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.
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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
Pan-Babylonianism
(364 words)
[German Version] refers to a scholarly position taken by leading German Assyriologists and biblical scholars between 1890 and 1925 which held that ancient Mesopotamia had given the Hebrews most of their religion and civilization (including monotheism). The uniqueness and importance of ancient Israel is thereby denied. In extreme cases even Christianity was derived from Babylonia. Hugo Winckler, for example, proposed that the patriarchs and early rulers of Israel (e.g. David) were not people, as po…
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Religion Past and Present
Pancasila
(233 words)
[German Version] From its first formulation by President Achmed Sukarno, the Pancasila (from Sanksrit
pañcaśīla, “five principles”) has been understood as a ¶ “state philosophy” guiding the people of Indonesia’s various ethnic communities, able to unite them in a single nation. Since the proclamation of the Republic of Indonesia in 1945, it has been in the preamble of all the various constitutions. In its original form, it read: “Belief in the one and only God. Just and civilized humanity. The unity of Indonesia. Demo…
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Religion Past and Present
Panchacuti Inca Yupanqui
(202 words)
[German Version] (Titu Cusi; 1530–1572), third Inca ruler after the conquest of Peru in 1532; until his death, he retreated to a mountain fortress in the jungle near Cuzco. As a living symbol of the Inca empire, he conducted guerilla warfare against the Spanish, repeatedly refusing to capitulate. He nevertheless allowed a few Catholic missionaries to come to his refuge and was baptized in 1568. It is questionable, however, whether he really accepted Christianity. Between 1569 and 1570, the Inca leader wrote a chronicle of the conquest from the Inca perspective (
An Inca Account of the …
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Religion Past and Present
Pancras, Saint
(228 words)
[German Version] According to the legendary
Passio (6th cent.?), Pancras was from a prominent Phrygian family. He came as an orphan to Rome, where he was baptized, and at the age of 14, under Diocletian (or Valerian), he was beheaded on May 12 (304 or 257?) on the Via Aurelia, and buried there in the catacombs named after him. Pope Symmachus had a basilica built over his tomb, and this was given its present form (
San Pancratio fuori le mura) by Pope Honorius I. His cult, first documented in the
Martyrologium Hieronymianum (mid-6th cent.), spread throughout Europe. As patron saint of a…
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Religion Past and Present
Panentheism
(977 words)
[German Version] I. Terminology; Natural Science – II. Philosophy of Religion – III. Dogmatics
I. Terminology; Natural Science The term
panentheism originated as a theological concept, but it is also used in the natural sciences. It expresses the view that the world exists in God, even though God is more than the world (Transcendence and immanence: I; see also II and III below). The major arguments for panentheism from the perspective of the natural sciences include the standard arguments for classical philosophical theism (Natural theology). Panentheists a…
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Religion Past and Present
Panichida
(149 words)
[German Version] The word
panichida is based on the Greek παννυχίς/
pannychís (“all night [
sc. service]”); in the Russo-Slavic church, it refers to what the Greek church calls a parastas (from παράστασις/
parastasis), a memorial service. It is modeled on the structure of Matins (Orthros: Worship: II, 7). Very popular with Orthodox churchgoers, today it is a comparatively short (and often further abbreviated) memorial service for the liturgical commemoration of the dead (Memorials to the dead), leading up to a prayer to God for…
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Religion Past and Present
Pankok, Georg Karl Otto
(275 words)
[German Version] (Jun 6, 1893, Mülheim an der Ruhr – Oct 20, 1966, Wesel), painter, graphic artist, and sculptor; 1909–1912, painting excursions to Holland. Pankok gained his
Abitur in 1912, and attended art academies in Düsseldorf and Weimar. In 1913 he undertook independent study of the Oldenburg dialect; from 1914 to 1917 he served in World War I (buried in a trench explosion, 1915). In 1919 he spent time in East Friesland, then went with the painter Gert Wollheim to Düsseldorf, his main place of residence until 1958. …
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Religion Past and Present
Panofsky, Erwin
(199 words)
[German Version] (Mar 30, 1892, Hannover – Mar 14, 1968, Princeton), art historian. Panofsky studied at Freiburg, where he received his doctorate in 1915. He was appointed as a
Privatdozent at the University of Hamburg, where he became a full professor in 1926. There, under the influence of E. Cassirer and Aby Warburg (Warburg school), he produced groundbreaking studies, including
Die Perspektive als ‘symbolische Form’ (1927; ET:
Perspective as Symbolic Form, 1991) and
Hercules am Scheidewege, 1930. In 1933 he was dismissed and emigrated to the United States, where in…
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Religion Past and Present
Panpsychism
(248 words)
[German Version] (Gk “all-animating”) goes back to Francesco Patrizzi’s
Panpsychia (1591), and denotes the idea of a vital world-soul (
anima mundi) penetrating everything that is, as encountered in the philosophy of the Renaissance (G. Bruno, B. de Spinoza), the Enlightenment (G.W. Leibniz), and Romanticism (F.W.J. Schelling, J.G. Herder, H. Heine). Closely related to pantheism and pansophism, panpsychism opposes the mechanistic worldview of I. Newton, which reduces God to the role of artificer, who eventually hand…
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Religion Past and Present
Panselinos, Manuel
(165 words)
[German Version]
Panselinos, Manuel, Byzantine painter from Saloniki (Thessalonica). The first mention of his name is in an 18th-century manual of painters by Dionysius of Fourna, who does not provide his dates or mention specific works. Shortly afterwards the frescoes of the Protaton church in Karyes on Athos were ascribed to him, so that it was finally possible to date him to the late 13th and early 14th century. It is unclear to this day whether there was actually a painter by this name, since c…
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Religion Past and Present
Pantaenus
(204 words)
[German Version] (died c. 200), a Stoic from Sicily (perhaps), who converted to Christianity. He is said to have carried the gospel to the peoples of the East, traveling as far as India. From about 180, he was a member of the Alexandria presbytery and led there, as one famous for his learning, “the school of the faithful” (Eus.
Hist. eccl., V 10.1). Eusebius of Caesarea describes him as the leader of the Alexandrian Catechetical School (VI 6; Alexandrian theology), and names as his student and successor Clement of Alexandria, who was later followed by Origen. Clement speaks with great resp…
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Religion Past and Present
Pantaleon (Saint)
(230 words)
[German Version] According to the Greek
Passio (5th/6th cent.), Pantaleon was the son of a pagan father and Christian mother in Nicomedia and a student of the emperor’s personal physician Euphrosynos. After his conversion he healed a blind man in the name of Christ. Envious members of the college of physicians denounced him; even his successful healing of a paralytic in a contest with his informers before the emperor Maximian could not save him from martyrdom. The lions in the arena refused to attack …
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Religion Past and Present
Pantheism
(2,444 words)
[German Version] I. Philosophy of Religion – II. Dogmatics – III. Practical Theology
I. Philosophy of Religion The term
pantheism (from Gk πᾶν/
pán, “all,” and ϑεός/
theós, “God”) is a product of the 18th-century critical debates about religion. Coined in discussions about B. de Spinoza, it refers to religio-philosophical conceptions that undertake to relate God and the world through the idea of an all-embracing unity. Its central concept is the immanence of God (Transcendence and immanence) in the totality of all that ex…
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Religion Past and Present
Pantheon
(1,026 words)
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. The Pantheon in Rome
I. Religious Studies In classical usage, attested since the Hellenistic period, a pantheon (Gk
pántheion) was a shrine dedicated to “all the gods” (
hoi theoí pántes). In modern scholarship, the term has come to be used in describing polytheistic (Monotheism and Polytheism) systems, in particular the 12 Olympian gods of Greece. This example also illustrates the problem presented by pantheons: what modern presentations treat as a closed system appears in the sources as…
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Religion Past and Present
Papacy
(20,018 words)
[German Version] I. Early Church – II. Middle Ages and Reformation – III. Modern Period and Today – IV. Chronological List of the Popes
I. Early Church
1. Definition. If
papacy is defined as the claim (based on Matt 16:16–19; 28:20; Luke 22:31f.; John 21:15–19) of the bishops of Rome as successors and heirs to Peter to leadership along with jurisdictional and magisterial primacy (I) within the universal church, papacy in the strict sense dates only from the Middle Ages in the Latin West. In the Early Church, the point at iss…
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Religion Past and Present
Papadopoulos, Chrysostomos
(218 words)
[German Version] (Jul 1, 1868, Madytos, Eastern Thrace – Oct 22, 1938, Athens), one of Greece’s most important theologians and hierarchs. Papadopoulos studied in Constantinople, Jerusalem, Smyrna, Athens, Kiev, and St. Petersburg. He undertook teaching and pastoral work in Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Athens, and was from 1914 professor of church history at Athens University; from 1923 to 1938 metropolitan, then archbishop, of Athens and the whole of Greece (the title of metropolitan was replaced by…
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Religion Past and Present
Papal Blessings
(387 words)
[German Version] The imparting of a special apostolic or papal blessing (
benedictio apostolica seu papalis) goes back to Pope Boniface VIII (1300). Pope Clement VII associated the imparting of a papal blessing with a plenary Jubilee indulgence (1525). Since that time, the papal blessing has been imparted in both solemn and simple form. The pope bestows his papal blessing
urbi et orbi – on the city of Rome (
urbi) and the whole Catholic world (
orbi). Since the pope is bishop of Rome and the supreme pastor of the universal church (
CIC/1983, c. 331), the papal blessing in this solemn for…
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Religion Past and Present
Papal Names
(567 words)
[German Version] When a new pope is elected (Pope, Election of), it has been the Roman custom since the early 11th century that he replace his baptismal name with a papal or regnal name. Some earlier instances provide justifications and exclusionary criteria. Unacceptable baptismal names included the names of gods (533, John II, changed from Mercurius), emperors (other than Hadrian; in 955 John XII changed his name from Ottaviano [Augustus]), and the prince of the apostles (Peter; 983, John XIV). …
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Religion Past and Present
Papal Secretary of State
(165 words)
[German Version] is the title of the head of the highest authority in the Roman Curia. The roots of this office as the pope’s political adviser go back to the 14th century. Since the 17th century, the holder has always been a cardinal (and is often referred to as Cardinal Secretary of State). The anachronistic name of the office is connected with its former predominant responsibility for church politics, and for internal and external affairs of the papal states. The Secretariat of State is divided into two sections in current law (Apostolic constitutions
Pastor bonus:
AAS 80, 1988, 841–93…
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Religion Past and Present