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Intermediate State (Christianity)
In some forms of Christianity, the intermediate state or interim state is a person's existence between death and the universal resurrection. In addition, there are beliefs in a particular judgment right after death and a general judgment or last judgment after the resurrection. It bears resemblance to the Barzakh in Islam. Early Christians looked for an imminent end of the world and many of them had little interest in an interim state between death and resurrection. The Eastern Church admits of such an intermediate state, but refrained from defining it, so as not to blur the distinction between the alternative definitive fates of Heaven and Hell. The Western Church goes differently by defining the intermediate state, with evidence from as far back as the ''Passion of Saint Perpetua, Saint Felicitas, and their Companions'' (203) of the belief that sins can be purged by suffering in an afterlife, and that purgation can be expedited by the intercession of the living. Those in t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious .... It is the Major religious groups, world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in Christianity by country, 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah#Christianity, messiah was Old Testament messianic prophecies quoted in the New Testament, prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testamen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paganism
Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. In the time of the Roman empire, individuals fell into the pagan class either because they were increasingly rural and provincial relative to the Christian population, or because they were not '' milites Christi'' (soldiers of Christ).J. J. O'Donnell (1977)''Paganus'': Evolution and Use ''Classical Folia'', 31: 163–69. Alternative terms used in Christian texts were '' hellene'', '' gentile'', and ''heathen''. Ritual sacrifice was an integral part of ancient Graeco-Roman religion and was regarded as an indication of whether a person was pagan or Christian. Paganism has broadly connoted the " religion of the peasantry". During and after the Middle Ages, the term ''paganism'' was applied to any non-Christian religion, and the term presum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intertestamental Period
The intertestamental period (Protestant) or deuterocanonical period (Catholic and Eastern Orthodox) is the period of time between the events of the protocanonical books and the New Testament. Traditionally, it is considered to cover roughly four hundred years, spanning the ministry of Malachi (c. 420 BC) to the appearance of John the Baptist in the early 1st century AD. It is roughly contiguous with the Second Temple period (516 BC-70 AD) and encompasses the age of Hellenistic Judaism. It is known by some members of the Protestant community as the "400 Silent Years" because it was a span where no new prophets were raised and God revealed nothing new to the Jewish people. Many of the deuterocanonical books, accepted as scripture by the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, were written during this time, as were many pseudepigraphal works, the Biblical apocrypha, the Jewish apocrypha, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. An understanding of the events of the intertestamental period provide ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, label=none) is part of the Abrahamic religions and the '' Frashokereti'' of Zoroastrianism. Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, resulting in the approval of some and the penalizing of others. The concept is found in all the canonical gospels, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew. The Christian tradition is also followed by Islam, where it is mentioned in the 43rd chapter ('' Az-Zukhruf'') of the Quran, according to some interpretations. Christian futurists believe it will follow the resurrection of the dead and the Second Coming of Jesus, while full preterists believe it has already occurred. The Last Judgment has inspired numerous artistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaiah
Isaiah ( or ; he, , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "God is Salvation"), also known as Isaias, was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "the prophet", but the exact relationship between the Book of Isaiah and the actual prophet Isaiah is complicated. The traditional view is that all 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah were written by one man, Isaiah, possibly in two periods between 740 BC and c. 686 BC, separated by approximately 15 years, and that the book includes dramatic prophetic declarations of Cyrus the Great in the Bible, acting to restore the nation of Israel from Babylonian captivity. Another widely held view is that parts of the first half of the book (chapters 1–39) originated with the historical prophet, interspersed with prose commentaries written in the time of King Josiah a hundred years later, and that the remainder of the book dates from immediately before ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th century BC setting. Ostensibly "an account of the activities and visions of Daniel, a noble Jew exiled at Babylon", it combines a prophecy of history with an eschatology (a portrayal of end times) both cosmic in scope and political in focus, and its message is that just as the God of Israel saves Daniel from his enemies, so he would save all Israel in their present oppression. The Hebrew Bible includes Daniel in the '' Ketuvim'' (writings), while Christian biblical canons group the work with the Major Prophets. It divides into two parts: a set of six court tales in chapters 1–6, written mostly in Aramaic, and four apocalyptic visions in chapters 7–12, written mostly in Hebrew; the deuterocanonical books contain three additional sections, the Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three Holy Children, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. The book's influence has resonated through later ages, from the comm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheol
Sheol ( ; he, ''Šəʾōl'', Tiberian: ''Šŏʾōl'') in the Hebrew Bible is a place of still darkness which lies after death. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. Within the Hebrew Bible, there are few – often brief and nondescript – mentions of Sheol, seemingly describing it as a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life. The implications of Sheol within the texts are therefore somewhat unclear; it can be interpreted as either a generic metaphor describing "the grave" into which all humans invariably descend, or, it may be interpreted as representing an actual state of afterlife within Israelite thought. Though such practices are forbidden, the inhabitants of Sheol can, under some circumstances, be summoned by the living, as when the Witch of Endor calls up the spirit of Samuel for Saul. While the Hebr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stephen L Harris
Stephen L. Harris (February 5, 1937 - April 14, 2019) was Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at California State University, Sacramento. He served there ten years as department chair and was named a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. He received his MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University.Harris, Stephen L. Author's Website. July 28, 2009Stephenharrisauthor.com Harris was a member of the American Academy of Religion, a fellow at the Westar Institute, a fellow of the controversial Jesus Seminar, and authored several books on religion, some of which are used in introductory university courses. He also had a strong interest in some geological topics. Harris grew up in western Washington state where the views of Mount Rainier Mount Rainier (), indigenously known as Tahoma, Tacoma, Tacobet, or təqʷubəʔ, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, located in Mount Rainier National Park about south-southeast of Seattle. With a ... and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maccabees
The Maccabees (), also spelled Machabees ( he, מַכַּבִּים, or , ; la, Machabaei or ; grc, Μακκαβαῖοι, ), were a group of Jewish rebel warriors who took control of Judea, which at the time was part of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 167 BCE to 37 BCE, being a fully independent kingdom from about 110 to 63 BCE. They reasserted the Jewish religion, partly by forced conversion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reduced the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism. Etymology The name Maccabee is often used as a synonym for the entire Hasmonean dynasty, but the Maccabees proper were Judas Maccabeus and his four brothers. The name Maccabee was a personal epithet of Judah, and the later generations were not his direct descendants. One explanation of the name's origins is that it derives from the Aramaic ''maqqəḇa'', "the hammer", in recognition of Judah's ferocity in battle. The tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resurrection Of The Dead
General resurrection or universal resurrection is the belief in a resurrection of the dead, or resurrection from the dead ( Koine: , ''anastasis onnekron''; literally: "standing up again of the dead") by which most or all people who have died would be resurrected (brought back to life). Various forms of this concept can be found in Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Samaritanism and Zoroastrian eschatology. Rabbinic Judaism and Samaritanism There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible of people being resurrected from the dead: * The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17–24) * Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32–37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8–16) * A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21) While there was no belief in personal afterlife with reward or punishment i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonconformist (Protestantism)
In English church history, the Nonconformists, also known as a Free Church person, are Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church, the Church of England ( Anglican Church). Use of the term in England was precipitated after the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, when the Act of Uniformity 1662 renewed opposition to reforms within the established church. By the late 19th century the term specifically included other Reformed Christians ( Presbyterians and Congregationalists), plus the Baptists, Brethren, Methodists, and Quakers. The English Dissenters such as the Puritans who violated the Act of Uniformity 1559 – typically by practising radical, sometimes separatist, dissent – were retrospectively labelled as Nonconformists. By law and social custom, Nonconformists were restricted from many spheres of public life – not least, from access to public office, civil service careers, or degrees at univer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indulgences
In the teaching of the Catholic Church, an indulgence (, from , 'permit') is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins". The ''Catechism of the Catholic Church'' describes an indulgence as "a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints". The recipient of an indulgence must perform an action to receive it. This is most often the saying (once, or many times) of a specified prayer, but may also include a pilgrimage, the visiting of a particular place (such as a shrine, church or cemetery) or the performance of specific good works. Indulgences were introduced to allow for the remission of the severe penances of the early church and grant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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