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[German Version] I. Religious Studies All religions share the conviction that human actions hold a significance that reaches far beyond a person’s current life situation. On the precise manner in which an equitable balance between personal behavior and current or future life is achieved, however, there is considerable divergence of views – depending on the historical and social context of the respective religion. From the perspective of religious studies, it is advisable to differentiate between the…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Judaism – IV. Law – V. Ethics I. Old Testament The death penalty in the Old Testament has three causes: 1. blood revenge as a direct legal reaction by a family damaged by a homicide; 2. cultic law involving severe violations of religious taboos such as witchcraft, sodomy and apostasy (Ex 22:17–19); 3. family property …

[German Version] The canonical Old Testament describes the settlement as a military conquest of Palestine by the 12 tribes of Israel, beginning in Transjordan under Moses’ leadership with a victory over Sihon and Og, kings of the Amorites, and the capture of Heshbon (Num 20f.; 32; Deut 1–3). After Moses’ death (Deut 34), the settlement continued west of the Jordan under Joshua’s leadership, initially in Benjaminite territory with the capture of Jericho (Josh 6) and Ai (Josh 7–8) and a treaty with Gibeon (Josh 9); it concluded with the conquest of the south (Josh 10) and the north (Josh 11), including the capture of Hazor. Afterwards the territory on both sides of the Jordan was divided among the tribes, including the Levites (Josh 13–21), fulfilling the promises of the land to the patri…

[German Version] I. The State of Israel – II. History – III. Society I. The State of Israel The formal full name, State of Israel (Heb. Medinat Yisrael), calls attention to the spatial divergence between the political entity and the geographical and historical Erets Israel (Land of Israel, Palestine and its linguistic equivalents). Israel is located in southwest Asia, on the southern stretch of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean. In its northern half, inland from the shore, is the coastal area and further east are the hills, from n…

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[German Version] I. The Concept – II. Economic Systems and their Theories – III. Economy and Religion I. The Concept The term economy encompasses the totality of all individual actions and social interactions that serve to produce goods (commodities or services [Service sector]) for the purpose of satisfying human needs (Consumption). As a rule, the “production” of commodities means that human labor and …

[German Version] I. Bible – II. Philosophy – III. History of Theology and Dogmatics – IV. Ethics – V. Law – VI. Social Politics, Social Ethics – VII. Missiology – VIII. Islam I. Bible 1. Ancient Near East and Old Testament The concept of justice in the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible is basically one of connectivity. It designates the positive relation of the king to the gods and to his people, of the individual to the various collectives ranging from the family to the entire nation, of the deed to the doer's well-being,…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament – III. Judaism I. Old Testament 1. History of scholarship For the biblical tradition of the Torah, Moses, born in Egypt (Exod 2:1–10), was the founder of Israel's religion and its lawgiver at Sinai (Exod 3f.; Exod 19 – Num 10), the designer of its judicial system (Exod 18*), the leader of the people in Egypt and during the exodus (Exod 2; 5–15) and ¶ the subsequent journey from Egypt to the land of Moab (Exod 16f.; Num 10 – Deut 34), who before his death (Deut 34:5f.) put the Torah into writing (Deut 31:9) and was permitted to…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. New Testament I. Old Testament 1. The rational spirit of the Hebrew Bible and biblical scholarship. Modern biblical scholarship, with its historico-reflexive self-understanding, has its first precondition in the Hebrew Bible, which is not only the object of biblical studies, but also the subject in the sense that the…

[German Version] Following Exod 24:7, the law collection in Exod 20:22–23:13(19) is termed the Book of the Covenant. The oldest legal corpus in the Old Testament, dating to the middle to late monarchial period, although pre-deuteronomic, the Book of the Covenant was edited together from several originally independent, smaller, thematically self-contained collections, such as…

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[German Version] As a regional designation (“the hollowed out, washed out region”; cf. also Arab. wahda), Judah (Heb. יְהוּדָה/ yehûdāh; Gk ‘Ιουδα/Iouda) refers to the southern range in the hills to the west of the Jordan. It gave the name to the tribe of Judah (Tribes of Israel) that settled there, from which the allied state of Judah developed in the time of David. Until the death of Solomon part of a state with the other tribes of Israel, Judah became independent again alongside the northern kingdom of Israel after the division of the kingdom. After the demise of the northern kingdom, Judah became the sole site of the origin and transmission of the Old Testament, which, therefore, has a Judean point of view. In the Persian period, after losing i…

[German Version] I. Old Testament In the preexilic period, Sabbath (שַׁבָּת/ šabbāt) meant the day of the full moon; from the Exile on, it denoted a weekly day of rest. The origins of this day of rest go back to the early days of Exile. The earliest laws regarding the preexilic day of rest appear in the Book of the Covenant (Exod 23:10) and the cultic code in Exod 34:18–23, 25f. (v. 21) (Law and legislation: III). In the Book of the Covenant, the commandment to …

[German Version] I. The Prophet – II. The Book – III. Effective History I. The Prophet The prophet Habakkuk lived in Jerusalem around 600 bce. His name is Assyrian in origin and derives from the Akkadian term for a garden plant ( ḫabb[m]aqūqu). He is described as a cult prophet ( nabı̑) (1:1), which is confirmed by the fact that he receives the word in a cultic location (2:1–3). Whether, however, his critique of the social abuses caused by the political and economic elite of Judah was part of his function or contradicted it, must remain as op…

[German Version] In accordance with LXX and Vulgate (Bible translations: I), the fifth book of the Pentateuch is termed Deuteronomy (Deut); in the Jewish tradition it is named “discourses” ( debārïm) after the beginning of the book. The name Deut is a summary of the law (Law and legislation), which is stylized as a collection of farewell discourses by Moses in 1–4; 5–28; 29–32; 33 and which, in the final form o…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. Judaism – III. New Testament – IV. Early Church – V. Patriarchates – VI. Islam – VII. Religious and Political Situation Today – VIII. Archaeology I. Old Testament Jerusalem (ירושׁלם/ yerûšālēm, MT yerûšālayim) was founded c. 1800 bce as a fortified town in the central Palestinian uplands at a strategic point for transportation between northern and southern Palestine. Outside the Bible, the name appears from the 18th century on in the Egyptian execration texts and the Amarna letters (as Akkad. uruu-ru-sa-lim). It derives from the verb yrh I (“found”) and means “foundation of (the god) šalem.” In the Late Bronze Age, the Canaanite city of Jerusalem was under Egyptian suzerainty. The Old Testament preserves an accurate historical memory that around the turn of the millennium Jerusalem was captured by David and became a Judahite city. It became the urban center and royal residence of the tribal state of Judah, isolated until well into the 8th century in the hill country of Judah. Not until the time of …

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[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. Early Christianity – V. Church History – VI. Liturgical and Practical Aspects I. Religious Studies The words “feast” and “festival” (cf. fête, festa, fiesta, Fest, etc.) derive f…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Church History – V. Sociology – VI. Systematic Theology – VII. Law – VIII. Practical Theology – IX. Judaism – X. Islam I. Religious Studies The term marriage denotes a relationship entered into between two or more persons of different sex, ritually formalized, intended to be permanent, and recognized by society. In all cultures, definitions of economic and sexual rights and the c…

[German Version] I. Social Sciences 1. Concept. War is conflict between large groups, peoples, nations, and states conducted by force of arms. The more precise definition of the term and its differentiation from peace are disputed. Behavioral science tends toward a broad definition: war is a specifically human form of intergroup aggression, functional in the context of competition for scarce resources; in it the use of weapons decreases our instinctive inhibition against killing. The theory that war is…

[German Version] (Heb. חִזְקִיָּה/ ḥizqiyyāh) ruled Judah as king from 725–696 bce. Under his rule, the kingdom of Judah developed from a tribal state – which, isolated on the Judean mountains, was affected by political events less than the more highly developed northern kingdom of Israel (II, 1) and was based economically primarily on small animal breeding – into a fully developed state. The conquest of Samaria (722) ¶ and the final incorporation of Israel into the provincial system of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (720) sparked this sudden development, since a stream…

[German Version] I. Concept and Scope – II. Religious Studies – III. Bible – IV. Judaism – V. As a Theological Discipline – VI. As a Philosophical Discipline (Business Ethics, Discourse Ethics, Economic Ethics, Ethics, Bio-Medical Issues, Ethics Commissions, Ethics Education, Ethics of Conviction, Ethics of …

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[German Version] Shechem, Heb. שְׁכֶם/ šĕkem, “shoulder,” a city in the hill country of central Palestine between Ebal and Gerizim. Since the excavations by Sellin and G.E. Wright between 1913 and 1969, it has been identified with Tell Balāṭa, near Nablus. The earliest Middle Bronze settlement of the city, initially unfortified, dates from c. 1900 bce. It includes a courtyard complex which Wright interpreted as a temple but was more likely a palace (Otto, 133–150). In the 17th century, Shechem was fortified with a massive cyclopean wall in combinat…

[German Version] The Sumerian culture of the 3rd millennium, made comprehensive by the invention of writing (Paleography) and its high capacity for mythical interpretation of the world, had a formative impact on the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires of the 2nd millennium. The notion of a world capital, developed in Sumerian Nippur, was taken up in the imperial centers of Babylon and Ashur and became the basis of their competition. With the Semitic assimilation of Sumerian culture, a mixed civilizati…

[German Version] The judicial system in the ancient Near East and biblical Israel was shaped by its political context. In the ancient Near East, the king, acting for the gods to …

[German Version] I. Terminology The five books of Moses (Genesis, called by the rabbis bĕrēšît, “in the beginning,” its first word; Exodus, šĕmôt, “names”; Leviticus, wayyiqrāʾ, “and he called”; Numbers, bĕmidbar, “in the desert”; Deuteronomy, dĕbārîm, “words”), whose tale runs from creation (Gen 1) to the death of Moses (Deut 34), were called in Greek ὁ(ἡ) Πεντάτευχος (βίβλος)/ ho[ hē] Pentáteuchos ( bíblos), “Five Scroll Work”; in the 2nd century ce, this term entered the tradition of the Early Church in Alexandria (e.g. Origen). It came into Latin with Tertullian as Pentateuchum or P…

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Ethics I. History of Religion …

[German Version] I. History of Religion Instances in which a certain share of a person’s gains were ceded to the gods are known from the religions of the ancient Near East and of Classical Antiquity; on the evidence of the Old Testament (e.g. Lev 27:32f.; 1 Sam 8:15), Judaism and Christianity were also familiar with tithing (see III, IV below). Even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), which only cultivates a loose relationship to biblical tradition, takes up this notion in the B…

[German Version] In Israel and Judah, bodily harm was originally avenged through the legal institution of the talion (Exod 21:24f.), an immediate juridical response on the part of the injured party, who inflicted on the wrongdoer a punishment equal to the crime. When the law governing bodily harm was entrusted to the local authorities (Judicial system), the …

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. History – III. German Criminal Law Today – IV. Penal Canon Law (Roman Catholic) – V. Islam I. Old Testament Old Testament law (Law and legislation: II) emerged from three sources: (1) it reinforced mutual expectations based on norms of behavior by means of criminal ¶ laws supporting general prevention of criminal conduct; (2) it minimized violence by regulating conflicts through casuistic law (Law and jurisprudence: III) as the precursor of modern civil law, and (3) it regulated int…

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[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. Judaism I. Old Testament 1. Name The anthroponym Jaco…

[German Version] Klostermann introduced this term to Old Testament studies in 1877 to describe Lev 17–26. It derives from such phrases as, “you shall be holy, for I, YHWH, your God, am holy,” appearing frequently in 19–22. J. Wellhausen interpreted the Holiness Code as law (Law and Legislation: II) independent of its literary context in Lev 1–16, younger than Deuteronomy and older than the Priestly document (Pentateuch). Subsequent Old Testament research concentrated in the first half of the 20th …

[German Version] I. History of Religions State cults in the narrow sense are religious ceremonies, governed by tradition or law, performed in the name of the state and for its benefit; typically they are addressed to extrasensory powers such as gods, demons, natural numina, or personalized cosmic forces. It is necessary to distinguish cults celebrated regularly at fixed times and places from those staged on a particular occasion such as an enthronement, the death of a ruler, a natural disaster, an epi…

[German Version] Zadok (Heb. קוֹדצָ[ינֵבְּ]/[ b enê]…

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[German Version] I. Religion – II. Biblical – III. Ethics – IV. Practical Theology I. Religion The present scientific classification of homosexuality in acts, preferences, and identity does not exist in religious documents or traditions. What these describe, and in some cases judge or condemn, is sexual acts between persons of the male sex. The presence in myths of homosexual activities between gods does not always correspond to what is sanctioned among men. In many religions with strong patterns of gender roles, polygamy or other conditions in society lead to homosexuality and to a benevolent attitude to its presence. When men are forced to play the female gender role, they are also forced to play the female social role. The lack of virility among such men is regarded as being compensated for by charismatic powers, and they are often considered holy or dangerous. Young boys who are least virile among men often have to act as substitutes for women. In the liminal state of initiation (Rites of passage) these are expose…

[German Version] I. Conception – II. Greco-Roman Antiquity – III. Ancient Near East and Israel – IV. Church History – V. Fundamental Theology – VI. Ethics – VII. Church in International Law – VIII. Islam I. Conception 1. Legal conception International law is the quintessence of the legal norms that regulate sovereign relations between the international legal subjects. International legal subjects are primarily states, traditionally also the Apostolic See, the international organizations created by the states on a contractual b…

[German Version] I. Terminology The sociology of religion studies religion’s social aspects and manifestations, clearly including religious institutions, organizations, and social groups. It also studies more situational forms, less clearly defined, such as gatherings, ceremonies, and collective rituals (e.g. processions [Rite and ritual]). In an extended sense, characteristic of the German-language tradition since M. Weber, religious sociology deals with all social or socialized behavior focused on…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Peace (negatively: absence of fighting and war; positively: security, wellbeing, and harmony) is considered desirable in all traditional religions, although they also have their specific legitimations of war. In archaic religions, peace is primarily related to the community and understood as a present reality. However, from the beginning of the Christian era, religious developments produced stronger differentiations. Peace is no longer seen as a social ph…

[German Version] I. Concept and Legal Definition – II. History of Religion – III. Ancient Near East and Old Testament – IV. Greco-Roman Antiquity – V. New Testament – VI. Dogmatics – VII. Ethics of Law – VIII. Sociology of Law…

[German Version] I. Old Testament – II. Judaism – III. New …

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