Faiths and Pantheons

Faiths and Pantheons PDF

Author: Eric L. Boyd

Publisher:

Published: 2002-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786927593

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This collection details the 30 most important gods in the Forgotten Realms universe and expands upon the profiles of the rest of the deities. Faiths and Pantheons includes all-new prestige classes, feats, spells, and monster templates.

Book of the Righteous 5E

Book of the Righteous 5E PDF

Author: Aaron Loeb

Publisher:

Published: 2017-11-21

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781934547816

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This massive tomes provides more than 20 pick-up-and-play churches, whose organization and beliefs are described in lavish detail. These churches can be used in any campaign setting to bring a whole new level of detail to the religious characters. Plus, for those who don't have a complete cosmology in their game, The Book of the Righteous provides a comprehensive mythology that unifies all of the gods in the book.

Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean

Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean PDF

Author: Erica Ferg

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-01-16

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0429594496

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Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean explores the influence of geography on religion and highlights a largely unknown story of religious history in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the Levant, agricultural communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims jointly venerated and largely shared three important saints or holy figures: Jewish Elijah, Christian St. George, and Muslim al-Khiḍr. These figures share ‘peculiar’ characteristics, such as associations with rain, greenness, fertility, and storms. Only in the Eastern Mediterranean are Elijah, St. George, and al-Khiḍr shared between religious communities, or characterized by these same agricultural attributes – attributes that also were shared by regional religious figures from earlier time periods, such as the ancient Near Eastern Storm-god Baal-Hadad, and Levantine Zeus. This book tells the story of how that came to be, and suggests that the figures share specific characteristics, over a very long period of time, because these motifs were shaped by the geography of the region. Ultimately, this book suggests that regional geography has influenced regional religion; that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are not, historically or textually speaking, separate religious traditions (even if Jews, Christians, and Muslims are members of distinct religious communities); and that shared religious practices between members of these and other local religious communities are not unusual. Instead, shared practices arose out of a common geographical environment and an interconnected religious heritage, and are a natural historical feature of religion in the Eastern Mediterranean. This volume will be of interest to students of ancient Near Eastern religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, sainthood, agricultural communities in the ancient Near East, Middle Eastern religious and cultural history, and the relationships between geography and religion.

Faiths of Eberron

Faiths of Eberron PDF

Author: Jennifer Clarke Wilkes

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780786939343

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Faiths of Eberrondetails established pantheons, secret cults, and other religious organizations of Eberron. It includes new rules material for the player, such as prestige classes, feats, spells, and magic items, while the details on the various organizations give Dungeon Masters many new options for their campaigns. AUTHOR INFORMATION Jennifer Clarke Wilkes is an editor of roleplaying games and miniatures at Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Her previously published credits includeSandstormandSavage Species. Ari Marmell and C.A. Suleiman are freelance writers with extensive credits in the d20 gaming industry. Their published credits includeHeroes of Horror.

Pathfinder Lost Omens

Pathfinder Lost Omens PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2020-03-24

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781640782020

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Test your convictions. In a land without fate and a world too often void of justice, it falls to the gods to make or break the people who call upon them for salvation -- or draw their ire. Swear yourself to the might of the gods and the power of their causes, or reject their offerings to live a life that's yours and yours alone! Lost Omens Gods & Magic offers details on major gods found in the Inner Sea region, including what forms their pleasure or wrath might take. It also presents rules for over a hundred other deities and philosophies so you can find the cause that best fits your convictions and take up weapons and magic in its service!

Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars

Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars PDF

Author: Bruce Lincoln

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-07-09

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0226035166

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Bruce Lincoln is one of the most prominent advocates within religious studies for an uncompromisingly critical approach to the phenomenon of religion—historians of religions, he believes, should resist the preferred narratives and self-understanding of religions themselves, especially when their stories are endowed with sacred origins and authority. In Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars, Lincoln assembles a collection of essays that both illustrates and reveals the benefits of his methodology, making a case for a critical religious studies that starts with skepticism but is neither cynical nor crude. The book begins with Lincoln’s “Theses on Method” and ends with “The (Un)discipline of Religious Studies,” in which he unsparingly considers the failings of uncritical and nonhistorical approaches to the study of religions. In between, Lincoln presents new examinations of problems in ancient religions and relates these cases to larger comparative themes. While bringing to light important features of the formation of pantheons and the constructions of demons, chaos, and the dead, Lincoln demonstrates that historians of religions should take religious things—inspired scriptures, sacred centers, salvific rites, communities graced by divine favor—as the theories of interested humans that shape perception, community, and experiences. As he shows, it is for their terrestrial influence, and not their sacred origins, that religious phenomena merit consideration by the historian. Tackling many questions central to religious study, Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars will be a touchstone for the history of religions in the twenty-first century.

African Religions

African Religions PDF

Author: Jacob K. Olupona

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 0199790582

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This book connects traditional religions to the thriving religious activity in Africa today.

One True God

One True God PDF

Author: Rodney Stark

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2003-04-13

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780691115009

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Western history would be unrecognizable had it not been for people who believed in One True God. There would have been wars, but no religious wars. There would have been moral codes, but no Commandments. Had the Jews been polytheists, they would today be only another barely remembered people, less important, but just as extinct as the Babylonians. Had Christians presented Jesus to the Greco-Roman world as ''another'' God, their faith would long since have gone the way of Mithraism. And surely Islam would never have made it out of the desert had Muhammad not removed Allah from the context of Arab paganism and proclaimed him as the only God. The three great monotheisms changed everything. With his customary clarity and vigor, Rodney Stark explains how and why monotheism has such immense power both to unite and to divide. Why and how did Jews, Christians, and Muslims missionize, and when and why did their efforts falter? Why did both Christianity and Islam suddenly become less tolerant of Jews late in the eleventh century, prompting outbursts of mass murder? Why were the Jewish massacres by Christians concentrated in the cities along the Rhine River, and why did the pogroms by Muslims take place mainly in Granada? How could the Jews persist so long as a minority faith, able to withstand intense pressures to convert? Why did they sometimes assimilate? In the final chapter, Stark also examines the American experience to show that it is possible for committed monotheists to sustain norms of civility toward one another. A sweeping social history of religion, One True God shows how the great monotheisms shaped the past and created the modern world.