Theological findings on apocryphal writings: Could they foster conflict resolution? Yes they could, say scholars at the Regensburg Centre for Advanced Studies Beyond Canon_.
A new Indology project is focussing on a hitherto little-researched period of ancient Indian history: the time of the transition from Buddhism to Hinduism in the northwest of the country.
Magical texts from Egypt in Coptic script and language are at the centre of a research project at the University of Würzburg. They have now been collected and scientifically annotated for the first time in a 600-page book.
How did local people get organized in the ancient world? This is the subject of a new research project at the University of Würzburg involving Theology, Philology and History.
Prof. Dr Elisabeth Naurath, a protestant religious education teacher and project leader of a research fellowship at the Jakob-Fugger-Zentrum of the University of Augsburg, has been awarded an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership. Together with international partners, it aims to develop models for integrating learnings from interreligious studies and environmental ethics into the education of religious education teachers from various religions.
Magical texts of the ancient Near East, Egypt and neighbouring regions are the focus of a new research group at the University of Würzburg. The German Research Foundation (DFG) is providing approx. 3.5 million euros for the first phase.
The situation of the Uyghur population in the Chinese region of Xinjiang has been largely unclear since 2017. Researchers are now seeking an approach using remote ethnography methods as part of an EU project.
It is an inconspicuous book, hardly larger or holding more pages than a paperback, that has been in the stacks of the University Library at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) until recently. Telling from the worn edges of its pages, it looks as if the book in Hebrew script was picked up often. Despite its condition, the book is a valuable object – not because of the material value of this prayer book “Sidur Sefat Emet”, which is still widely used in Germany today. What makes it a treasure is a short handwritten note in the envelope: “Wolf Grünebaum, Sulzbürg i. Obpf, 4. Mai 1926“.
At first glance, it is merely a printed textbook for religious education in a foreign language. But the genesis of the 1903 edition of "Kurze biblische Geschichte für die unteren Schuljahre der katholischen Volksschule" (short biblical history for the lower years of Catholic elementary school), published in the language of the indigenous Mapuche, provides special insights into the time of missionary work by the Bavarian Capuchins in Chile. A digital re-edition project implemented by the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt KU, which has now come to a conclusion, focuses especially on the ambivalent translation and dissemination history of the work.
In contrast to developments in Western Europe, religion continues to gain importance globally - also with regard to political processes of recent times. Even in the current Ukraine conflict, religion plays a role after the country’s Orthodox Church was split with the nation’s independence in the early 1990s. Knowledge about Orthodox Churches and Churches of the Christian Orient in the Middle East, however, remains scattered around the world.