MessianismMessianism is the belief in the advent of a messiah who acts as the savior of a group of people. Messianism originated as a Zoroastrianism religious belief and followed to Abrahamic religions, but other religions have messianism-related concepts. Religions with a messiah concept include Judaism (Mashiach), Christianity (Christ), Islam (Isa Masih), Druze faith (Jesus and Hamza ibn Ali), Zoroastrianism (Saoshyant), Buddhism (Maitreya), Wotanism (David Eden Lane), Taoism (Li Hong), and Bábism (He whom God shall make manifest).
Ninety-five ThesesThe Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences is a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, then a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. The Theses is retrospectively considered to have launched the Protestant Reformation and the birth of Protestantism, despite various proto-Protestant groups having existed previously.
ApotheosisApotheosis (, ), also called divinization or deification (), is the glorification of a subject to divine levels and, commonly, the treatment of a human being, any other living thing, or an abstract idea in the likeness of a deity. Before the Hellenistic period, imperial cults were known in Ancient Egypt (pharaohs) and Mesopotamia (from Naram-Sin through Hammurabi). In the New Kingdom of Egypt, all deceased pharaohs were deified as the god Osiris. The architect Imhotep was deified after his death.
Mount of OlivesThe Mount of Olives or Mount Olivet (Har ha-Zeitim; Jabal az-Zaytūn; both lit. 'Mount of Olives'; in Arabic also الطور, Aṭ-Ṭūr, 'the Mountain') is a mountain ridge east of and adjacent to Jerusalem's Old City. It is named for the olive groves that once covered its slopes. The southern part of the mount was the Silwan necropolis, attributed to the elite of the ancient Kingdom of Judah. The western slopes of the mount, those facing Jerusalem, have been used as a Jewish cemetery for over 3,000 years and holds approximately 150,000 graves, making it central in the tradition of Jewish cemeteries.
Apollonius of TyanaApollonius of Tyana (Ἀπολλώνιος; بلينس; अपालुन्यःc. 15 – c. 100 AD) was a first-century Greek philosopher and religious leader from the town of Tyana, Cappadocia in Roman Anatolia, who spent his life travelling and teaching in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. He is a central figure in Neopythagoreanism and was one of the most famous "miracle workers" of his day. His exceptional personality and his mystical way of life, which was regarded as exemplary, impressed his contemporaries and had a lasting cultural influence.
Dying-and-rising deityA dying-and-rising, death-rebirth, or resurrection deity is a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies and is resurrected. Examples of gods who die and later return to life are most often cited from the religions of the ancient Near East. The traditions influenced by them include the Greco-Roman mythology. The concept of a dying-and-rising god was first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer's seminal The Golden Bough (1890). Frazer associated the motif with fertility rites surrounding the yearly cycle of vegetation.
Talent (measurement)The talent (Ancient Greek: τάλαντον, talanton, Latin talentum) was a unit of weight used in the ancient world, often used for weighing gold and silver, but also mentioned in connection with other metals, ivory, and frankincense. In Homer's poems, it is always used of gold and is thought to have been quite a small weight of about , approximately the same as the later gold stater coin or Persian daric. In later times in Greece, it represented a much larger weight, approximately 3000 times as much: an Attic talent was approximately .
Four Horsemen of the ApocalypseThe Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are figures in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of the Bible, a piece of apocalypse literature written by John of Patmos. They are not specifically identified there but subsequent commentary often identifies them as personifications of Death, Famine, War, and Conquest. Revelation 6 tells of a book or scroll in God's right hand that is sealed with seven seals. The Lamb of God/Lion of Judah opens the first four of the seven seals, which summons four beings that ride out on white, red, black, and green horses.
Feeding the multitudeIn Christianity, feeding the multitude comprises two separate miracles of Jesus, reported in the Gospels, in which Jesus used modest resources to feed thousands of followers who had gathered to see him heal the sick. The first miracle, the "Feeding of the 5,000", is the only miracle—aside from the resurrection—recorded in all four gospels (Matthew 14:13–21; Mark 6:31–44; Luke 9:12–17; John 6:1–14). The second miracle, the "Feeding of the 4,000", with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish, is reported in Matthew 15:32–39 and Mark 8:1–9 but not by Luke or John.
CarpocratesCarpocrates of Alexandria (Greek: Καρποκράτης ήταν αλεξανδρινός) was the founder of an early Gnostic sect from the first half of the 2nd century, known as Carpocratians. As with many Gnostic sects, one knows of the Carpocratians only through the writings of the Church Fathers, principally Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement of Alexandria. As these writers strongly opposed Gnostic doctrine, there is a question of negative bias when using this source.