Encyclopedia of Christianity Online
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Subject: Religious Studies
Editors: Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Milič Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan and Lukas Vischer
The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online describes modern-day Christian beliefs and communities in the context of 2000 years of apostolic tradition and Christian history. Based on the third, revised edition of the critically acclaimed German work Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online includes all 5 volumes of the print edition of 1999-2008 which has become a standard reference work for the study of Christianity past and present. Comprehensive, reflecting the highest standards in scholarship yet intended for a wide range of readers, the The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online also looks outward beyond Christianity, considering other world religions and philosophies as it paints the overall religious and socio-cultural picture in which the Christianity finds itself.
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The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online describes modern-day Christian beliefs and communities in the context of 2000 years of apostolic tradition and Christian history. Based on the third, revised edition of the critically acclaimed German work Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon. The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online includes all 5 volumes of the print edition of 1999-2008 which has become a standard reference work for the study of Christianity past and present. Comprehensive, reflecting the highest standards in scholarship yet intended for a wide range of readers, the The Encyclopedia of Christianity Online also looks outward beyond Christianity, considering other world religions and philosophies as it paints the overall religious and socio-cultural picture in which the Christianity finds itself.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Quantum Theory
(1,290 words)
“Quantum theory” is the term for a collection of physical theories about the behavior of matter, all of which are distinguished from previous Newtonian theory by their acceptance of ¶ discrete or discontinuous behavior of matter, and by their supplanting of Newtonian determinism in favor of a probabilistic description of material reality. 1. The Quantum Principle The mechanical theory of mass, force, and motion ascribed to Isaac Newton (1642–1727) yields a picture of the world in which the physical variables describing an isolated system (such as pos…
Quaternity
(423 words)
The number four ranks high among the symbolically significant numbers (Symbol). In translations of Monophysite arguments both for and against Apollinarius of Laodicea (d. ca. 390), theological Latin refers to
quaternitas along with
trinitas. “Two natures,” it was argued, means “two sons,” and hence we have a tetrad instead of a triad (Trinity). In religious history the term “quaternity” denotes a fourfold structure. On the basis, for example, of the four points of heaven, the four ages, the four sides of a square, the four temperaments, the four…
Quietism
(390 words)
“Quietism” is the term used for a mystically oriented, transdenominational movement in the 17th and 18th centuries (Mysticism 2). Two of its main features find expression in 18th-century Protestant poetry (Devotional Literature), namely, silence and simplicity, as in G. Tersteegen’s “Gott ist gegenwärtig … alles in uns schweige” (God is present, [let] everything in us be silent) and M. Claudius’s “Laß uns einfältig werden” (Let us become simple). From the standpoint of social history quietism ma…
Qumran
(1,634 words)
1. General Data Khirbet Qumran (KQ), or simply Qumran, is a location on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea at the Wadi Qumran, approximately 20 km. (12½ mi.) in a direct line east of Jerusalem.
1.1.
Texts The Qumran texts broadly include the Dead Sea MSS, along with writings from Masada (a.d. 74), Naḥal Ḥever, Ṣeʾelim, Mishmar, and Murabbaʿat (up to a.d. 132/35). More narrowly, the Qumran texts include the remains of about 750 various MSS (scrolls of leather, more rarely papyrus, in one case copper) that were found between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near Qumran a…
Qur’ān
(2,857 words)
1. Etymology Arab.
Qur’ān (often previously transliterated “Koran”) is a derivative of the verbal root
qrʾ, with the general meaning “recite (orally).” The imperative of the same verb,
iqraʾ, is generally acknowledged to be the opening of the first utterance revealed by God to the Prophet Muḥammad, in
sūrah 96 (The Blood-Clot), v. 1, and is God’s command to Muḥammad that he proclaim God’s revelations.
Qur’ān is thus best translated “recitation.” This etymology is of importance because it underlines both the oral origins of Islam’s most authoritative source an…