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[German Version] (cf. Āśrama) Christian ashrams are found in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. They are places for religious observance, reflection, and a spiritual life deepened by prayer and meditation. They involve small groups of men and/or women who give concrete shape to the Christian faith in the context of their own culture and social environment. They prac…

[German Version] I. Concept – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Dogmatics – V. Practical Theology – VI. Missiology – VII. Judaism – VIII. Cultural History I.  Concept “Bible” is the predominant designation in church, theology, and society for the collection of OT and NT scriptures recognized by the church. The word “Bible” and its close equivalents in other European languages derive from the middle Latin “biblia.” This Latin feminine derives from the Greek neuter plural τὰ βιβλία/ tá biblía. Grammatically, the sg. βιβλίον/ biblíon is a diminu¶ tive form of ἡ βίβλος/ hē b…

[German Version] (Oct 7, 1909, Berlin – Jun 11, 2000, Heidelberg), Old Testament scholar. His father Diedrich Westermann was a specialist in African languages. After schooling and university studies, he served in the Confessing Church; after military service and imprisonment, he served as a pastor in (West) Berlin, where after 1949 he also taught as a lecturer in the theological seminary, being appointed professor in 1954. From 1958 until his retirement in 1977, he was a professor in the faculty o…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. History of Dogma – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Philosophy of Religion – VIII. Judaism – IX. Islam (cf. Present and Future Eschatology, Consistent Eschatology) I. Religious Studies …

[German Version] I. Place and Date While individual poems like Song 1:9–11 may go back to the preexilic period, collections, redaction(s), and linguistic revision(s) date from just before and especially during the 3rd century bce. The text contains several loanwords: pardēs (4:13: “orchard,” from Old Iranian), ¶ ʾ appiryôn (3:9: “palanquin,” most likely from Gk), and qinnāmôn (4:14: “cinnamon,” ultimately from Malay kayu manis, “sweet wood”), along with several words borrowed from Old Indic. Beside numerous lexical and grammatical Aramaisms, it exhibits features of a late colloquial dialect looking forward to the Hebrew of the Mishnah (Fox, 186–190). In addition to the loanwords, the vocabulary of a prosperous culture points to the Hellenistic period with its extensive foreign trade, which enabled a life of opulent indulgence for a politically emasculated propertied class in Jerusalem (“daughters of Jerusalem”: 1:5, …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. History – III. Philosophy of Religion – IV. Fundamental Theology. – V. Missiology I. Religious Studies 1. The Concept and Its History Myth may be defined by either content or function. Defined by content, myth is a belief about something significant, such as the world or society. Defined by function, myth accomplishes something significant, such as explaining the world or supporting society. Most theories of myth are concerned with the function of myth, but many are also concerned with either the origin or the subject matter of myth. Mythology then refers to the system of different myths within a religion or culture. ¶ Nineteenth-century theories tended to view myth as a prescientific explanation of the physical world. For the key theorists, E.B. Tylor and J.G. Frazer, a…

[German Version] Swāmī (born Narendranāth Datta; Jan 12, 1863, Calcutta – Jul 4, 1902, Belur, Karnataka). As a member of the upcoming middle class, the multi-talented youth attended English colleges. Plunged into an existential crisis by the death of his father, he turned increasingly to the sainted Rāmakrishna and became his disciple. In 1887 he performed the ritual of renouncing the world and dedicated himself to the study of the religious literature of India. From 1890 to 1893 he traveled throu…

[German Version] (May 22, Radhanagar, Bengal – Sep 27, 1833, Bristol, England). During the era of British colonial rule in India, Roy was an advocate of religious and social reforms in Hinduism. Drawing on Vedānta and the Upaniṣads while appealing to reason and common sense, Roy argued for aniconic worship of the one God and a philanthropic ethics, which he defended again…

[German Version] (Aug 2, 1832, Orange, NJ – Feb 17, 1907, Adyar near Madras). Olcott grew up in a Presbyterian family. As a young man he turned to spiritualist circles (Spiritualism). Following a career as a journalist (from 1853), he was an agricultural expert, an officer of the Union in the American Civil War (1861–1865), and an attorney (from 1868). In 1875, he, together with H.P. Blavatsky, founded in New York the ¶ Theosophical Society (Theosophy) for scientific research into paranormal experiences. Two additional aims appeared later: to spread in the West the “…

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[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament. – III. New Testament – IV. Philosophy of Religion – V. Dogmatics I. Religious Studies Monotheistic ideas of God, which take as their starting point the existence and activity of a single God, have long dominated the understanding of religion in historically Christian Europe. The term monotheism itself is a modern coinage, first appearing in 1660 in the work of the English philosopher Henry More. As a contrast ¶ to the term polytheism, which goes back originally to Philo of Alexandria and was rediscovered for the European tradition by J. Bodin in 1580, monotheism was introduced into the 17th- and 18th-century discussion of the origins of belief in God. From then until the mid-20th century, the emergence of monotheism was explained either in the context of evolutionary models (Evolution) as the culmination of a chain of development comprising at least two stages (e.g. animism, totemism, fetishism, polytheis…

[German Version] (1862, Karazgāon, Ratnāgiri district – May 9, 1919, Bombay [Mumbai]). Tilak’s father, a Chitpavan-Brahmin, was a registrar. Tilak studied Sanskrit with a Vedic scholar and attended an English highschool for two years. His lite…

[German Version] (real name Bhavani Charan Banerjee; Feb 11, 1861, Khanyan, Bengal – Oct 27, 1907, Calcutta [Kolkata]). Upadhyaya’s father, a Brahmin, was a police inspector in British service. Upadhyaya attended English schools and colleges as well as a traditional Sanskrit school. He became familiar with Christianity through his uncle, the Protestant pastor Kalicharan Ban…

[German Version] (honorific title meaning “great self,” actual name: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; Oct 2, 1869, Porbandar, India – Jan 30, 1948, New Delhi). Gandhi's parents were Vaiṇava Hindus and belonged to the merchant caste of the Banias in Rajkot and Porbandar, where Gandhi's father was a government minister. Gandhi studied law in London from 1888 to 1891. While living in South Africa (1893–1914), he gradually assumed the role of civil rights attorney for the Indian minority and organized thei…