submit” (
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, AA 4, XI, note; ET:
Critique of Pure Reason, 1881), even religion and legislation. The only authority that is recognized in its claim of “free and public exam…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kantorei (Professional Choirs)
(317 words)
[German Version] From the Middle Ages onward, the word
Kantorei denoted groups of professional singers and instrumental musicians attached to churches and royal courts, led by a cantor; after the Reformation, after the model of the institution established in 1525 by Johann Walter,
Kantorei denoted a group of volunteers from the pupils of the local Latin school (
chorus symphoniacus) together with residents of the town as singers (
adiuvantes) and instrumentalists (
collegium musicum) for the performance of polyphonic vocal and instrumental music (
Musica figuralis). From the time…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kapff, Sixt Karl v.
(158 words)
[German Version] (Oct 22, 1805, Güglingen, Württemberg – Sep 1, 1879, Stuttgart). Son of an old aristocratic family, Kapff attended the seminaries in Maulbronn and Tübingen (II), where he became friendly with L. and W. Hofacker; he was a lecturer from 1830 to 1833. This leading representative of conservative Württemberg Pietism was appointed pastor of the Brethren congregation in Korntal in 1833, dean in Münsingen in 1843 and in Herrenberg in 1847. From 1850, Kapff was general superintendent in Re…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kaplan, Mordecai Menahem
(142 words)
[German Version] (Jun 11, 1881, Švencionys, Lithuania – Nov 8, 1983, New York). Kaplan spent his early childhood years in the traditional Jewish world in Lithuania. In 1889 he emigrated to New York with his parents, where after religious and academic studies he initially served as a rabbi (Rabbis). In 1909 he was invited to join the faculty of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he taught for more than half a century. Starting from a conceptual definition that sought to understand Judaism as an…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Kapler, Hermann
(286 words)
[German Version] (Dec 2, 1867, Oels, Silesia – May 2, 1941, Berlin), Dr.jur., member of the Protestant High Consistory in Berlin from 1903, secular vice-president from 1919 and president from 1925. Kapler fulfilled important functions during the reorganization of the church after 1918. As head of the Evangelical Church of the Old Prussian Union, he also became ¶ president of the German Evangelical Church Committee in 1925, and was thus the highest representative of the Evangelical Church in Germany until 1933. Although imbued with the concepts of value…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karabinov, Ivan Alekseevič
(159 words)
[German Version] (born 1878, declared missing in the 1930s) was associate professor at the Clerical Academy of St. Petersburg from 1911 onward. As a liturgical scholar with a strict historical-critical orientation, he interpreted the early Christian Eucharist (Eucharist/Communion: III, 3) as in essence a sacrifice of prayer and praise. The Words of Institution and the epiclesis, on the other hand, he viewed as relatively late, albeit indisputably appropriate expansions of the original order. Karab…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karaites
(887 words)
[German Version] I. History – II. Relations with Other Jews – III. Principles of Karaite Law The distinctive feature of the Jewish Karaite movement (
karaʾim) is its rejection of rabbinic/talmudic (“oral”) literature. They claim to recognize only the authority of the biblical text (HB/OT) in its plain meaning – hence their alternative names of
baʾale miqraʾ or
bene miqraʾ (“those who refer only to the HB”).
I. History The rather obscure beginnings of the Karaite movement in the Babylonian/Persian sphere are generally linked with ʿAnan, of Davidic lineage, who …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karatepe
(327 words)
[German Version] (“Black Hill”), an ancient fortified hill in Cilicia. Together with the neighboring fortress Domuztepe, it dominates the overland route from northern Syria and Cilicia to Central Anatolia across the Anti-Taurus mountain range. Now a Turkish city, it lies roughly 100 km northeast of Adana. Following the discovery of the archaeological site in 1946, excavations uncovered the upper and lower city on the Karatepe from 1947 onward. A considerable stir was caused by the Phoenician and H…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karg, Georg
(78 words)
[German Version] (
Parsimonius; 1512/1513, Heroldingen – Nov 27, 1576, Ansbach) was a theologian of the Reformation. As superintendent of the Margraviate of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Karg was highly instrumental in the organization of its Protestant church from 1552 onward (catechism, 1564); between 1567 and 1570, ¶ internal Lutheran doctrinal disputes arose over his divergent doctrine of the imputation of Christ's passive obedience, only, in the act of justification. Hellmut Zschoch Bibliography H.-M. Weiss,
Vom notwendigen Verstand der Lehre, 1991.
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karlstadt, Andreas Rudolf Bodenstein von
(927 words)
[German Version] (actually: Bodenstein; 1486, Karlstadt am Main – Dec 24, 1541, Basel) studied in Erfurt, Cologne, and Wittenberg. After ordination to the priesthood and graduation as Dr.theol. (1510), Karlstadt was appointed professor of theology in Wittenberg. His interest in law (Dr.iur.utr., 1515/1516, Rome) lent a specific character to his theology, while elements of Neoplatonism, the Kabbalah, and Humanism influenced his thinking. In 1516, Luther inspired him to engage in an intensive study …
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karma
(634 words)
[German Version] or
karman (Sanskrit: “action”) designates, among other things, the action that binds the human being into the cycle of rebirths (Reincarnation), which is called
saṃsāra in Sanskrit. The origins of this doctrine are obscure; the Brāhmaṇas speak of the “redeath” through which a deceased person reenters the world of the living from the world of the ancestors. Already in the early Upaniṣads (between the 8th and 5th cents. bce), the notion of rebirth is linked to the retribution of deeds on the basis of ethical considerations: “He who does good will be…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karmiris, Ioannis
(172 words)
[German Version] (Dec, 1904, Brallos, central Greece – Jan 5, 1992, Athens). Karmiris studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Athens, Berlin, and Bonn, receiving his doctorate in 1936 and being appointed
Privatdozent in 1937. In 1939 he was appointed to the theological faculty of the University of Athens as associate professor of symbolics and the history of dogma; in 1942 he was made full professor and in 1959 professor of dogmatics and Christian ethics. From 1945 to 1960, he was the director of the religion sec…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karnak Temple
(295 words)
[German Version] is the largest temple complex ever to have been excavated in Egypt; the field- archaeological and epigraphic work is still in full swing. Of the three precincts within the enclosure wall, the middle one is dedicated to Amun, the southern one to the goddess Mut, and the northern one to the god Montu. The middle precinct is dominated by the Great Hypostyle Hall of the Amun temple; in the course of its 2,000-year building history, its original nucleus was expanded to the south, west,…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karo, Joseph ben Ephraim
(208 words)
[German Version] (1488, Toledo or Portugal – 1575, Safed). Karo was the greatest Jewish legal scholar of the modern period; his legal works are still considered normative. During or shortly before the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, his family left Spain and settled in Turkey. In 1536 he moved to Zefat, then a center of Kabbalistic circles (Kabbalah: II). His most important work is the
Bet Yosef [House of Joseph], a commentary on the entire halakhic tradition (Halakhah), which provided the basis for the condensed version, the
Shulchan ʿarukh [Prepared table], which even today remains…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Károlyi, Gáspár
(226 words)
[German Version] (c. 1530, Nagykároly [today Carei, Romania] – late 1591, Gönc, northern Hungary), a Hungarian Reformed theologian. After studying in Wittenberg (and in Switzerland?), Károlyi became a pastor, from 1563 in Gönc. As senior in northeastern Hungary, he took part in the struggle against the Antitrinitarians on the Helvetian side. As an author, he combined a Melanchthonian view of history and expectation of imminent end with analysis of the fall of Hungary and the “Turkish question”
(Két könyv [Two books], Debrecen, 1563). The
Szent Biblia (Vizsoly, 1590), a Hungarian…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karrenberg, Friedrich
(197 words)
[German Version] (Apr 16, 1904, Velbert – Nov 28, 1966, Berlin). Karrenberg was born in Velbert to a middle-class family. After receiving his intermediate school certificate, he entered his father's shape-turning business and passed his secondary school examination. In 1925 he went to Frankfurt to study economics and sociology. He became a qualified economist and in 1931 received his doctorate, with a thesis on
Christentum, Kapitalismus und Sozialismus, published in 1932. He returned to his father's business, of which he served as director from 1940 until his d…
Source:
Religion Past and Present
Karsavin, Lev Platonovich
(197 words)
[German Version] (Dec 1, 1882, St. Petersburg – Jul 12, 1952, Abezʾ, Siberia), Russian philosopher of religion. Appointed professor in St. Petersburg in 1912, he was expelled from Russia in 1922, became professor in Berlin, then at the Institut St. Serge in Paris (1926), in Kaunas (1928), and in Vilnius (1940). He was sentenced to forced labor in 1950. Building especially on the work of V. Solovyov, his philosophy of religion aspires to a realization of “all-encompassing oneness.” The truth of Christ is to pervade everything. Although he regarded the Western culture of the
Filioque …
Source:
Religion Past and Present