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
Stoics
(1,582 words)
[German Version]
I. History The Stoic school takes its name from the Stoa Poikílē, the “Painted Porch,” in Athens, where the earliest public teaching began at the end of the 4th century bce. Founded by Zeno of Citium, the Stoa rapidly became the dominant influence on Hellenistic discussion and remained the most influential philosophical school until the end of antiquity (Philosophy: I; Hellenistic philosophy). The school’s tradition can be divided into three distinct historical phases.
1. Early Stoa. Zeno came to Athens from Citium, a Phoenician settlement on Cyprus, in 3…
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Religion Past and Present
Stolberg, Friedrich Leopold Graf zu
(299 words)
[German Version] (Nov 7, 1750, [Bad] Bramstedt [then in Denmark] – Dec 5, 1819, Sondermühlen estate, near Melle), grew up in a polyglot environment of Lutheran Pietism at the Copenhagen court. Despite having studied law, he preferred reading classical English, Latin, and Greek literature; in Göttingen he became a member of the Göttingen Grove, writing enthusiastically and spontaneously, in a Romantic religious vein like F.G. Klopstock. As Danish ambassador (1789–1791) and jurist in the service of …
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Religion Past and Present
Stoltz, Johann
(145 words)
[German Version] (c. 1514, Wittenberg – 1556, Weimar), editor of the Jena edition of Luther’s works. He came to Wittenberg in 1532 and went through the usual course of instruction, receiving his M.A. in 1539. There was a brief interruption when he was ordained as a deacon in Jessen in 1539 and served as court tutor in Freiberg and Dresden in 1539/1540. In 1544 he was appointed to a professorship at the Wittenberg Pädagogium and the theological faculty. In 1547 he was appointed court chaplain in We…
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Religion Past and Present
Stolz, Fritz
(238 words)
[German Version] ( Jul 16, 1942, Männedorf, Switzerland – Dec 10, 2001, Männedorf ). After studying theology and Near Eastern philology in Zürich and Heidelberg, he taught Hebrew and Old Testament at the seminary in (Bielefeld-)Bethel from 1969 to 1980. In 1980 he was appointed professor of the history of religions and the study of religion in Zürich, where he taught until his death. He was also active in several bodies both within and outside the university, for example as a member of the researc…
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Religion Past and Present
Stolz, Johann Jakob
(279 words)
[German Version] (Dec 31, 1753, Basadingen, near Zürich – Mar 12, 1821, Zürich), Reformed theologian. The son of Friedrich Salomon, a master shoemaker, and Judith Hofstätter, he received his training in Zürich and was ordained in 1774. After employment as a tutor in Weinfelden (Thurgau), in 1781 on the recommendation of J.K. Lavater he was appointed second Reformed pastor in Offenbach am Main; on the strength of his excellent reputation, in 1784 he was appointed preacher at the Martinskirche in Br…
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Religion Past and Present
Stone, Barton Warren
(131 words)
[German Version] (Dec 24, 1772, near Port Tobacco, MD – Nov 9, 1844, Hannibal, MO), leader of the American Restoration Movement, was ordained as Presbyterian, but early on began to doubt aspects of traditional Presbyterian practice. In 1801 he was the ¶ key figure in the great Cane Ridge revival meeting in Kentucky (Revival/Revival movements: II). In an active career as preacher, writer (
Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, 1804), and editor, he promoted an apocalyptic vision of Christian faith, the practice of baptism by immersion, and the resto…
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Religion Past and Present
Stones, Sacred
(381 words)
[German Version] Stones of all kinds, from large rocks to precious stones, can play a concrete or metaphorical role in religion. In many religions, stones – unhewn or finished, individually or in groups, piled loosely or installed permanently – mark a site endowed with special power, often a cult site recalling an event in which this power was once revealed and where it is now worshiped. In the case of ancient Israel and its neighbors, this use of stones is well attested both in the Tanakh and arc…
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Religion Past and Present
Storm, Theodor
(424 words)
[German Version] (Sep 14, 1817, Husum [then under Danish rule] – Jul 4, 1888, Hademarschen), German poet and novelist, whose North Frisian background left an enduring mark on his work. His upbringing was vague on all issues of religion; as a consequence, he turned his back on Christianity and developed instead a humanistic commitment to life in this world, which nevertheless had melancholic and sometimes pessimistic elements occasioned by its denial of transcendental hopes. After studying law at K…
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Religion Past and Present
Storr
(451 words)
[German Version]
1. Johann Christian ( Jun 3, 1712, Heilbronn – May 8, 1773, Stuttgart). In 1744 he was appointed deacon at the Leonhardskirche in Stuttgart and also court chaplain. In 1759 he was appointed preacher at the collegiate church and consistorial councilor; in 1765 he was appointed prelate of Herrenalb, in 1772 prelate of Alpirsbach. Storr was an independent representative of early Württemberg Pietism in the school of J.A. Bengel. He was critical, however, of Bengel’s interpretation of the…
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Religion Past and Present
Story Bible
(301 words)
[German Version] A story Bible or historiated Bible (Ger.
Historienbibel ) is a prose work of the 14th century or 15th century, often illustrated (Bible illustrations), reproducing the narrative material of the Bible in the vernacular and usually incorporating apocryphal texts and accounts from secular history. Formal analogies have repeatedly led scholars to postulate the influence of the Jewish Haggadah and Christian historiography (Eusebius of Caesarea, Jerome, Isidore of Seville). A major source of many story Bibles was the
Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor, which…
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Religion Past and Present
Stosch, Bartholomäus
(331 words)
[German Version] (Sep 12, 1604, Strehlen, Silesia [now Strzelin, Poland] – Mar 5 [?], 1686, Berlin), Reformed theologian and adviser on religious policy. After schooling at the Schönaichianum Gymnasium in Beuthen [Bytom], he began to study theology in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1626. In 1629 he began working as a private tutor in East Prussia. From 1632 to 1640 he broadened his education by traveling in the ¶ Netherlands (Leiden), England, and France. In 1640 he was appointed pastor in Pilten (Livonia; now Piltene, Latvia). In 1643 he was appointed court chaplain i…
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Religion Past and Present
Stössel, Johann
(213 words)
[German Version] ( Jun 23, 1524, Kitzingen – Mar 18, 1576, Senftenberg). After studying in Wittenberg (M.A. 1549) and Jena, in 1554 he was appointed superintendent in Heldburg. At the Colloquy of Worms in 1557 (Disputations, Religious), he joined the Ernestine theologians against Melanchthon. In 1560 he defended Lutheran eucharistic doctrine at a disputation in Heidelberg. In 1561 he was appointed superintendent in Jena and in 1562 professor of theology; he received his Dr.theol. in 1564. In the d…
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Religion Past and Present
Stoß, Veit
(359 words)
[German Version] (c. 1445, Horb am Neckar – Sep 22, 1533, Nuremberg), sculptor, woodcarver, painter, and engraver, outstanding master of late German Gothic art. In 1476 Stoß traveled from Nuremberg to Cracow to create the altarpiece of the high altar in the church of St. Mary for the German congregation there. It was followed by other important creations, primarily in stone. In 1496 he returned to work in Nuremberg. Stoß’s work is characterized by an exuberant, powerful, and dynamic expressive dri…
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Religion Past and Present
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
(246 words)
[German Version] ( Jun 14, 1811, Litchfield, CT – Jul 1, 1896, Hartford, CT), author and critic of New England Calvinism, was the daughter of L. Beecher and Roxana Foote. Educated at her sister Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a biblical scholar, in 1836. After writing for popular periodicals, she gained international fame for
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (2 vols., 1852), written to protest against the Fugitive Slave Act (1850), which required northerners to assist in the capture and return of escaped southern slaves. Th…
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Religion Past and Present
St. Paul’s Cathedral (London)
(304 words)
[German Version] The original London cathedral, begun by Bishop Mellitus in 604, was replaced between 1087 and 1148 by a three-aisle Romanesque church more than 100 m long. The crossing tower, completed in 1221/1222, was extended at the beginning of the 14th century; until destroyed by fire in 1561, it was some 150 m high. The crypt and choir, proportional to the nave, were constructed between c. 1258 and 1327 (esp. in the last quarter of the 13th cent.), modeled on Ely Cathedral (choir ending in …
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Religion Past and Present
St. Peter’s Basilica (Rome)
(707 words)
[German Version] (Basilica di San Pietro), in the Vatican, is the burial church of the apostle Peter and the main church of the popes residing there. The old basilica was begun by Constantine the Great between 319 and 322 in thanksgiving for his victories over his opponents Maxentius and Licinius. The five-aisle basilica with a transept was some 123 m long. It formed the western terminus of a gently rising axial public space, which included a forecourt, a flight of stairs, and an atrium with an ou…
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Religion Past and Present
St. Petersburg
(554 words)
[German Version]
I. City and Eparchy
1. St. Petersburg was built in 1703 by Tsar Peter the Great in wetlands at the mouth of the Neva, to be a “window on the Baltic.” It has two patrons: the apostle Peter and St. Alexander Nevski, in whose honor the tsar founded a monastery in 1724. From 1712 to 1728 ¶ and from 1732 to 1918, St. Petersburg was the capital of Russia. It was called Petrograd after 1914; the October Revolution began there in 1917 (Soviet Union); from 1924 to 1991 it was called Leningrad. Peter the Great founded the Academy of Sciences, the…
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Religion Past and Present
Strachan, John
(154 words)
[German Version] (Apr 12, 1778, Aberdeen, Scotland – Nov 1, 1867, Toronto, Canada), Anglican bishop and officeholder. Strachan graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1797, and moved to Kingston, Upper Canada, in 1799, where he became a schoolmaster. In 1804 he was ordained priest in the Church of England. An effective educator and church administrator, ¶ Strachan moved to York (Toronto) in 1812 where he sought to influence Upper Canada’s political developments. He maintained that his Church should receive all of the funds from lands set aside in…
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Religion Past and Present
Strack, Hermann Lebrecht
(283 words)
[German Version] (May 6, 1848, Berlin – Oct 5, 1922, Berlin), conservative Protestant theologian and student of Judaism. After studying in Berlin and Leipzig, he was appointed associate professor of Old Testament and Near Eastern languages in Berlin in 1877. In 1883 he was a cofounder of the Institutum Judaicum in Berlin (which he headed after 1886), devoted to scholarly study of Jewish history, literature, and culture but also committed to mission to Jews (Jewish missions). Although Strack’s miss…
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Religion Past and Present