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Blasphemy (Gk., blasphemía, ‘abuse’ e.g., verbal; also ‘abuse of God’) is disparagement of God. The status of blasphemy is indicated in Jewish and Roman law themselves. It was adopted by the medieval imperial and canonical codes from Justinian's Novels 77 (c. 540 CE). The concept is marked by the European legal tradition, and, to a lesser degree, by the monotheistic notion of God. Its generalization is therefore not unproblematic. For…

The word ‘holy,’ or ‘sacred,’ denotes an area completely bounded off from the everyday (‘profane’), and simply never to be available to the human being. Accordingly, special rules are in force for dealing with sacred objects, buildings, and persons. A type of theory of the Holy attributes the latter to other quantities, for example, sociologically to society (Durkheim), or to aggression (Girard) in anthropological sociology. On the other hand, the Holy can be conceived as a category of its own, incapable of reduction, as in the pheno…

1. The word ‘taboo’ comes from the Polynesian tápu and denotes, on one hand, a prohibition by which an object is withdrawn from everyday use, and on the other, the object itself. A taboo can pertain to …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies Piety (recently often also “spirituality”) is understood, first, as the forms of expression of lived religiosity; research in this area is particularly the subject of folklore studies and church history for the idividual, secondly, piety has to do with particular qualities of feeling, such as reverence, with which the psychology of religion (Gruehn, Sundén) is concerned. Objective and subjective components are combined in various ways in the historical developme…

[German Version] I. Alchemy denotes a particular craft knowledge used first of all for transforming metals; however, its goal was not only the perfecting of the material but also of the human being (e.g. healing or immortality). The origins of Western alchemy are found in Antiquity; in the earliest literary sources (3rd cent. …

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[German Version] I. Science of Religion – II. Philosophy – III. Practical Theology I. Science of Religion A functional analysis describes the parts of a system on the basis of their function for the whole. Pioneered by É. Durkheim, functionalism was developed in Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology by B. Malinowski and Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, primarily as a heuristic framework for ethnographic observation, to be distinguished from theory-driven evolutionism. In sociology, by contrast, it …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Church History – VI. Dogmatics and Ethics I. Religious Studies Humility is an attitude of conscious abasement (Humiliation) and submission. Some modes of expressing humility, such as postures or gestures, can be traced to biological roots; others are conventional, for example a “humble glance” or foot washing. In many cases we encounter an inversion of what is culturally normal, for example nakedness in the poverty (IV) movements of the Middle Ages. Basically, a distinction must be made between ritualized humility (Rite and ritual) and the virtue of humility. Ritualized humility is a temporary reversal of the ordinary situation. In an initiation ritual of the African Ndembu, the future village chief must allow himself to be insulted without offering any defense (Turner, 97ff.). A Roman Catholic episcopal procession signalizes ¶ humility by its contrast to the Roman triumphal processions: the bishop walks at the end, not in the first third, of the procession, like the v…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies As with other divine attributes, the wrath of God (cf. Wrath/Anger) is an anthropomorphism that is encountered in iconography (I; e.g. of Thangkas [ …

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[German Version] Divine jealousy is especially evident in Greek mythology (ϕϑόνος ϑεῶν/ phthónos theōn) and is a psychological and anthropomorphic character…

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[English Version] I. ReligionswissenschaftlichWie andere Eigenschaften Gottes ist der Z.G. (vgl. Zorn) ein Anthropomorphismus, der sich in der Ikonographie (: I.; z.B. Thangkas [tʾan˙ Ka] in Tibet), aber v.a. in der Mythologie vieler Rel. findet und dort zu diversen Verwicklungen des Geschehens führt. In der griech. Mythologie z.B. schickt der von Prometheus hintergangene Zeus im Z. den Menschen die Büchse der Pandora und bringt so das Übel in die Welt.Je nach Situation kann der Z.G. Willkür oder Berechenbarkeit der Götter versinnbildlichen und sich für den Men…