The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#5901
Shirley Jackson Case
1872 - 1947 (75 years)
Shirley Jackson Case was an historian of early Christianity, and a liberal theologian. He served as dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. Biography Case was born on September 28, 1872, in Hatfield Point, New Brunswick. He received a BA and MA in mathematics from Acadia University. He taught mathematics at the New Hampton Library Institute. In 1904, he obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1908. He was professor of New Testament literature and interpretation at University of Chicago Divinity School until 1925.
Go to Profile#5902
Paul Tillich
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
Paul Johannes Tillich was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian who was one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. Tillich taught at German universities before immigrating to the United States in 1933, where he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago.
Go to Profile#5903
Carl Hermann Kraeling
1897 - 1966 (69 years)
Carl Hermann Kraeling , an American theologian, historian, and archaeologist; born in Brooklyn on March 10, 1897, and died in New Haven on November 14, 1966; he is known for his publications on the synagogue and the Christian chapel of Dura-Europos.
Go to Profile#5904
George Kilpatrick
1910 - 1989 (79 years)
George Dunbar Kilpatrick was an Anglican priest and theologian. He was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1949 to 1977. Life Kilpatrick was born in Coal Creek, British Columbia, Canada.
Go to Profile#5905
Albert Outler
1908 - 1989 (81 years)
Albert Cook Outler was a 20th-century American Methodist historian, theologian, and pastor. He was a professor at Duke University, Yale University, and Southern Methodist University. He was a key figure in the 20th-century ecumenical movement.
Go to Profile#5906
John A. Ryan
1868 - 1945 (77 years)
John Augustine Ryan was an American Catholic priest who was a noted moral theologian and advocate of social justice. Ryan lived during a decisive moment in the development of Catholic social teaching within the United States. The largest influx of immigrants in America's history, the emancipation of American slaves, and the industrial revolution had produced a new social climate in the early twentieth century, and the Catholic Church faced increasing pressure to take a stance on questions of social reform.
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H. A. Hodges
1905 - 1976 (71 years)
Herbert Arthur Hodges was a British philosopher and theologian. He was Professor of Philosophy at Reading University from 1934 to 1969. He was a member of The Moot, the discussion and study group begun by J. H. Oldham. Its purpose was "to continue, in an informal, confidential but serious way, exploration of the relation between church and society and the realisation of Christian ethics in the public sphere." Other members included T. S. Eliot, with whom Hodges corresponded. Eliot suggested to Karl Mannheim that Hodges was closer to Mannheim than others in the Moot, in at least some areas of ...
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W. O. E. Oesterley
1866 - 1950 (84 years)
Rev. William Oscar Emil Oesterley was a Church of England theologian, and professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at King's College, London, from 1926. His many books span a wide range of topics from Bible commentary and Christian doctrine, Judaism and ancient Israel to more general subjects such as Sacred Dance.
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Hans Conzelmann
1915 - 1989 (74 years)
Hans Conzelmann was a Protestant, German theologian and New Testament scholar. Life Conzelmann studied at the universities of Tübingen and Marburg and, after World War II , he became the assistant to Helmut Thielicke at the University of Tübingen. He served at the same time as a pastor and, from 1948, as a religion teacher in a secondary school. In 1951 he submitted his dissertation and, in 1952, his Habilitation at Heidelberg University. He then took a position teaching New Testament at Heidelberg and was called, in 1954, to the University of Zurich, where he was made full professor in 1956.
Go to Profile#5910
Nathan Porges
1848 - 1924 (76 years)
Nathan Porges was a Bohemia and German rabbi. Biography Porges was born in Prostějov in Moravia, then part of the Austrian Empire. He was educated in his native town Prostějov, at the gymnasium of Olomouc, and at the University of Olomouc and the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau . He became successively rabbi at Nakel , Mannheim , Pilsen , Karlovy Vary , and Leipzig; he began officiating in the last city in 1888.
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Elihu Grant
1873 - 1942 (69 years)
Elihu Grant was an American scholar and writer on Palestine. Grant was ordained Methodist minister in 1900, and between 1901 and 1904 he was superintendent of the American Friends Schoolss in Ramallah and Jerusalem. Returning to the US he was a professor of biblical literature at Smith College from 1907 to 1917, and thereafter at Haverford College until his retirement in 1938.
Go to Profile#5912
Otto Eissfeldt
1887 - 1973 (86 years)
Otto Eißfeldt, spelled alternatively Otto Eissfeldt, was a German Protestant theologian, known for his work on the Old Testament and comparative near-east religious history. His magisterial 860-page The Old Testament: An Introduction , giving a detailed literary-critical assessment of the history of the formation of each part of the Old Testament on the basis of the documentary hypothesis, has been called the "best of its kind".
Go to Profile#5913
Arnold Ehrhardt
1903 - 1965 (62 years)
Arnold Anton Traugott Ehrhardt was a German jurist and British theologian. Life Arnold was the son of Oscar Ehrhardt, a professor of surgery, and Martha, née Rosenhain, a school teacher from a Jewish family. He went to school in Königsberg and then studied law at Erlangen, Bonn, Berlin and Königsberg. After the First World War he served in the eastern border force and took part in the conflict with the Spartacists. He took his doctoral degree in 1926 in Königsberg and the following year became an assistant to in Göttingen and took his habilitation in civil and Roman law in 1929 in Freiburg. He lectured at the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
Go to Profile#5914
Peter Craigie
1938 - 1985 (47 years)
Peter Campbell Craigie was a British biblical scholar. Craigie was born in Lancaster and grew up in Edinburgh. He studied successively at the Edinburgh Academy, the Prairie College in Alberta, New College at the University of Edinburgh, St. John's College at the University of Durham, the University of Aberdeen, and McMaster University. He then taught at Carleton University, McMaster University, and the University of Calgary. He died as the result of a car crash in 1985.
Go to Profile#5915
Helmut Thielicke
1908 - 1986 (78 years)
Helmut Thielicke was a German Protestant theologian and rector of the University of Hamburg from 1960 to 1978. Biography Thielicke grew up in Wuppertal, where he went to a humanistic Gymnasium and took his Abitur in 1928. After this he began to study philosophy and theology in Erlangen, but soon had to undergo an operation on his thyroid. Despite the negative outcome of this operation , which were still causing complications 4 years later, he finished his studies and in 1932 he got his doctorate in philosophy with "Das Verhältnis zwischen dem Ethischen und dem Ästethischen" .
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Johannes Quasten
1900 - 1987 (87 years)
Johannes Quasten was a Roman Catholic theologian and scholar of patristics. Life Johannes Quasten was a Roman Catholic theologian and scholar of patristics. He studied Roman Catholic theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms University in Münster. In 1926 he was ordained priest. In 1927 he earned his graduate Degree with F.J. Dölger in Münster with a thesis on "Music and singing in the cults of the ancient pagan and early Christian times". Further studies followed in the years 1927-1929 in Rome at the Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana. At the same time, he served as chaplain at the Campo Santo Teutonico or Teutonic Cemetery.
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Douglas Clyde Macintosh
1877 - 1948 (71 years)
Douglas Clyde Macintosh was a Canadian theologian. Biography Macintosh was born in Breadalbane, Ontario, on 18 February 1877 and received his undergraduate degree from McMaster University when it was in Toronto. In 1907 was ordained a Baptist minister and taught at Brandon College in Manitoba. In 1909 Macintosh received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago and joined Yale Divinity School, becoming an assistant professor of systematic theology.
Go to Profile#5918
Hubert Jedin
1900 - 1980 (80 years)
Hubert Jedin was a Catholic Church historian from Germany, whose publications specialized on the history of ecumenical councils in general and the Council of Trent in particular, on which he published a 2400-page history over the years 1951–1975.
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Umberto Cassuto
1883 - 1951 (68 years)
Umberto Cassuto, also known as Moshe David Cassuto , was an Italian historian, a rabbi, and a scholar of the Hebrew Bible and Ugaritic literature, in the University of Florence, then at the University of Rome La Sapienza. When the 1938 anti-Semitic Italian racial laws forced him from this position, he moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Merrill C. Tenney
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Merrill Chapin Tenney was an American professor of New Testament and Greek and author of several books. He was the general editor of the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, and served on the original translation team for the New American Standard Bible.
Go to Profile#5921
Edward Musgrave Blaiklock
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Edward Musgrave Blaiklock was chair of classics at the University of Auckland from 1947 to 1968, and champion of Christian apologetic literature in New Zealand from the 1950s until his death in 1983.
Go to Profile#5922
J. Gresham Machen
1881 - 1937 (56 years)
John Gresham Machen was an American Presbyterian New Testament scholar and educator in the early 20th century. He was the Professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary between 1906 and 1929, and led a revolt against modernist theology at Princeton and formed Westminster Theological Seminary as a more orthodox alternative. As the Northern Presbyterian Church continued to reject conservative attempts to enforce faithfulness to the Westminster Confession, Machen led a small group of conservatives out of the church to form the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. When the northern Presbyterian chur...
Go to Profile#5923
Norman Porteous
1898 - 2003 (105 years)
Norman Walker Porteous was a noted theologian and writer on Old Testament issues, and the last surviving military officer of the First World War. Education Porteous entered the University of Edinburgh as first bursar in 1916, but his studies were interrupted by World War I service in France, where he served as a subaltern in the 13th Battalion, The Royal Scots.
Go to Profile#5924
Alexander Schmemann
1921 - 1983 (62 years)
Alexander Dmitrievich Schmemann was an influential Orthodox priest, theologian, and author who spent most of his career in the United States. Born in Estonia to émigrés from the Russian Revolution, he grew up primarily in France, where there was a large émigré community in Paris. After being educated there in both Russian and French schools and universities, from 1946 to 1951 he taught in Paris. That year he immigrated with his family to New York City to teach at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. In 1962 he was selected as dean of the Seminary, serving in this position until his death.
Go to Profile#5925
William F. Badè
1871 - 1936 (65 years)
William Frederic Badè , perhaps best known as the literary executor and biographer of John Muir, was a versatile scholar of wide interests. As an archaeologist, he led the excavation of Tell en-Nasbeh in Palestine, now believed on the basis of his work to be the biblical city of Mizpah in Benjamin. He was also an ordained Moravian minister, a professor of ancient languages, a theologian and bible scholar, a mountaineer, a conservationist and a naturalist. Born and raised in Minnesota, he studied at Moravian College and its seminary as well as other universities. He served on the faculties of Moravian Theological Seminary and then the Pacific School of Religion.
Go to Profile#5926
Oswald Thompson Allis
1880 - 1973 (93 years)
Oswald Thompson Allis was an American Presbyterian theologian and Bible scholar. Biography He was born in 1880 and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton Theological Seminary. He received a master's degree from Princeton University and a doctorate from the University of Berlin. Later, Allis received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Hampden Sydney College in 1927.
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Herbert Henry Gowen
1864 - 1960 (96 years)
Herbert Henry Gowen was an Anglican missionary and orientalist who wrote on the history of China and Japan and was long associated with the University of Washington. Early life and education Herbert Gowen was born in Yarmouth, England and earned a B.A. degree from St. Augustine's College in 1886. He was ordained a deacon in the Church of England the same year.
Go to Profile#5928
Steven Schwarzschild
1924 - 1989 (65 years)
Steven S. Schwarzschild was a rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and editor. Biography Schwarzschild was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and grew up in Berlin. He escaped to the United States with his family in 1939.
Go to Profile#5929
L. Harold DeWolf
1905 - 1986 (81 years)
Lotan Harold DeWolf , usually cited as L. Harold Dewolf, was an American Methodist minister and professor of systematic theology at Boston University where he was Martin Luther King Jr.'s "primary teacher and mentor".
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Joachim Begrich
1900 - 1945 (45 years)
Joachim Begrich was a German biblical scholar and theologian born in Predel, a hamlet now belonging to Elsteraue in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. He was the son of a pastor and the son-in-law of Old Testament scholar Hermann Gunkel .
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Herbert Brook Workman
1862 - 1951 (89 years)
Herbert Brook Workman was a leading Methodist and secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Secondary Schools Trust when they took over Elmfield College in 1928. Workman was born in London and educated at Kingswood School and Owens College, Manchester. He entered the Wesleyan ministry in 1885 and served as a circuit minister in England and Scotland until 1903 when he was appointed principal of Westminster College. In 1930 he was elected president of the Wesleyan Conference.
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Sigmund Mowinckel
1884 - 1965 (81 years)
Sigmund Olaf Plytt Mowinckel was a Norwegian professor, theologian and biblical scholar. He was noted for his research into the practice of religious worship in ancient Israel. Life Mowinckel was born at Kjerringøy in 1884 and was educated at the University of Oslo . His early research interests was the study of the Old Testament, and Assyriology. In the years 1911-13 he made study trips to Copenhagen, Marburg and Giessen. At Giessen he came into contact with Hermann Gunkel and was inspired by Gunkels understanding of the Old Testament as literature, as well as his traditio-historical method.
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N. P. Williams
1883 - 1943 (60 years)
Norman Powell Williams , known as N. P. Williams, was an Anglican theologian and priest. Educated at Durham School and at Christ Church, Oxford, he enjoyed a succession of appointments at that university: Fellow of Magdalen , Chaplain of Exeter , Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church . In 1924 he was Bampton lecturer.
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Irving Francis Wood
1861 - 1934 (73 years)
Irving Francis Wood was an American biblical scholar. Professor Wood was born at Walton, New York. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1885 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and taught at Jaffna College, Ceylon, until 1889. Wood then studied for his Bachelor of Divinity degree at Yale and completed it in 1892, the same year he met and married his wife, Katherine Hastings. Katherine bore him two children, Constance and Edna, who both went to get collegiate degrees. He taught for a short time at the University of Chicago before taking a job as a professor of Biblical literature and comparative religion at Smith College in 1893.
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Johan Herman Bavinck
1895 - 1964 (69 years)
Johan Herman Bavinck was a Dutch pastor, missionary and theologian. Family Bavinck was born in Rotterdam as the second son of Reverend Coenraad Bernardus Bavinck. He attended the Marnix Gymnasium there. Both his father and his grandfather Jan Bavinck were pastors. His uncle was Herman Bavinck, pastor and Professor of Dogmatics at the theological school in Kampen and at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. In 1922 Bavinck married Tine Robers. Their children were Koert, Ben and Ineke.
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Leo Baeck
1873 - 1956 (83 years)
Leo Baeck was a 20th-century German rabbi, scholar, and theologian. He served as leader of Reform Judaism in his native country and internationally, and later represented all German Jews during the Nazi era. After the Second World War, he settled in London, in the United Kingdom, where he served as the chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was its first international president. The Leo Baeck Medal has been awarded since 1978 to those who have helped pre...
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Sidney B. Sperry
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
Sidney Branton Sperry was one of three scholars who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who began the scholarly and systematic study of the Book of Mormon in the mid-20th century — the other two being John L. Sorenson and Hugh W. Nibley. Sperry was also a leading Latter-day Saint scholar of the Bible.
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Albert C. Knudson
1873 - 1953 (80 years)
Albert Cornelius Knudson was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition, associated with Boston University and the school of liberal theology known as Boston personalism. Biography Albert Cornelius Knudson was born on January 23, 1873, in Grand Meadow, Minnesota. He was the son of Asle Knudson and Synnove Knudsen , both of whom were immigrants from Norway. The family subsequently moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Asle Knudson regularly traveled by train to Grand Meadow to minister at the Danish-Norwegian Methodist Church until shortly before his death in 1939.
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Donald Macpherson Baillie
1887 - 1954 (67 years)
Donald Macpherson Baillie was a Scottish theologian, ecumenist, and parish minister. Life Raised in the Calvinist tradition, Baillie studied at University of Edinburgh and then at the University of Marburg, where he was influenced by the theologian Wilhelm Herrmann. After some time as a Church of Scotland parish minister, he wrote Faith in God and its Christian Consummation . This led to his appointment as a professor of divinity at St Mary's College, University of St Andrews, where he spent the remainder of his life.
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Martin Dibelius
1883 - 1947 (64 years)
Martin Franz Dibelius was a German Protestant theologian and New Testament professor at the University of Heidelberg. Dibelius was born in Dresden, Germany, on September 14, 1883. Along with Rudolf Bultmann he helped define a period in research about the historical Jesus characterized by skepticism toward the possibility of describing Jesus with historical certainty. In this capacity he is often regarded as an early pioneer of New Testament form criticism, a highly analytical review of literary forms within the New Testament. After studying at multiple universities, he eventually ended up as a teacher of New Testament exegesis and criticism at Heidelberg University.
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Hugo Gressmann
1877 - 1927 (50 years)
Hugo Gressmann was a prominent Old Testament scholar in Protestant Germany and a friend and associate of the eminent scholar Hermann Gunkel. He was a member of the history of religions school. Early life He was born on 21 March 1877 in Mölln, in the Province of Schleswig-Holstein.
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Jakob Jocz
1906 - 1983 (77 years)
Jakób Jocz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and studied in Germany, England, and Scotland. He received his Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Letters degrees from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He contributed to many professional journals and wrote four other books of Old Testament study and systematic theology. Jocz was ordained in the Anglican Church, and served for many years as Professor of Systematic Theology at Wycliffe Seminary, Toronto.
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James I. McCord
1919 - 1990 (71 years)
James I. McCord was a president of Princeton Theological Seminary. He also won the 1986 Templeton Prize. 150 Years of Princeton Theological Seminary In 1962, as President of Princeton Theological Seminary, McCord hosted the Princeton Theological's 150-year anniversary festivities.
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Jesus
7 BC - 30 (37 years)
Jesus , also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah , that is prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.
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Muhammad
570 - 632 (62 years)
Muhammad was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets within Islam, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis for Islamic religious belief.
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Thomas Aquinas
1225 - 1274 (49 years)
Thomas Aquinas was an Italian Dominican friar and priest, an influential philosopher and theologian, and a jurist in the tradition of scholasticism from the county of Aquino in the Kingdom of Sicily.
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Augustine of Hippo
354 - 430 (76 years)
Augustine of Hippo , also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions.
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Origen
185 - 254 (69 years)
Origen of Alexandria , also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Alexandria. He was a prolific writer who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, homiletics, and spirituality. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures in early Christian theology, apologetics, and asceticism. He has been described as "the greatest genius the early church ever produced".
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Martin Luther
1483 - 1546 (63 years)
Martin Luther was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar. He was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism.
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Paul the Apostle
5 - 67 (62 years)
Paul , commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. Generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age, he founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD.
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