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
Ghana
(1,031 words)
[German Version] Ghana, formerly a British colony (Gold Coast) on the West Coast of Africa (map) and with a land space of 238,533 km2, consists of terrain plains, scrubland, rain forest, and savanna. It gained independence on Mar 6, 1957. Ghana was the first Black African country to achieve independence in modern history. While colonial historiography presents Ghana as a nation created by British administration out of congeries of tribes, current historiography states that early on there was the Greater Ashanti, which…
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Religion Past and Present
Ghetto
(511 words)
[German Version] Not all Jewish quarters were ghettos closed off against the will of the inhabitants. For members of a Jewish community, there were reasons to live together in close proximity to each other (the use of common institutions such as the synagogue, ritual baths, kosher butchers and bakers). In the medieval Islamic realm with its confessional variety, the tradition of distinct city quarters on religious lines developed. In Christian-dominated Europe, things were different. Here, the chu…
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Religion Past and Present
Ghost Dance (Native American)
(529 words)
[German Version] The Ghost Dance (1889–1890) was the second and larger so-called intertribal prophetic religious movement that swept members of different Native American peoples in the western United States. The movement centred around a shared ritual complex of song, dance, and vision, believed power-¶ ful enough to reunite adherents with the souls of their dead relatives and to rejuvenate the land, especially the then decimated buffalo, and to restore the balance of lifeways based on that land. The movement originated in a series of vis…
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Religion Past and Present
Giants
(316 words)
[German Version] In the history of religions. In the mythologies (Myth/Mythology) of the most divergent religious traditions, giants or mostly anthropomorphous protagonists of extraordinary bodily dimensions, envisioned as composite beings, play a role between humans and deities. The giant figure can have a positive or a negative connotation, and it can be either ugly or beautiful, threatening or protective, with raw power or wisdom, female or male. Its size expresses through physical superiority …
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Religion Past and Present
Gibbon, Edward
(159 words)
[German Version] (Apr 27, 1737, Putney, Surrey – Jan 16, 1794, London), historian and the author of
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788). His work shows meticulous accuracy in handling original sources, as well as familiarity with recent French and Italian historians. This combined with an elegant style gave Gibbon immediate acclaim from the publication of the first volume. Gibbon's treatment of the Early Church, controversial at the time, proved a landmark since he adopted a sociological rather ¶ than a providential standpoint. This was not impart…
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Religion Past and Present
Gibbons, James
(289 words)
[German Version] (Jul 23, 1834, Baltimore, MD – Mar 24, 1921, Baltimore), Catholic bishop of Richmond, Virginia (1872–1877), archbishop of Baltimore (1877–1921), and cardinal (1886–1921). Gibbons was the foremost American Catholic churchman during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He came to public prominence in the United States with the publication of
Faith of Our Fathers (1876), an introduction to Catholic faith and practice that exhibited his missionary experiences among non-Catholics in Virginia and North Carolina. The text was a widely di…
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Religion Past and Present
Gibeah
(367 words)
[German Version] (Heb. גִּבְעָה), variants Geba (גֶּבַע) and Gibeon (גִּבְעֹן), is an appellative place name that appears relatively often in the Hebrew Bible and means “hill.” Sometimes, as in 1 Sam 7:1 and 2 Sam 6:3, it is unclear whether the word means “hill” or “Gibeah.” It is also unclear how many different Gibeahs there were. ¶ Gibeon seems to refer consistently to a Hivite city northwest of Jerusalem (present-day el-Jīb). From the context it can be determined that the Gibeah mentioned in Josh 15:57 was in Judah. Also the Gibeah described in Jos…
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Religion Past and Present
Gibeon
(410 words)
[German Version] The site of el-Jīb, first settled around 3000 bce, was a center of wine production from the Early Bronze through the Iron Ages. Inscriptions and coins at Gibeon record the progression of Egyptian, Israelite, Persian, Greek, Hasmonean, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab control of the city. Tombs appear throughout the periods of habitation into modern times. Excavations have uncovered figurines (female, animals as well as horse and rider) from the Bronze and Iron Ages along with a bronze statuette…
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Religion Past and Present
Giberti, Gian Matteo
(160 words)
[German Version] (Sep 20, 1495, Palermo – Dec 30, 1543, Verona). Before he became bishop of Verona in 1524, as secretary and adviser to Clement VII, he supported the pope's anti-Habsburg policy and pushed him to forge an alliance with Franz I. After the
Sacco di Roma (1527) and the collapse of the policy he proposed, he withdrew to his diocese. Associated with personalities such as Cajetan of Tiene, G. Contarini, R. Pole and J. Sadoleto, he enacted reforms that made him the most important reform bishop before C. Borromeo. He strengthened ep…
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Religion Past and Present
Gibson, Edmund
(159 words)
[German Version] (Dec 16, 1669, Bampton, England – Sep 6, 1748, Bath), first came to public attention as an Anglo-Saxon scholar and antiquarian. In the first decade of the 18th century, he played a leading role in the “convocation controversy” (Convocations of Canterbury and York) and authored a series of devotional works which became minor classics of Anglican popular ¶ piety. Turning his attention to canon law, he published the
Codex iuris ecclesiastici anglicani in 1713, which remained the standard work on English canon law until the late 19th century. In 1715, Gi…
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Religion Past and Present
Gichtel, Johann Georg
(241 words)
[German Version] (May 4, 1638, Regensburg – Jan 21, 1710, Amsterdam) was a theosophist in the succession of J. Böhme and the editor of his works (1682). Gichtel studied theology and law, but practiced no profession after a brief period as an advocate since he considered work – like marriage – detrimental to a pious life. After he was expelled from Regensburg for vigorous attacks on the clergy, he lived – after some odysseys in Germany and a year-long sojourn in Zwolle with F. Breckling – from 1668…
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Religion Past and Present
Gide, André
(471 words)
[German Version] (Nov 22, 1869, Paris – Feb 21, 1951, Paris), French poet and Nobel prize winner for literature (1947), who, as the son of the law professor Paul Gide, who was born in Uzès in the south of France, and the Rouenaise industrialist's daughter Juliette Rondeaux, had financial means that permitted him an independent literary career. In 1909, together with other
literati, who later partially turned to the
Renouveau catholique (P. Claudel), he founded the literarily influential
Nouvelle Revue Française. Gide's entire corpus was placed on the
Index librorum prohibitorum …
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Religion Past and Present
Gideon
(421 words)
[German Version] Gideon, the most important of the major deliverer figures in the biblical book of Judges (Judg 6–8; Deuteronomistic History). The core of the tradition is the anecdote about how Gideon succeeded in cunningly driving out a military encampment of the Midianites that had intruded into the Plain of Jezreel: he surrounded the camp with his men, all blew their horns ¶ and smashed jugs simultaneously. The Midianites believed that they were facing a superior enemy and fled. Gideon pursued them beyond the Jordan and captured their leaders Zebah and …
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Religion Past and Present
Gierke, Anna von
(184 words)
[German Version] (Mar 14, 1874, Wrocław [Ger. Breslau], Poland – Apr 3, 1943, Berlin), youth/social worker. From 1894, an aid in the shelter for young women, Verein Jugendheim, in Berlin, she served as its superintendent from 1898, and from 1908 as the chairperson of the organization. Gierke promoted age-appropriate care for Berlin school children in day care institutions, arguing that shelters along with schools and parents should correct deficiencies in education and health care. For young women dismissed from school, Gierke demanded a home economics education. ¶ Gierke worked f…
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Religion Past and Present
Gieseler, Johann Karl Ludwig
(275 words)
[German Version] (Mar 3, 1792, Petershagen, Minden – Jul 8, 1854, Göttingen). Shaped and nurtured at Halle by A.H. Niemeyer and J.A.L. Wegscheider, Gieseler worked from 1812 to 1819, interrupted by the Wars of Liberation, in higher education; in 1819, he became professor at Bonn, in 1831 in Göttingen. He established his academic reputation with a monograph on the synoptic question (1818), proposing that all the synoptics utilized an essentially uniform oral tradition (tradition hypothesis). Active as an editor of journals (
ThStKr) since his time in Bonn, he was also intensel…
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Religion Past and Present
Giessen, University of
(627 words)
[German Version] The University of Giessen is one of the post-Reformation/confessional institutions. As a reaction to the introduction of the Reformed confession in the Hessian University of Marburg (Marburg, University of), Count Ludwig V of ¶ Hessen-Darmstadt established a Lutheran
Paedagogium in Giessen in 1605 which was elevated to university status in 1607 by imperial privilege (Ludwigs-Universität,
Ludoviciana). Owing to claims of traditional and legal succession, it was moved in 1624/1625 to occupied Marburg during the Thirty Years War and reop…
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Religion Past and Present
Gifftheil, Ludwig Friedrich
(199 words)
[German Version] (baptized Oct 18, 1595, Heidenheim, Württemberg – 1661, Amsterdam) was an apocalyptic critic of church and society. As a surgeon, he became acquainted with the horror of the Thirty Years War and sent his anti-war pamphlets to all powers participating in the war. Expelled from Württemberg in 1624, he led a vagrant life that brought him to Turkey, England and Holland. Owing to his impetuous disposition, he had disputes not only with representatives of the church, but also with fello…
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Religion Past and Present
Gift
(1,063 words)
[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Systematic Theology
I. Religious Studies In the religious studies context, gifts are usually not understood in terms of a present, and such an idea is ¶ based on a misunderstanding (M. Douglas, preface to Mauss, VII). Each gift is one part within a system of reciprocities between those giving and those receiving at the time. Participants in this system may belong to various levels: closer or more distant groups or individuals among the living of varying generations, the dead (ancest…
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Religion Past and Present
Gilbertines
(159 words)
[German Version] The Gilbertines were founded c. 1131 by Gilbert of Sempringham (died Feb 4, 1189) to provide religious women with the opportunity for a contemplative life. After the Cistercians rejected the incorporation of the rapidly growing community in 1147, Gilbert created a form of organization in double monasteries guided by various monastic traditions: the strictly cloistered nuns (Enclosure) followed the Benedictine rule (Benedict, Rule of), their pastors as canons, the Augustine rule (A…
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Religion Past and Present