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[German Version] Chaldea ( kur Kaldu), the settlement area of the Chaldeans ( lú Kaldayya/ Χαλδαίοι [ Chaldaíoi], כַּשְׁדִים [ kaśdîm]) in southern Mesopotamia. The Chaldeans may be attested already in Middle Assyrian texts. They were organized in tribal states. Whether the Chaldeans were ethnically related to the Arameans (Gen 22:21f.; Jer 35:11; Dan 2:4) or the Arabs, or belonged to a separate semitic group, is unknown. They usurped the throne of Babylon roughly from 780 to 689 bce. The OT refers to the Babylonians only as Chaldeans; Berossus uses both nam…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Historical and Systematic Theology– VI. Practical Theology I. Religious Studies From the perspective of religious studies, blessing and curse are dense, complex terms, hard to summarize in a single concept that would include every religious symbol system. They should not be thought of primarily as opposites but as parallel polyvalent terms that express different forms of religious communication. They represent complex processes that con…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Old Testament – III. Judaism – IV. New Testament – V. Church History – VI. Ethics – VII. Law I. Religious Studies As a solemn affirmation of a statement, an oath takes its religious quality from the underlying belief in the power of words to effect a blessing or curse (Blessing and curse). Therefore the early phenomenology of religion classed oaths with invective, curses, etc. as words of consecration: those who swear oaths identify themselves with their words and are “consecrated” to the power of the oath if it proves false or is not kept. In fact most oaths take the form of a spoken utterance – often form…