The new and impressively comprehensive Brill Dictionary of Religion addresses religion as an element of daily life and public discourse. Richly illustrated and with more than 500 entries, the dictionary is a multi-media reference source on the many and various forms of religious commitment. It is unusual in that it not only addresses the different theologies and doctrinal declarations of the official institutionalized religions but it also gives equal weight and consideration to a multiplicity of other religious phenomena. People perceive and express religious experiences in many...

Untersuchungen zur Adaption astrologischer Diskurse in Judentum und Christentum der Spatantike. Aus dem Inhalt: Astrologie und Priestertheologie in Qumran - Die Astrologie im Lichte der judischen Geschichtsschreibung - Die astrologischen Zeugnisse der "zwischentestamentlichen" Literatur - Der rabbinische Diskurs - Die Astrologie im christlichen Kanon - Astrologie im gnostischen Kontext - Manichaische Astrologie - Antiastrologische Diskurse im zentristischen Christentum.

In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie both the identities within and the controversy about esoteric currents in European history. From Jewish and Christian kabbalah through heretical discourse and interconfessional polemics in early modernity to the legitimization of esoteric identity in modern culture, the 12 chapters, accompanied by an editors' introduction, provide a cornucopia of relevant cases that are interpreted in a framework...