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
Goa
(551 words)
[German Version] is located almost at the middle of the west coast of the Indian subcontinent (15°48′–14°53′ N, 74°20–73°40′ E). This strategic location led Alfonso de Albuquerque, the builder of the Portuguese empire in the East, to conquer it in 1510 from its erstwhile ruler, the sultan of Bijapur. In the centuries before the Portuguese conquest, Goa had belonged to the neighboring administrative regions under changing rulers. Goa acquired its present borders only at the end of the 18th century.…
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Religion Past and Present
Goar, Jacques
(164 words)
[German Version] (1601, Paris – Sep 23, 1653, Paris). As prior of the Dominican convent on Chios (1631–1637), in close interaction with the Greeks there, he began the study of Orthodox worship that he continued in Rome through contact with L. Allatius. The
Euchologion (Liturgical books) he published in 1647 relied on the
textus receptus published in Venice in 1638, which Goar supplemented with excerpts from older manuscripts (including the oldest
Euchologion text in the Greek ¶
codex Barberini 336, 8th cent.) and from the liturgy commentaries of important Byzantine theolo…
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Religion Past and Present
God
(23,549 words)
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Philosophy of Religion – V. Dogmatics – VI. Practical Theology – VII. Missiology – VIII. Art – IX. Judaism – X. Islam
I. Religious Studies
1. It is fundamentally true that God is not an object of religious studies, since God – as theology teaches – cannot be made an object of empirical scientific study. Religious studies can only address the concepts that human beings have expressed concerning their God (or gods: God, Representations and sym…
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Religion Past and Present
God as Father
(2,661 words)
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Early Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Dogmatics – VI. Philosophy of Religion
I. Religious Studies The use of
father as a designation of God is almost universal. It is especially frequent in certain contexts: 1. In many cultures, deification of ancestors begins as their death recedes into the past (in Hinduism after three generations). Forefathers gradually lose their individuality and become gods or merge with familiar deities. Thus the original ancestor is often identif…
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Religion Past and Present
God-fearers
(258 words)
[German Version] Whether and how the reference to God-fearers in the NT and in (Jewish) inscriptions can be linked with the concept of the fear of God in the Hebrew Bible and in Jewish literature of the Second Temple period, has been the subject of controversy. The various references to God-fearers in Acts (10:2, 22; 13:16, 26, 43, 50; 16:13f.; 17:4, 17; 18:6f.) are often adduced to justify the assumption that Luke located the starting-point for Paul's mission to the Gentiles in the circle of Gentiles who revered the God of the Jews. The often expressed doubt as to whether there were ever ¶ such c…
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Religion Past and Present
God-Is-Dead Theology
(699 words)
[German Version] The mythologies of various peoples speak of the death and resurrection of a god. B. Pascal (1647) understood prophetic the saying attributed to Plutarch: “Le grand Pan est mort.” The expression “God is dead” was often used in traditional theological language. A Lutheran chorale speaks of it: “God himself lies dead” (thus originally, later altered; cf. EG 80.2). G.F.W. Hegel refers to it and recognizes in it the “fearful notion” that “negation is in God himself” (297), but also tha…
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Religion Past and Present
Godparents
(819 words)
[German Version] I. Catholic Church – II. Protestantism
I. Catholic Church A godparent or sponsor is a Christian who (along with the parents) accompanies the baptizand or confirmand on his or her path to Christian initiation. The earliest precursors of godparents are already mentioned in the
Traditio apostolica (15 and 20) and Tertullian (
Bapt. 18). The office originated in the nascent catechumenate (I) and in the growing practice of infant baptism. To counter tendencies during the Middle Ages to increase the number of godparents, the Council of Trent ¶ imposed a limit of one godf…
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Religion Past and Present
God, Representations and Symbols of
(7,207 words)
[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Ancient Near East and Old Testament – III. Greco-Roman World – IV. Religions of India – V. Buddhism – VI. Chinese Religions – VII. Japan
I. Terminology Gods manifest themselves in the human world; after the analogy of human beings, they are usually envisioned biomorphically, with ascribed sex and genealogy, as well as varying levels of differentiation and autonomy (Demons, Angels, Spirits). Natural entities felt to be supremely powerful (e.g. mountains, rivers, springs, constellation…
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Religion Past and Present
Gods, Groups of
(481 words)
[German Version] Gods, Groups of, in the history of religions. The assembly of individual gods into a group of gods serves to structure polytheistic panthea (Pantheon: I) and results from cosmological classification or priestly-theological speculation. Frequently, groups of gods are arranged binarily, triadically or according to some other simple number (dyads e.g.: heaven/earth; triads: heaven/earth/sea, sun/moon/morning star). Additional criteria for the assembly of gods include: (fictive) genea…
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Religion Past and Present
God the Father
(589 words)
[German Version] “Father” describes the triune God in relation to humanity (Child of God) and sets one of the three divine persons in relation to the other two. The Father is ontologically primary. In the Christ event, the intra-trinitarian relations become evident (Trinity, Christology); the address “Abba” (Mk 14:36) expressed the special relationship of God the Son to the Father and early Christianity adopted this in speaking of God as the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 1:3; Eph 1:3, e…
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Religion Past and Present
God the Holy Spirit
(452 words)
[German Version] For Irenaeus the Holy Spirit (Spirit/Holy Spirit) is fully divine as mediator of the Fathers creating and redemptive action (God the Father), but the tendency after him was to conceive the Spirit as subordinate, even sometimes the highest of the creatures. Against this, Athanasius and the Cappadocians (Cappadocian theology), while conceding that Scripture does not ambiguously teach the Spirit's full divinity, argued that as the sanctifier the Spirit was to be worshiped together wi…
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Religion Past and Present
God the Son
(430 words)
[German Version] The biblical basis of the doctrine of the Son's particular divine personhood (Christology) is to be found in New Testament confessions (II), placing Jesus Christ alongside the Father and the Spirit (God the Father, God the Holy Spirit) and attributing to him creating and saving action. It is also to be found in the grounding of this in Old Testament portrayals of God's self-differentiating action in the world (Divine action). Explicit distinction of the second person of the Trinit…
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Religion Past and Present
Goerdeler, Carl Friedrich
(245 words)
[German Version] (Jul 31, 1884, Schneidemühl – Feb 2, 1945, Berlin-Plötzensee) was a leading German resistance fighter in the circle associated with the July 20th (1944) plot. Goerdeler, from an old Prussian bureaucratic family, studied in Tübingen, Königsberg and Göttingen (Dr.jur.); in 1912, he became a councilor in Solingen, in 1920, vice-mayor in Königsberg, and, from 1930, mayor in Leipzig, while also serving as Reichskommissar for price controls. As a result of increasing conflict with the leadership of the NSDAP in ¶ Leipzig, Goerdeler resigned his office in April 1937…
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Religion Past and Present
Goes, Albrecht
(277 words)
[German Version] (Mar 22, 1908, Langenbeutingen – Feb 23, 2000, Stuttgart), pastor, poet and essayist. After attending the theological seminaries in Schöntal and Urach, he began studies in Protestant theology in 1926 in Tübingen and Berlin; he pastored in Württemberg (1933–1940), served as a soldier (1940–1942), then hospital and prison chaplain; after 1945, he pastored in Gebersheim and was furloughed in 1953 in order to pursue his writing. Goes published his first volume of poetry
Verse in 1932 and gained international fame with his novels
Unruhige Nacht [Restless night, 1950] and
D…
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Religion Past and Present
Goes, Damiano de
(171 words)
[German Version] (1502, Alenquer, Portugal – 1574, Alenquer), a Portuguese historian and humanist, spent a long time first in Flanders, then in various European countries in which he maintained close contact with Humanists and Reformers (Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, S.Münster, P.Bembo, J.Sadoleto and Gian Battista Ramusio). In Portugal, Goes taught Prince John. Because of his great interest in the Reformation and the Jews, Goes was persecuted by the Inquisition. Manuel Augusto Rodrigues Bibliography Works:
Legatio Magni Indorum Imperatoris, 1532
Fides, religio, moresque …
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Religion Past and Present
Goes, Hugo van der
(164 words)
[German Version] (between 1430 and 1440, Ghent – 1482, Roode Clooster near Brussels) was the leading painter in Ghent before he withdrew as “frater conversus” to a monastery of the Windesheim Congregation in 1477. The winged altar from S. Maria Nuova in Florence, which he created on the commission of Tommaso Portinari (now Florence, Uffizi), is considered his chief work. In his realistic perspective, Goes exceeded the generation that included R.van der Weyden and Robert Campin (c. 1375–4/26/1444),…
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Religion Past and Present
Goeters
(678 words)
[German Version]
1. Wilhelm Gustav (Jan 9, 1878, Rheydt – Apr 17, 1953, Bonn), influenced by his Lower Rhine background, he was introduced to the history of the Reformed Church through his studies with K. Müller. From 1901–1909 he worked as inspector in the Reformed student convictorium in Halle (August Lang), and received the Lic.theol. in 1909. His work on the Dutch Reformation, which earned him the Dr. h.c. from the University of Utrecht in 1913, is valued even today; it was Goeters's sole monograph. Professor of church history in Bonn from 1913, Goeters only attained an ¶ endowed chair i…
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Religion Past and Present
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
(4,386 words)
[German Version] I. Life and Work – II. Goethe and Religion (Aug. 28, 1749, Frankfurt am Main – Mar 22, 1832, Weimar) I. Life and Work The career of Germany's most important writer and representative of a cosmopolitan European culture, extended for more than six decades (c. 1770–1830) during radical and revolutionary changes in European thought, society, and culture. Three essential stages to his work may be distinguished: 1. his early years in Frankfurt, Leipzig, Strassburg, Wetzlar and related sites, prior to his mov…
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Religion Past and Present
Goeze, Johann Melchior
(437 words)
[German Version] (Oct 16, 1717, Halberstadt – May 19, 1786, Hamburg), studied theology, mathematics and physics at Jena and Halle (1734–1738), received the Dr.theol. (1738), became adjunct professor (1741), deacon in Aschersleben (1744), pastor in Magdeburg (1750), senior pastor at the Katharinenkirche in Hamburg (from 1755) and later Senior in the clerical ministry there (1760–1770). The popular preacher and learned theologian (works include
Versuch einer Historie der gedruckten Niedersächsischen Bibeln, 1775) was a ¶ combative proponent of late Lutheran orthodoxy (O…
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Religion Past and Present
Gogarten, Friedrich
(581 words)
[German Version] (Jan 13, 1887, Dortmund – Oct 16, 1967, Göttingen) studied 1907–1912 at Jena, ¶ Berlin and Heidelberg (there, esp. with E. Troeltsch). He was a pastor in Bremen (1914), Stelzendorf, Thüringen (1917) and Dorndorf/Saale (1925). He took the Dr.theol. at Gießen (1924), was assistant professor of systematic theology at Jena (1927), professor at Breslau (1931) and Göttingen (1935) where he became emeritus in 1955. Gogarten's early writings (1914–1918) are defined by the adoption and extension of J.G. Fichte. They are related to his proximity with Ar…
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Religion Past and Present