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1. Term From Thales, the Greeks believed that “all things are full of gods” (Aristotle, De anima 1.5, 411a8–9; Aristotelianism). Only in concrete cases, however, did they call this idea polytheism (e.g., Aeschylus Supp.  424 mentions polytheos hedra, “seat of many gods,” for an altar; Greek Religion). Neither they nor other peoples made of polytheism an abstract concept. The Jews did so when, distancing themselves from polytheism, they criticized the lovers of polytheïa (Philo De mut. nom.  205). So too did Christians, for whom Orpheus taught the Greek polytheotēs (thus the asc…

1. Term Monotheism is a religious, theological, or philosophical position whose normative feature is recognition of only one God. Those who use the term “monotheism” in either confession or research are differentiating between different views of God. Like other isms, this term also tends to denote a movement, sphere, or epoch in which, whether the respective inhabitants or contemporaries use the term or not, a specific outlook or opinion prevails. Whether those who define their own position claim the validity of t…

¶ “Theogony” (Gk. theogonia, “birth of the gods”), the title of an epic poem by Hesiod (ca. 700 b.c.), refers to the origin of the gods. Many of the almost 300 gods whose names and qualities Hesiod gives in this work make up the world, so that a theogony is also a cosmogony. When the world is constituted, it is ruled by the great gods (Uranus, Cronus, Zeus). Hesiod makes use here of the concept that northern Syria and Asia Minor employed: a succession of gods instead of a genealogical list or an anthropomorphizin…

1. Founder Abhay Charan De (1896–1977), founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), was born in Calcutta, where he received university training in philosophy, English, and economics. In 1922 he came in contact with the Vishnu Gaudiya Mission (Hinduism 3.3), whose founder, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura (d. 1937), had prepared the way for the worldwide work of the 32d guru in a succession that had begun with the prehistorical avatars, or “descents,” of the gods (see 3). In 1933 De became a formal disciple of B…

1. History The Yezidis are a religious community in the Syrian district of Simʿān and across to Ossetia. Though not unlike Iraqi Arabs, their Kurdish dialect (Kurds) and distinctive tradition make them a distinct ethnic group. Around 1900 they numbered up to 300,000, but after World War I only 100,000 and by 1983 only around 20,000. In 2005 estimates of the number of Yezidis worldwide ranged up to several times this reduced figure, mainly in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Armenia, with a sizable group in Germany as guest workers. Yezidis call themselves Dāsin (pl. Dawāsin; Syr. Dasnīyē), after a…

1. Religious History 1.1. Variety of Terms and Views The word “soul” (cf. Ger. Seele) embraces the meanings of many other words with a history of their own. These meanings differ not only in ancient cultures but also among themselves. They stand for various human experiences, of which we no longer know whether they were as numerous as the terms used—but do know that historically they represent basic realities of existence. A common feature of these realities is that they are regarded as essentially different from the materials of which we and nature and our world are composed. We may divide …

1. Names Kurdistan, originally a term for “steppe country” and later for the land of the Kurds, was the term given by the Seljuk government of Iran (1092–1194) to a region that must have stretched from between Lakes Van (in present-day western Turkey) and Urmia (in eastern Iran) south to the Zagros Mountains (extending along the Iran-Iraq border). The basic word came to be used, as in Arabic, as a collective and denoted “tiller of the field” or “shepherd.” Today some scholars identify the Kurds as the Karduchoi of Xenophon’s Anabasis (3.5.15–4.1.11), a group living east of the Upper T…

1. General 1.1. Words and Concept The English words “sacrifice” and “offering” come from Lat. sacrificium and offero. Ger. Opfer goes back to Lat. operari, “be active.” The terms suggest an active relation to the reality concerned in the different religions. The various ways in which the relation is described may thus affect the concept. Even though a distinction might arise between real and symbolic sacrifice, sacrifice is always at the heart of religion and widely influences human conduct in other spheres as well. In religious history we may un…

Meaning “way of blessedness” in Sanskrit, Ānanda Mārga is the name of a Hindu reforming movement that was started in 1955 at Jamalpur, in Bihar, India. Its originator was Prabhata Ranjana Sarkar (b. 1921), who called himself Shree Ānanda-murti, and to whom his followers attached a further title “shree.” With the Ānanda he thought of himself as a member of the classical Vedanta triad sat (being), chit (thought), and nanda (bliss), which, as attributes of Atman or Brahman, compose the true nature of humanity and the univers…

“Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh” is the guru name of Rajneesh Chandra Mohan (1931–81). It combines with the given name “Rajneesh” the appellative “Bhagwan,” commonly used in India for gods, demigods, and holy men (from Skt. bhag(a)van, meaning “reverend” or “divine”), and the title “Shree.” Rajneesh was born in Kuchwada (Madhya Pradesh), India, on December 11, 1931. On March 21, 1953, he experienced the “other reality,” which his philosophy enabled him to interpret as God, truth, dharma, tao, and so forth. He deepened the experience by techniqu…

Afghanistan became a separate kingdom under Aḥmad Shāh Durrāni (ruled 1747–73), who, as an officer of Nāder Shāh of Persia, left the army and was able to build his small Pashtuni state on the subjection of various ethnic groups in northeast Iran and central Asia. About 90 percent of the present-day population are rural peasants or nomads. Approximately 78 percent belong to the Sunni branch of Islam, 20 percent are Shiites, and 1 percent are Ismailis. The rest consist primarily of Hindus, Si…

1. Term The prophets of Israel with their criticism of Canaanite worship, as well as the philosophers of antiquity with their attacks on Greek myths, held aloof from what we now call religion, an attitude that is essential in the study of religion. The same applies to Islamic geographers, Christian missionaries, European explorers, and students of mythology from the days of the Enlightenment, also of comparative linguistics from the days of Romanticism, especially when new knowledge was brought to light. The whole complex of what might be called religion in the form of a secta, lex, latr…

Yoga, the Vedic term for “exertion,” “strain,” or “venture” (related to Gk. zygon and Lat. iugum, “yoke”), is a technical term used in various senses. 1. In a less technical sense yoga has to do with forms of trance (Ecstasy), asceticism, and meditation¶ . Two or three such rituals reach back to the end of the second century b.c. in southern Asia. Then in a more crystallized sense we find jñānayoga, bhaktiyoga, and karmayoga (yoga through the ways of knowledge, surrender/devotion, and action) in the Bhagavad Gita, and the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali (lived between 2d cent. b.c. and 2d cent. a.d.).…

1. Cultures that have loanwords from Lat. visio (a seeing, view) often use them for visionary hallucinations. Such a vision, which takes place when the person is awake, is not a dream. Psychokinetic phenomena may accompany it, and it may include paranormal information. If the visionary is religiously inclined, it might seem to contain a revelation. The vision itself is not a revelation and must be interpreted. The visionary might be the interpreter, or some other person might be. Interpretation imparts mystical knowledge, falling between the rational and the occult (Occultism). 2. A …

1. Basic Considerations 1.1. Distinctions No systematic hermeneutical examination of miracles in the larger sense can avoid articulating exactly which elements are to be addressed as objective facts and which as part of the concept itself. Because arguments on the two sides can no longer be adduced in support of one another, the modes in which the two aspects are examined necessarily also diverge. The remaining conceptual content prompts even further distinctions, depending on whether one is dealing with a simple or a complex concept. Only simple concepts mu…

Cyprus (Heb. Kittim, after the harbor Citium, mentioned often by the Phoenicians and the site of present-day Larnaca), from the Greek “Kypros” (etymology unknown), is a Mediterranean island 100 km. (60 mi.) west of the Syrian coast and 65 km. (40 mi.) south of the coast of Turkey. 1. Late Paleolithic and Neolithic settlement of Cyprus before the fourth millennium b.c. points to close relations with the Near East. During the third and second millennia the Copper and Bronze Age of Egypt, Crete, Mycenae, Syria, and Anatolia made Cyprus, with its rich m…

(Ἀμ(μ)αθοῦς; Am(m)athoûs). [German version] [1] Fortress to the east of the Jordan A fortress to the east of the Jordan, tell 'ammatā, which towers over the north bank of the wādi raǧib and has control over three roads, one of which runs close beside it on the west towards Pella ( ṭabaqāt faḥil) (Eus. Onom. 22,24) [1; 2]. Ceramics found here have so far shown no evidence of either pre-Hellenistic settlement or Cypriot imports [3. 44; 4. 301]. After 98 BC it was taken by  Alexander Iannaeus from the tyrant Theodorus of Philadelphia and razed to th…

[German version] The term anti-Semitism, coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr, wrongly assumes the existence of a uniform race speaking the Semitic languages. It also integrates into the ideology, which underlies this error and is expressed in this self-characterization, earlier (Christian) religious, political, social and cultural motifs of anti-‘Semitic’ behaviour in the 19th cent. It glances over the fact that such behaviour was not directed against Semites in general but exclusively against Jews. Th…

(Ἡλιάδης; Hēliádēs). [German version] [1] Officer of Alexander [13] Balas Officer of  Alexander [13] Balas, whom he betrayed after the defeat he suffered in 145 BC at Oenoparas at the hands of Ptolemy VI and  Demetrius [8] II (Jos. Ant. Iud. 13,4,8), with another officer and a north Syrian Bedouin sheikh, in exchange for securities offered by the victors, and helped to murder (Diod. Sic. 32,10,1). Colpe, Carsten (Berlin) [German version] [2] Sisters of Helios see  Helios

[German version] This item can be found on the following maps: Pompeius (Aramaic bēt ṣaydā, ‘house of the catch’ or ‘of the booty’). Place in Gaulanitis ( Batanaea) on Lake Genezareth (in today's plain el-ibṭeḥa) east of the confluence with the Jordan; established as a city in 3 BC by the tetrarch  Herodes Philippus and named Iulias after Augustus' daughter (Jos. Ant. 18,2,1; Bell. 2,9,1; probably today's et-tell), only 2 kms further inland), but in all four gospels mentioned with an Aramaic name (probably just the fishing settlement on the lake, today's ḫirbet el-araǧ). B./Iulias was…