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
Tennent, William
(154 words)
[German Version] (1673, Scotland – May 6, 1746, Neshaminy, PA), Presbyterian clergyman and educator. Tennent studied at the University of Edinburgh. He relinquished his Presbyterian affiliation and was ordained in the Church of Ireland. However, after he immigrated with his wife and five children to America in 1718, he was admitted to the Presbyterian Synod (Presbyterians) of Philadelphia after denouncing the unscriptural Arminian doctrines of his former communion. In Neshaminy he created an acade…
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Religion Past and Present
Tennhardt, Johannes
(277 words)
[German Version] (Jan 2, 1661, Dobergast, Saxony – Sep 12, 1720, Kassel), radical Pietist itinerant preacher. After dropping out of secondary school, Tennhardt, the son of a prosperous farmer, worked as a barber and then after 1688 as a wigmaker in Nuremberg. As a young man, he was already an avid reader of mystical works, an interest that shaped his later religiosity, which involved repeated visions. In 1704, after the death of his wife, in a vision he experienced a call to be God’s “chancery cl…
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Religion Past and Present
Tennyson, Alfred Lord
(188 words)
[German Version] (Aug 6, 1809, Somersby – Oct 6, 1892, Aldworth), the most renowned Victorian poet. He was the son of a clergyman, from whom he received most of his instruction. In 1827 he enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge. The sudden death of a college friend in 1833 cast a pall of melancholy over his life. Even before he published his elegiac major poem
In Memoriam (1850), he had already become the voice of his era. The musicality and humanistic depth of works like “The Lotos-Eaters” (1832), “Locksley Hall” (1842), “Ulysses” (1842), and “The Princess” …
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Religion Past and Present
Tenorio, Gonzalo
(176 words)
[German Version] (1602, Jaen de Bracamoros, Diocese of Quito – 1682[?], Spain), Peruvian Franciscan priest, student of theology and the arts, missionary, and
Minister Provincialis. He became known for an untitled 16-volume work in which he maintained that the universal kingship of Christ began with creation, was interrupted by Adam and Eve, and was partially restored through redemption. A third, millenarian kingdom would begin with the proclamation of a dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Because the Indians had rej…
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Religion Past and Present
Tenrikyō
(369 words)
[German Version] “Teaching of Heavenly Wisdom.” Tenrikyō was founded in Japan in 1838 by Miki Nakayama (1798–1887), who considered herself the mediator of the words of the universal Creator God Oyagami (“Parental God”). Although conceived as the ultimate, true religion, Tenrikyō initially adapted to the organizational structure of sectarian Shintō (Shintoism). Its ritual, cult, and clerical organization were revised in 1949. Tenrikyō is an independent religious corporation. In 2002 its members (
yōboku, “timber”) numbered about 1.75 million. Through a system of chur…
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Religion Past and Present
Tent Mission
(230 words)
[German Version] originates in two forces: the desire to preach to all people and conflict with existing authorities. The Wesleyan revival (J. Wesley) provided a model of preaching outside recognized church structures. Then the 19th-century camp meeting, important in the Second Great Awakening in the United States, moved North-East and met considerable, established-church opposition there. This resulted in independent itinerant evangelists preaching wherever they could and erecting temporary taber…
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Religion Past and Present
Teología India (Indigenous Theology)
(604 words)
[German Version] is a theological movement of the indigenous population of Latin America and the Caribbean that began in the 1980s. It has attracted indigenous Catholic and Protestant clergy and laity as well as intellectuals supporting indigenism (Indigenization). Indigenous religions and the various Christian faiths of the creoles are seeking their own theological approaches. From the perspective of the church hierarchy, the Christian faith of the indigenous population is finding new forms of expression. This is taking place according to the prin…
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Religion Past and Present
Teraphim
(180 words)
[German Version] (Heb. תְּרָפִים), in the Old Testament a household means of divination. A teraph could be tucked away in a camel saddle (Gen 31:19, 34f.), resemble a human being (1 Sam 19:13, 16), and sometimes be made of wood and be part of the cultic inventory of a private sanctuary (Judg 17f.). There is some evidence that teraphim were effigies of deified ancestors (III; Hereafter, Concepts of the). Efforts to identify teraphim definitively with archaeological artifacts associated with the ancestor cult have so far proved unsuccessful. The finds in question i…
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Religion Past and Present
Teresa of Ávila, Saint
(637 words)
[German Version] (Span.: Teresa de Jesús; Mar 28, 1515, Ávila – Oct 4, 1568, Alba de Tormes, Salamanca), founder of the Discalced Carmelites (Aug 24, 1562, for women, Nov 28, 1568, for men), mystic, saint (Mar 12, 1622; feast day Oct 15), and the first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church (Sep 27, 1970; Doctores ecclesiae). Her father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda, was converted from Judaism as a child; her mother, Beatriz de Ahumada, was a member of the lower gentry. After reading many legends of…
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Religion Past and Present
Term and Concept
(494 words)
[German Version] Normal use of language includes general expressions or terms used to denote something that several individual objects have in common. The meaning of such a general expression is a concept. The meaning of a concept is called its intension, whereas its extension or scope is the set of all objects that come under it. The classical way in which concepts and terms are defined is represented by hierarchical classification systems, i.e. systems of concepts and terms for genera, species, …
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Religion Past and Present
Terministic Controversy
(373 words)
[German Version] The terministic controversy in Lutheran Protestantism was sparked by a common practice based on
CA 12 (Augsburg Confession): at death’s door, after confession and communion (Eucharist) eternal bliss (Blessedness) was promised regardless of whether the person dying had lived a recognizably Christian life. In response Pietist theologians –especially P.J. Spener, appealing to J.K. Dannhauer – cited Heb 3:7–11 in support of the view that God has determined a set period of grace for repentance ¶ (
tempus peremtorius gratiae); at its end, the sinner is cut off fr…
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Religion Past and Present
Territorial Church History
(1,691 words)
[German Version]
I. Name and Definition Territorial church history (TCH; also: church history of the
Länder; Regional church) is a discipline of historical theology (Church history). It is concerned with church territories (Church order) as presently consitituted, and brings out their specific traditions and qualities. Thus the degrees of interdependence between TCH, general church history, regional history, and general history vary greatly. ¶ Within historical theology, TCH has important functions. It covers a wide spectrum of local sources and relationshi…
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Religion Past and Present
Territorialism/Territorial System
(492 words)
[German Version] Territorialism is a theory of the legal relationship between the state and the church, according to which the all-embracing sovereignty of the prince includes sovereignty over the church and the public practice of religion in his territory; this means that all leadership authority in the church derives from the territorial lord. Chronologically the territorial system gradually gave way to episcopalism (which was influenced increasingly by territorialist arguments as it emerged); i…
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Religion Past and Present
Terror/Terrorism
(410 words)
[German Version] Terrorism is the systematic employment of especially brutal and shocking violence in pursuit of political ends. The definition of the agent is disputed: historically, the term
terrorism initially (after the French Revolution) referred to the reign of terror on the part of the state. Restriction of the term to forms of violence carried out below the level of the state is based on the observation that methods employed by the anticolonial struggle for liberation were adopted by other groups and employed in other ¶ conflicts. It would be good to distinguish between t…
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Religion Past and Present
Tersteegen, Gerhard
(909 words)
[German Version] (Nov 25, 1697, Moers – Apr 3, 1769, Mülheim an der Ruhr), Protestant lay theologian and pastor; author and hymn writer. The young Tersteegen came from a practicing Protestant family, received thorough secondary education in Moers, and spent four years being trained for a business career in Mülheim an der Ruhr, where he lived for the rest of his life. Here he was influenced by members of the Pietist revival (Pietism), and began a strict withdrawal from the world in “discipleship in…
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Religion Past and Present
Tertiaries
(426 words)
[German Version] members of a third order (
tertius ordo).
I. Secular Tertiaries Tertiaries are members of a third order for men or women; since the 11th/12th century, they have associated with the male (First Order) or female (Second Order) branch of existing orders, especially the mendicant orders that arose in the 13th century, in order to pursue religious or social goals. The most important was and still is the Franciscan Third Order (
Tertius Ordo ¶
Franciscanus, TOF). In his
Letter to the Faithful, Francis had limited himself to urging them to live active Christian lives,…
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Religion Past and Present
Tertullian, Quintus Septimius Florens
(1,268 words)
[German Version] (c. 160–170 ce, Carthage – after 220 ce)
I. Biography There are few references to Tertullian in the works of other Latin authors (Jer.
Vir. ill. 53; Aug.
De haeresibus 86). Despite the skepticism of some critics, it is possible ¶ to reconstruct his life. He was born the son of an officer stationed in Carthage. Apart from literary and legal studies, he devoted his youth to social life (
Apol. 18.14;
Res. 59.3); identification with the jurist of the same name cited in the
Digestum appears unlikely. Jerome’s statement that Tertullian had been a presbyter is disputed.…
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Religion Past and Present
Teschemacher, Werner
(173 words)
[German Version] (Teschenmacher, Techenmacher; Sep 13, 1590, Elberfeld – Apr 2, 1638, Xanten). Teschemacher, the son of a mayor, was brought up in the Reformed Church and studied theology in Herborn, Burgsteinfurt, and Heidelberg. After serving congregations in Grevenbroich (1611), Sittard (1613), and Elberfeld (1615), he was appointed chaplain to the Brandenburg court in Kleve (1617) and later in Emmerich (1623). He proved himself a highly talented, consistent advocate for the interests of the Reformed along the Lower Rhine in the face of an active Counter-Reformation¶ movement.…
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Religion Past and Present
Teschner, Melchior
(134 words)
[German Version] (Apr 29, 1584, Fraustadt [Wschowa, Poland] – Dec 1, 1635, Oberpritschen, near Fraustadt [today Przyczyna Górna]), studied theology and philosophy in Frankfurt an der Oder (from 1601) and Wittenberg (from 1608). He also studied music with Bartholomäus Gesius (1560–1613). In 1609 he was appointed organist and choirmaster in Fraustadt and in 1614 pastor in Oberpritschen. He composed the tune for the hymn “Valet will ich dir geben,” written by the Fraustadt pastor V. Herberger (publ. 1614). Also popular as a tune for other hymns (e.g.
Gotteslob 468), it appears with H…
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Religion Past and Present
Testamentary Capacity of Clerics
(98 words)
[German Version] According to Catholic canon law, secular clergy can make wills without restriction. Particular law, however, suggests that they make wills that also consider church institutions. According to canon 668
CIC/1983, members of orders are, in principle, no longer able to make a will after taking solemn vows. Consequently, they must make a will beforehand that is also valid under secular law. According to state law in Germany and Austria, there are no restrictions on the testamentary capacity of members of orders. Richard Potz Bibliography B. Primetshofer, “Die Religio…
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Religion Past and Present
Testamentary Literature
(390 words)
[German Version] The term generally refers to a not very clearly defined group of Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian pseudepigrapha (Pseudepigraphy) that describe someone’s last words to relatives, friends, or successors. Some of them bear the title “testament” (Gk διαϑήκη/
diathḗkē), such as
Testament of Job (Job, Testament of) and Testaments of the Twelve Patri-¶ archs, but not all (see Ascension of Moses). Other writings with this title (
T. Abr. [Abrahamic writings],
T. Adam, T. Isaac [Isaac, Testament of],
T. Jac., T. Sol. [Solomonic writings]) are entirely different…
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Religion Past and Present
Testament of Abraham
(8 words)
[German Version] Abrahamic Writings
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Religion Past and Present
Testament of Solomon
(8 words)
[German Version] Solomonic Writings
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Religion Past and Present
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
(355 words)
[German Version] (
T. 12 Patr.) is one of the so-called pseudepigraphs (Pseudepigraphy) of the Old Testament and a typical example of testamentary literature. Most probably, it was originally composed in Greek by a Christian author in the 2nd century ce. The book consists of 12 parts or “testaments” containing the last words of the 12 sons of Jacob, addressed to their sons and other relatives at the end of their lives. Each of the 12 farewell discourses has a tripartite structure. In the biographical part the patriarch tells his audie…
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Religion Past and Present
Testamentum Domini Nostri
(201 words)
[German Version] a redactional composite of an adapted apocalypse (2nd cent.?) and a church order (expanded adaptation of the Traditio apostolica), framed by a revelatory address of the risen Lord before his Ascension. It was probably written in the second half of the 5th century in a settlement of ascetics and charismatics on the coast (Syr. I 34). The work was accepted only by anti-Chalcedonian churches. The Greek original and a Sahidic translation have been lost; a Syriac translation (composed…
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Religion Past and Present
Testimonium Flavianum
(186 words)
[German Version] is the name given to the short text
Ant. XVIII 63f. in which Flavius Josephus gives an account of Jesus. It would be of great moment if Josephus’s authorship of this text could be considered undisputed, but that is hardly the case. Although the text appears in all Greek manuscripts, its authenticity has often been challenged since J.J. Scaliger (16th cent.), because it contains several expressions that sound Christian, for example “he was the anointed.” One attempt to explain this ambivalent evidence is the the-ory ¶ that the text, in whole or in part, was interpol…
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Religion Past and Present
Testimonium spiritus sancti internum
(332 words)
[German Version] The doctrine of the
testimonium was formulated by Calvin (
Inst.I 7) and included in various Reformed articles of faith (I, 3;
Confessio Gallicana 4). It means that the unimpugnable validity and authority of Scripture (Holy Scriptures) does not depend on the judgment of the church (in the form of an agreement or consensus) but on the testimony of the Spirit (Spirit/Holy Spirit). J.H. Alsted honored it as the foundation of all theology. It does not mean that the “self-evidence” of Scripture is joined by …
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Religion Past and Present
Testimony, Clergy’s Right to Withhold
(155 words)
[German Version] To protect the confidentiality required for pastoral care, especially the seal of the confessional, the procedural codes of the German courts give clergy to be interrogated as witnesses the right to refuse to give evidence (§53, para. 1, no. 1 of the criminal procedural code, §383, para. 1, no. 4 of the civil procedural code). Given its purpose, this right extends only to pastoral activity, not administrative, educational, or charitable activity. In criminal cases, it is irrelevan…
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Religion Past and Present
Testimony of Truth (NHC IX,3; TestVer)
(127 words)
[German Version] a radically Encratite Gnostic Christian homily, written roughly between 180 and 230 in Alexandria; it is extant only in a badly damaged Coptic translation of the original Greek. Its author is unknown, and it is impossible to assign it to a particular school. Its polemic – rejection of Catholic baptism, bodily resurrection, identity of the Creator and Redeemer God – is directed primarily against the Catholic Church, but also various Gnostic schools. Uwe-Karsten Plisch Bibliography Ed.: B.A. Pearson & S. Giversen, NHS 15, 1981, 101–203 A. Mahé,
Le témoignage véritable…
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Religion Past and Present
Tetrarchy
(294 words)
[German Version] rule by four emperors during the first, second, and third tetrarchies (293–311 ce). The first tetrarchy (to 305) was established by Diocletian (284) and Maximian (285), who ruled as
Augusti and in 293 adopted two
Caesares (Constantius I and Galerius) as presumptive successors and coregents with authority to act. Diocletian gave a theocratic basis for this system, which provided for the adoption of a mature successor and a change of ruler through abdication after some 20 years. He cited Jupiter as the fountainhead of the tetrarchy, with the two familial branches of the
Iov…
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Religion Past and Present
Tetzel, Johann
(206 words)
[German Version] (c. 1465, Pirna – Jul 4, 1519, Dominican house in Leipzig), OP, began his studies in Leipzig in 1482/1483, receiving his Bacc.artium in 1487. He joined the Dominicans and was made an inquisitor in 1509 (Inquisition); he also served for a time as prior of the monastery in Glogau (Głogów). He studied theology, probably in Leipzig, receiving his Bacc.theol. in 1518 and then his M.theol. From 1505 to 1510 he was subcommissioner for indulgences of the Teutonic Order. Late in 1516, he w…
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Religion Past and Present
Teutonic Order
(1,208 words)
[German Version]
I. Origins The origins of an
Ordo fratrum hospitalis sanctae Mariae Theutonicorum Ierosolymitanorum are said to date back ¶ to a hospital of Mary in Jerusalem in the first half of the 12th century. The spiritual order of knights arose in 1198/1199 from a hospital brotherhood that was set up during the Third Crusade (1189/1190) near Acre by merchants from Lübeck and Bremen. Because they were supported both by German crusaders and the Hohenstaufen, most members came from the Empire, and their estates…
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Religion Past and Present
Tewodros II
(473 words)
[German Version] (Theodorus; 1818/1820, Q wārā, Ethiopia – Apr 13, 1868, Maqdalā, Ethiopia), emperor (
aṣe) of Ethiopia from 1855 to 1868). His mother Wayzaro Atteṭāgab and his father
daǧǧāzmāč̣ Hayla Māryām named him Kasa Haylu. After a Christian upbringing and a period as a
shifta (“outlaw”), he became a soldier under Ras Ali Alula. In 1845 he married Tawābač Ali (died 1858), a granddaughter of Empress Manan (1840–1853), and attained mastery over Q wārā. Military victories and additional marriages (in 1860 to Etēge Ṭēru Warq [Ṭerunaš], who died in 1868) enabled T…
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Religion Past and Present
Text
(1,617 words)
[German Version]
I. Literary Studies A text is a sequence of sentences or other linguistic utterances that can be considered as a unit. It may be oral or written. The term
text derives from Latin
texere, “weave,” and its associated nouns
textum and
textus. The metaphor of weaving, already used by Cicero and Quintilian with reference to linguistic phenomena, has had ongoing influence, down to present-day attempts to define the “textuality” of texts. In earlier usage, preserved in the tradition of philology, a text is an existing original …
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Religion Past and Present
Text Criticism of the Bible
(3,783 words)
[German Version]
I. Old Testament The aim of text criticism in general is to determine the original wording of a text that no longer survives in its original author copy but only in various late scribal copies. Text criticism compares the copies (called witnesses) to distinguish inaccurately copied passages (called readings) from accurately copied passages. What makes the Old Testament a special case is that most of its writings never had an original; they were never completed and published by a sing…
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Religion Past and Present
Textile Art
(535 words)
[German Version] (from Lat.
textilis, “woven, knitted”) comprises items produced by interlacing, entwining, linking, or weaving threads or yarn; such articles are used for clothing and high quality interior decoration. The raw materials have various origins: animals (wool, silk), plants (cotton, flax, jute, hemp), and since the 20th century industry (synthetic fibers). Braiding is the alternate interlacing of strands running in the same ¶ direction; in knitting the parallel strands are joined by stitches. In weaving two perpendicular groups of strands are cr…
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Religion Past and Present