Ancestor Worship: Did you mean...?

Hosea is listed as the first of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. He was active in the 8th century BCE and his ministry extended over 60 years, from King Jeroboam II (787-747 BCE) to King Hoseah (731-722 BCE). He was one of the...

The Magi are the visitors who came to Bethlehem to worship the newly-born Jesus of Nazareth in the gospel of Matthew (2:1-2). 'Magi' is a transliteration of the Greek magos from old Persian magus ("powerful") as a reference to the Zoroastrian...

Claude Brousson (l. 1647-1698) was a prolific writer and famous preacher after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 when Protestantism was outlawed in France. He self-exiled to Lausanne and Holland and returned to France to preach...

The legacy of the ancient Romans – from both the time of the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) and the time of the Roman Empire (27 BCE - 476 CE) – exerted a significant influence on succeeding cultures and is still felt around the world in the...

Ghosts (obake or yurei) appear in ancient Japanese folklore and literature, usually in moral tales designed to both warn and entertain but they were also an important element of ancestor worship. If the deceased members of a family were not...

The nativity of Jesus of Nazareth is told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. In Christian theology, the existence of two nativity stories by two different writers provided a prooftext for the historicity of the event. However, the two versions...

Ninhursag (also Ninhursaga) is the Sumerian mother goddess and one of the oldest and most important in the Mesopotamian pantheon. She is known as the Mother of the Gods and Mother of Men for her part in creating both divine and mortal entities...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes...

The Inca civilization flourished in ancient Peru between c. 1400 and 1533 CE. The Inca Empire eventually extended across western South America from Quito in the north to Santiago in the south. It was the largest empire ever seen in the Americas...

During the period of early Judaism (6th century BCE - 70 CE), Judean religion began to develop ideas which diverged significantly from 10th-to-7th-centuries BCE Israelite and Judean religion. In particular, this period marks a significant...