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
Dvořák, Antonín
(402 words)
[German Version] (Sep 8, 1841, Nelahozeves [Mühlhausen an der Moldau] – May 1, 1904, Prague). Dvořák and Bedřich Smetana count as the most important Czech composers of the 19th century; Dvořák contributed many chamber, symphonic, and choral works to the concert repertoire. But it was only after the end of an apprenticeship as a butcher that was he able, in 1854, to get further sc…
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Religion Past and Present
Dwarfs
(458 words)
[German Version] The appearance of small-sized beings in the beliefs of various cultures and religions finds its premise in the real occurrence of small-sized people. In ancient and medieval tradition, beings that are conceived of as smaller than humans are usually located at the periphery of the known world. In the third song of the
Iliad (Homer), the dwarf peoples are referred to as pygmies; Megasthenes located them in distant India, while 15th-century cartographers such as Klausen Svart placed them …
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Religion Past and Present
Dwight, Timothy
(169 words)
[German Version] (May 14, 1752, Northampton, MA – Jan 11, 1817, New Haven, CT). Grandson of J. Edwards, Dwight graduated from Yale College in 1769. Two years later he was appointed tutor. With other tutors and students, Dwight established the first indigenous American school of literary criticism, known as the “Connecticut wits.” In 1777 he became a patriot chaplain in the Americ…
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Religion Past and Present
Dyer, Alfred John
(148 words)
[German Version] (Feb 17, 1884, Melbourne – Apr 6, 1968, Austinmer, New South Wales), missionary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and an Anglican clergyman. Deeply committed to the welfare of the Aboriginal people, Dyer worked at three CMS missions in Australia: in Roper River (1915–1921), in Groote Eylandt (1921–1925), and in Oenpelli (1925–1935), where he overcame enormous difficulties in setting up a successful mission. To make up for the absence of clergy Dyer was himself ordained deacon in 1927 and ¶ priest a year later. In 1933 he became fa…
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Religion Past and Present
Dying
(2,372 words)
[German Version] I. Biology and Medicine – II. Dogmatics – III. Ethics – IV. Practical Theology
I. Biology and Medicine Ancient and medieval medicine was, for the most part, only interested in dying from the point of view of the prognostic signs of death. It was not until the advent of modern science that the determining of the fact of death came to be seen as a medical concern, an interest that was largely stimulated by the discussion over the phenomenon of apparent death in the 18th century. On the diagnostic side, particular attention was paid to
livores marks (
livores mortis) and muscu…
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Religion Past and Present
Dying, Care of the
(589 words)
[German Version] It can hardly be said that the postmodern human being plans and organizes his or her life with death permanently in mind. As a consequence, the fear of death that belongs to every human life (in combination with the question of the meaning of life and the “hereafter”) nowadays irrupts into the lives of many people in a particularly dramatic way, especially when a …
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Religion Past and Present
Dying, Songs for the
(370 words)
[German Version] Songs for the dying deal with the theme of human transience or react to the event of death. They articulate mourning and hope, and sometimes also the futility of earthly existence or earthly goods. Functionally, songs for the dying may be classified as: 1.
memento-mori songs; 2.
ars-moriendi songs; 3. occasional songs for burial; and 4. (Catholic) mass songs. The first group addresses death as the basic condition of human existence as well as the contingency of all existing things (
contemptus mundi/
vanitas motif, cf.
EG 527f.). The second …
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Religion Past and Present
Dynamic Equivalence,
(128 words)
[German Version] a concept introduced by Bible translators. The traditional “formal-correspondence” model focused on the linguistic form of the message being communicated – words and grammatical structure – resulting in a wooden and often inaccurate or obscure translation. The aim of the dynamic equivalence model, pioneered by Eugene A. Nida, was a translation that was completely…
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Religion Past and Present
Dynamism
(134 words)
[German Version] Traditional terminology in the history of dogma and theology distinguishes between “Dynamic” and a “Modalist” Monarchianism. It thereby subsumes under a common generic term (although see A. v. Harnack) the groups that energetically combatted the Logos theology (Logos) and the doctrine of a plurality of divine hypostases (Hypostasis; in e.g. …
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Religion Past and Present
Dyophysites
(6 words)
[German Version] Monophysites/Monophysitism, Christology
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Religion Past and Present