The second edition of a resource that is considered a standard reference in the field. Presents a cross-cultural approach that emphasizes religion's role within everyday life and as a unique experience from culture to culture. The original 2,750 entries have been retained, many heavily updated, and approximately 600 entirely new articles have been added by an international team of scholars and contributors. See eBook version above.

Examines the key sacred texts and foundational documents of the world's primary religions, from ancient times to the present, providing researchers with a fresh perspective on how critical religious texts have influenced both the past and the present. Three-volume set includes one hundred primary source texts. eBook version also available.

Written by an expert team of 80 international and multi-faith contributors, the volume contains over 8,200 entries and an original and in-depth introductory essay. Readers will find information on: Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, and much more. Includes over 500 entries on everything from Cargo Cults and the New Age movement to Rastafarians and Soka Gakkai along with over 1,000 entries covering the sacred writings of religions worldwide, covering architecture, sacred sites, festivals, etc.

With over 3,000 authors from 88 countries, this multi-volume set offers an unparalleled breadth of subject matter in theological and biblical studies for all levels of users. Interdisciplinary articles cover a wide range of topics from history, archaeology, liturgy, law, bible, music, visual arts, politics, social sciences, natural sciences, ethics, and philosophy, with hundreds of new entries on Eastern religions and other religious subjects. Global scope is conveyed through 15,000 entries and 8 million words, including short definitions and cross-references.

Beliefs, cults, gods, and ritual practices that arose and developed in Mediterranean religions, of Egypt, Anatolia and the Near East, Mesopotamia, Iran, Greece, and the Roman world, from the third millennium BCE to the fourth century CE.

Comprehensive, multi-volume work details the history, development, organization, current status, and contact information for major organizations associated with various living world faiths.

Includes almost 800 full-color images along with roughly 350 essays that examine a given symbol's psychic background and how it evokes psychic processes and dynamics. Etymological roots, the play of opposites, paradox and shadow, the ways in which diverse cultures have engaged a symbolic image—all these aspects are treated in a variety of cultural contexts.

Explores the genre of myths, folktales, legends, and other traditional literature written from 5000 B.C.E. to the modern era, including Greek, Mesopotamian, Iraqi, African, Roman, North American, Indian, Afghani, Japanese, European, South American, Serbian, Irish, Chinese, and Egyptian myths and folktales. Articles include a contextual overview, summary, an in-depth analysis, and bibliography. Also available above as an eBook.

Offers a fully rounded guide to all aspects of religious life and thought in ancient Greece and Rome, including Greek mythologies and Roman festivals with an emphasis on topics such as Greek and Roman religious places, monuments, authors and texts, religious organization, imagery, divination, astrology, and magic.

Eschatology is the branch of theology that deals with the final consummation of all things. Through centuries of Christian thought-from the early Church fathers through the Middle Ages and the Reformation-eschatological issues were of the utmost importance. In other religions, too, similar concerns were central to the shaping of the beliefs, practices, and identities of believers. Note: This title in circulating collection.

Comprehensive multi-volume reference set on all known aspects of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman cults and rituals. from the period from Homeric times (1000 B.C.) to late Roman times (A.D. 400). Includes the dynamic elements of cult: divination; prayer, gestures, and acts of prayer; gestures and acts of veneration; oaths; maledictions; profanation; magic; and consecration and foundation rites. Also describes the static elements of cult—cult places and their depictions in antiquity and the personnel of cults. Entries list the epigraphical and literary sources cited and reference ancient iconographical documents related to the topic.

Chapters by twenty scholars on monasticism, the Coptic language, Coptic literature, Christian Arabic literature, the objects and documents of daily life, magic, art and architecture, and textiles, as well as the history of the Coptic Church, its liturgy, theology, and music.

Includes more than 21,000 signed entries on Jewish life, culture, history and religion, written by Israeli, American and European subject specialists. Expanding the scope and relevance of this invaluable set are more than 2,600 brand-new entries, many focusing on gender issues and New World geographic areas of the United States, Canada and Latin America. Even more clarity and substance is incorporated through the updating of some 11,000 entries across all topics. Extensive cross-referencing and large subject index augmented with place-name lists, a chronology, a Hasidism chart, lists of newspapers and periodicals, and more than 600 maps, charts, tables, photographs, illustrations and other visuals. eBook version available above.

Provides a full and reliable account of Judaism, beginning in ancient Israelite times and extending to our own day. About Judaism, the religion, its diverse history, literature, beliefs past and present, observances and practices, and place in the context of society and culture, this is what we know. All principal topics required for the systematic description of Judaism as a religion the world view, way of life, theory of the social entity constituted by the faithful are addressed here.

Essay-length and short entries written by a team of leading religious experts, offering the most comprehensive guide to the cultural and intellectual world of Eastern Orthodox Christianity currently available in English. Explores the major traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy in detail, including the Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavic, Romanian, and Syriac churches from Late Antiquity to the present, encompassing history, theology, liturgy, monasticism, sacramentology, canon law, philosophy, folk culture, architecture, archaeology, martyrology, hagiography, along with a substantial prosopography. eBook also available.

Comprehensive multi-volume overview of the history, doctrines, and teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, including important people and associated topics. Print version includes supplements through 1996. See eBook version for latest revisions and supplements.

Focuses on recent and changing rituals in the Jewish community that have come to the fore since the 1997 publication of the First Edition. Includes the work of nearly 200 internationally renowned scholars with updated bibliographies, biographies of 20th-century individuals who have shaped the recent thought and history of Judaism, and an index with alternate spellings of Hebrew terms. Covers more than three millennia of Jewish religious thought, custom, law, and practice, from traditional approaches to Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and post-denominational Judaism.

Covers the entire range of religious and social changes associated with the Reformation in sixteenth-century Europe, encompassing not only issues of church polity and theology but also developments in politics, economics, demographics, art and literature. This broadly cast, interdisciplinary definition allows for a comprehensive social and intellectual history of early modern Europe. See eBook version above.

Features 32 authoritative essays on a wide variety of topics dealing comparatively with Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as with the interactions between the adherents of these religions throughout history.

Volume I (‘Reassessing Confucian Traditions’) covers Confucianism in History and the focus of Volume II is on ‘Reinterpreting Confucian Ideas’. Volume III is titled ‘Reconstructing Confucian Ethics’, while the final volume in the collection brings the best scholarship on ‘Reappraising Confucian Ideals'. Note: this set not in reference.

Combines alphabetically-arranged articles about the contents of the Qur'ān in an encyclopaedic dictionary of qur'ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history, and exegesis with extended essays on the most important themes and subjects within qur'ānic studies. With nearly 1000 entries in 5 volumes, the EQ is the first comprehensive, multi-volume reference work on the Qur'ān to appear in a Western language. A separate index to the set is available. Volumes 2, 3, and 4 available in reference collection.

Features twenty-four chapters on Hindu faith and culture by leading Hinduism scholars offering a general overview of the history, philosophy, and practice of one of the world's major religious traditions. Specific coverage ranges from the devotional texts of the Vedas and Ramayana to current perspectives on dharma and kama, temple architecture, sacred food, ritual, caste, cosmic philosophy, daily practice, and history and modernization.

Comprehensive overview with more than 5,000 entries totaling over a million words. Covers terms from all of the canonical Buddhist languages and traditions: Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Covers Confucianism as a whole, in 1235 entries on its history, key thinkers, doctrines, schools, rituals, sacred places and terminology, and the modern Confucianism in today's China and other Eastern Asian countries.

Traces the historical development of religious traditions in America, following both their transplantation from other parts of the world and the inauguration of new religious movements on the continent of North America.

Provides a comprehensive examination of the history of the religions of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world. Essays in two volumes have a broad reach, covering the ancient Near East and Mediterranean, extending from the Bronze Age into the late Roman period and incorporating a wide spectrum of textual and material evidence. The regional and historical orientations of the essays will enable readers to see how a religious tradition or movement assumed a distinctive local identity, as well as to understand how each tradition developed within its broader regional context. Supplemented with maps, illustrations, and detailed indexes.

First authoritative English-language reference work expressly dedicated to early Christian art and archaeology. Coverage includes architecture, epigraphy, mosaics, and textiles. Has maps, illustrations, and glossary.

A comprehensive collection of essays, discourses, ideas, and concepts in African religion, including almost 500 entries covering a wide range of topics, including African response to the sacred, spirituality, ritual, initiation, taboos and ethics, sacred spaces and objects, and cosmological narratives. It also provides new metaphors, figures of speech, reasoning modes, etymologies, analogies, and cosmogonies.

Signed articles provide a global overview of modern spiritual and religious groups, communities, and practices.

An essential reference work covering the fascinating relationship between religion and nature. Critically explores the relationships among human beings, their environments, and the religious dimensions of life. This wide-ranging work — chronologically, geographically, religiously — includes 1,000 entries from 520 international contributors. Also see eBook version above.

Explores the complex relationship between religion and war, including religion as a source of conflict and the role war holds in the development and spread of religion. This interdisciplinary A-Z reference delves into a variety of historical and global issues, including warrior cults, genocides, Northern Ireland, Holy War, assassins, religious feminism and war, Taliban, pacificism, and the Holy Roman Empire. In 130 articles, the volume provides authoritative historical and cross-cultural information that will help readers understand war and other forms of political violence in the major religions of the world. It also covers violent religious conflict in different regions, particular religious movements, and religious wars.

Broad, interdisciplinary coverage examines how religious history and practices are woven into the political, social, cultural, and historical landscape of North America. This authoritative reference work explains the origins, development, adaptation, influence, and interrelations of the many faiths practiced, including major world religions, new religious sects, cults, and religious movements that originated or had an influence in the United States.

Includes coverage of the human sciences (behaviourism, semiotics), ecology (biological diversity, nuclear energy), genetics (gene patenting, human genome project), philosophy (causation, humanism, teleology), technology (biotechnology, virtual reality), and religious thought (God, sin, spirit). It picks up those areas, like the neurosciences, computer science, and cosmology that lie on the borderlands between science and belief.

Features 450 articles by an international community of scholars on the Dead Sea Scrolls--their history, relevance, meaning, and the controversies that surround them. The collection of 800 manuscripts is older than any other collection of manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures by almost one thousand years. Includes contributions from 100 distinguished scholars representing diverse traditions and fields of learning on and the historical, archaeological, linguistic, and religious contexts of these texts. Also see eBook version above.

The work of 150 scholars, this interreligious, interracial, and multicultural encyclopedia features more than 145 long essays on major themes. Articles focus on institutions, movements, and ideas, with helpful biographical sketches and illustrations.

Covers Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern, Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century philosophy of religion.

Covers the cultural history of biblical texts, themes, characters, images, and the Bible itself in the literary, visual, and musical arts. 148 entries are organized primarily according to specific literary, visual, and musical artists, types of works, and periods. Includes bibliographies and suggested readings.