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History of Religion
(1,016 words)

1. According to the view one takes of religious studies, the history of religion is either one department of such studies or it is the main discipline itself. In about 1694 G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716) became the first to differentiate the histoire des religions from church history. In his Natural History of Religion (1757), D. Hume (1711–76) became probably the first to juxtapose critically religion’s “natural history” (terminology adopted by the whole Enlightenment) with the salvation history represented by the church. In French and Italian, for example, the use of the p…

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Colpe, Carsten, “History of Religion”, in: Encyclopedia of Christianity Online. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2211-2685_eco_H215>
First published online: 2011
First print edition: ISBN: 9789004169678, 20080512



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