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
Nathanael
(229 words)
[German Version] is mentioned only in the Gospel of John where he appears as a key disciple of Jesus (John 1:47–51). He is a witness to his resurrection in Galilee (John 21:2; where he is said to be from Cana in Galilee). Nathanael is a recipient of the promise of an open heaven and of the vision of the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man (John 1:51), which alludes most clearly to Jacob’s vision in Gen 28:12. This passage probably lies behind the identification of Nathanael as an I…
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Religion Past and Present
Nathan ben Yehiel
(143 words)
[German Version] (1035–1100) wrote a comprehensive lexicon of the Hebrew-Aramaic vocabulary employed by the two Talmuds and by midrashic literature (Midrash), in the last third of the 11th century. In his detailed analyses of words, he frequently also delves into the real nature of things and draws, among other sources, on the exegesis of the talmudic academies of Babylonia, North Africa, and the Rhineland. His excerpts from the Midrash sometimes contain unique variant readings, or quote from works that are otherwise entirely lost. His lexicon was already widely read in the ¶ Middle Ag…
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Religion Past and Present
Nathan of Gaza
(219 words)
[German Version] (1643, Jerusalem, Israel – Jan 11, 1680, Skopje, Macedonia), the first prophet and main theologian of Shabbetaianism. After a meeting with Shabbetai Tzevi in Gaza in 1665, Nathan, a young scholar of I. Luria’s Kabbalah, declared that he had a revelation which identified Shabbetai Tzevi as the messiah, a claim that the latter had been making for years without any positive response. However, actual Shabbetaianism was only brought to life with Nathan’s prophecy, and Nathan became its…
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Religion Past and Present
Nathusius, Martin Friedrich Engelhard von
(181 words)
[German Version] (Sep 24, 1843, Althaldensleben – Mar 9, 1906, Greifswald). Nathusius spent his childhood, youth, and years of study in an ecclesiastical and theological atmosphere, strongly influenced by J.H. Wichern, F.A.G. Tholuck, and J.T. Beck. He was a pastor from 1873 in Quedlinburg and from 1885 in Barmen, and was then appointed in 1888 to a chair of practical theology in Greifswald. Nathusius wrote influential and widely read publications on the social question, in which he strongly criti…
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Religion Past and Present
Nation
(936 words)
[German Version] The Latin word
natio (from
nasci, “be born”) denotes the place of origin of a person or thing. Natio was the goddess of birth. The Latin word also meant a tribe or people. Since the Middle Ages,
nation (or
natio) has had a wide range of heterogeneous meanings. The medieval
nationes of universities, councils, merchants, clerics, and nobility were not precursors of modern ideas of a nation, although clerics and landed nobility in the late Middle Ages developed notions of a German national consciousness or sense of a German
Reich. Formulas using the word
natio and references …
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Religion Past and Present
National Accounts
(269 words)
[German Version] (Macroeconomic Accounting). Macroeconomic accounting includes several part-calculations that represent the economy of an entire country or individual states of a federal republic for a certain period. At the center stand the calculation of the production, distribution and exploitation of the Gross National Product (GNP) and the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and an account of the redistribution ¶ and wealth-creation processes of a past period. The GDP is regarded as an important measure of production, and the GNP of income. National accou…
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Religion Past and Present
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
(169 words)
[German Version] The NAACP was founded in New York City on Feb 12, 1909 (A. Lincoln’s 100th birthday). It was established as a civil rights organization to improve the conditions under which black Americans lived. It sought a single-class citizenship for all American citizens. The organization’s most important victory came in 1954 when it successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The NAACP was chief sponsor to what became th…
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Religion Past and Present
National Association of Evangelicals
(301 words)
[German Version] The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is a voluntary interde ¶ nominational coalition of churches and organizations founded in 1942 under the leadership of H.J. Ockenga and J. Elwin Wright to further the reform of fundamentalism (II, 2) in North America and to return Evangelicalism (I) to a position of cultural and intellectual prominence. The “new evangelical” leaders believed that a national alliance of diverse evangelical groups could mount a powerful front against what they perc…
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Religion Past and Present
National Catholic Welfare Council/Conference
(311 words)
[German Version] The founding of the National Catholic Welfare Council (NCWC) in 1919 was a sign of the influence of progressive movements in United States Catholicism. Reorganized as the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) in 1967, since its founding it has spoken for Catholic bishops and lay leaders on political and social questions. Originally established as a coordinating body for the relief efforts of United States Catholics after World War II, the organization has increasingly become a …
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Religion Past and Present
National Church
(289 words)
[German Version] The term
national church denotes a legally independent church whose membership is defined as comprising the people of a state or nation. In modern territorial states, the territory of the national church is defined by the boundaries of the country. A national church is not necessarily a structural element of the state, but it can be a state church, as has long been true of the Scandinavian churches. Historically national churches developed from resistance to the pope – outstanding ex…
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Religion Past and Present
National Church of India
(299 words)
[German Version] (Madras). From the mid-19th century, there were repeated calls in Protestant India for a national church to which all Indian Christians would belong, irrespective of their confessional identity. Such efforts led, especially in Bengal and South India, to various experiments; the most important was the founding of the National Church of India in Madras in 1886. It sought to bring together Indian Christians in a self-governing and self-supporting church. Western confessional differen…
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Religion Past and Present
National Council of Churches
(533 words)
[German Version] The National Council of Churches of Christ (NCC) was founded in the ¶ United States in 1950 as an association of several significant interdenominational agencies, including the Federal Council of Churches, the International Council of Religious Education, and the United Council of Church Women. Most mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations are members of the NCC, although some of the largest religious groups in the United States, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist …
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Religion Past and Present
National Councils of Churches
(485 words)
[German Version] National councils of churches and national Christian councils first emerged among Protestants as corporate forms and instruments of the ecumenical movement. Where the gospel must be proclaimed to the nation in word and deed but the separated churches have not yet found unity of faith and action, these interim instruments are needed. The year 1908 saw the birth of the Federal Council of Churches in the United States and 1948 the birth of the Council of Christian Churches in Germany…
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Religion Past and Present
National Education
(390 words)
[German Version] (Ger.
Volksbildungswesen) denotes the institutions that organize learning processes either for all members of society (“Ministry of National Education”) or, more narrowly, for adults (Education of adults). In the context of the Enlightenment (I, 3.e), the 18th century saw the emergence of reading societies, moral weeklies, and patriotic societies, which can be interpreted as the start of national education. In the 19th century, the changes brought by the industrial revolution (Indu…
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Religion Past and Present
Nationalism
(5,477 words)
[German Version]
I. The Concept Nationalism may be described as an integrative ideology that claims that loyalty to the inclusive body of the ¶ nation has absolute priority over all other commitments. Such competing loyalties include loyalty to a particular estate or social class, a dynasty, a local state, a region, a tribe, a denomination, or a religion. While the concept of a nation played a role in political debates in medieval Europe, its reference was not to the totality of the people but to the ruling class (the
nationes of the nobility and the clergy). Modern nationalism emer…
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Religion Past and Present
National Mission Councils
(217 words)
[German Version] Cooperation in mission began at the end of the 19th century, and the Committee of German Missionary Societies was formed in 1885. It was similar to national mission councils created in 1893 in North America, and in 1912 in Great Britain. As a consequence of the first World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh (Edinburgh Conference) in 1910, national mission councils were founded in 1912/1913 in India and other Asian countries; they represent an important step in the building of auto…
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Religion Past and Present
National Psychology
(522 words)
[German Version] (Ger.
Völkerpschyologie), often called comparative psychology or folk psychology, is a branch of psychology founded in the mid-19th century by the philosopher M. Lazarus and the philologist H. Steinthal in a series of many individual studies. It explores the phenomena of mental life that arise inherently from a collective, even a whole nation or people – particularly language, religion, art, tradition, legal systems, customs, and the overall constitution of the household, society, …
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Religion Past and Present
National Service
(7 words)
[German Version] Conscription/National Service
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Religion Past and Present
National Socialism
(8,676 words)
[German Version]
I. History and Church History
1. Historical and political context. National Socialism as a political movement was born in Munich in 1919 with the founding of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) appealing to a nationalistic and anti-Semitic lower middle class. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, it soon gained a following among almost all social strata in Germany. It became a political force to be reckoned with in 1930, when the worldwide economic crisis of 1929 furth…
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Religion Past and Present
National Theology
(454 words)
[German Version] The expression
völkische Theologie(“national theology”) emerged in Germany around 1880 at the latest; its genesis and intellectual contexts have scarcely been explored. Nor are there studies of possible equivalents in other European languages. In terms of the sociology of knowledge, national theology can be interpreted as a specifically modern ideology of emancipation or as a liberation theology. relating to a people or nation (People and nationhood) acting collectively. Notwithstand…
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Religion Past and Present