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[German Version] (Apr 29, 1896, Brunswick – May 16, 1983, Calw), missiologist. Rosenkranz began his studies in 1919 at Marburg, where he studied theology and history of religions (R. Otto), after which he spent a few years as a pastor. In 1931 the Ostasien-Mission (OAM) in Heidelberg – the successor (after a name change in 1929) to the Allgemeiner Evangelisch-Protestantischer Missionsverein, founded in 1884 in Weimar as a nondenominational (liberal) missionary society for work in China and Japan – appointed him superintendent. There he received his doctorate in 1935 with a thesis on Der…

[German Version] derives from Arabic ʾāda, “the constantly recurring,” custom, tradition, customary law. The term spread with Islam; in its Persian form, ʾādat, it came to designate pre-Islamic legal traditions, as well as cultural and even religious traditions, especially in Southeast Asia. In other Islamic areas, the equivalent term is ʾurf. Adat is rooted in the original worldview of the peoples of the Malayo-Polynesian cultural sphere, including the mountain peoples of Taiwan. Thus it …

[German Version] I. Non-Christian Religions – II. Christianity A presidential republic since 1945, Indonesia is an archipelagic state in Southeast Asia (13,677 islands, 6,044 of them inhabited). Divided into 27 provinces, it comprises the Malay Peninsula, the Greater Sunda Islands (Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi [formerly Celébes]), the Lesser Sunda Islands (including Bali), the Moluccas, and Papua (western New Guinea; Irian Jaya 1969–2002). Its capital is Jakarta. Its population was 234 million in 2007. Some 360 ethnic groups are represented, including 3% Chinese. Indones…

[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. Missiology I. History of Religion 1. The Buddha and his Teaching. Although the biographical dates of the historical Buddha are uncertain, scholars generally put them at 563–483 bce. The Buddha understood his own teaching as a path to redemption, i.e., to liberation from the wretched cycle of rebirths. This teaching (Dharma) is often expressed in a medical…