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,
#4051
Shimon bar Yochai
71 - 160 (89 years)
Shimon bar Yochai or Shimon ben Yochai , also known by the acronym Rashbi, was a 2nd-century tannaitic sage in ancient Judea. He was one of the most eminent disciples of Rabbi Akiva. The Zohar, a 13th century foundational work of Kabbalah, is ascribed to him by Kabbalistic tradition.
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Gustaf Aulén
1879 - 1977 (98 years)
Gustaf Emanuel Hildebrand Aulén was the Bishop of Strängnäs in the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran theologian, and the author of Christus Victor, a work which still exerts considerable influence on contemporary theological thinking on the atonement.
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Hillel the Elder
70 BC - 8 (78 years)
Hillel was a Jewish religious leader, sage and scholar associated with the development of the Mishnah and the Talmud and the founder of the House of Hillel school of tannaim. He was active during the end of the first century BCE and the beginning of the first century CE.
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William Paley
1743 - 1805 (62 years)
William Paley was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his natural theology exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, which made use of the watchmaker analogy.
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Ferdinand Christian Baur
1792 - 1860 (68 years)
Ferdinand Christian Baur was a German Protestant theologian and founder and leader of the Tübingen School of theology . Following Hegel's theory of dialectic, Baur argued that second century Christianity represented the synthesis of two opposing theses: Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity . This and the rest of Baur's work had a profound impact upon higher criticism of biblical and related texts.
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Malik ibn Anas
711 - 795 (84 years)
Malik ibn Anas , whose full name is Mālik bin Anas bin Mālik bin Abī ʿĀmir bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith bin Ghaymān bin Khuthayn bin ʿAmr bin Al-Ḥārith al-Aṣbaḥī al-Ḥumyarī al-Madanī , reverently known as al-Imām Mālik by Sunni Muslims, was a Muslim jurist, theologian, and hadith traditionist. Born in the city of Medina, Malik rose to become the premier scholar of prophetic traditions in his day, which he sought to apply to "the whole legal life" in order to create a systematic method of Muslim jurisprudence which would only further expand with the passage of time. Referred to as the "Imam of Medi...
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Isidore of Seville
560 - 636 (76 years)
Isidore of Seville was a Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of the ancient world".
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Symeon the New Theologian
949 - 1022 (73 years)
Symeon the New Theologian was an Eastern Orthodox monk and poet who was the last of three saints canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church and given the title of "Theologian" . "Theologian" was not applied to Symeon in the modern academic sense of theological study; the title was designed only to recognize someone who spoke from personal experience of the vision of God. One of his principal teachings was that humans could and should experience theoria .
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Historical Jesus
The term "historical Jesus" refers to the life and teachings of Jesus as interpreted through critical historical methods, in contrast to what are traditionally religious interpretations. It also considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and attempts to deny his historicity have been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.
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Ignaz von Döllinger
1799 - 1890 (91 years)
Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger , also Doellinger in English, was a German theologian, Catholic priest and church historian who rejected the dogma of papal infallibility. Among his writings which proved controversial, his criticism of the papacy antagonized ultramontanes, yet his reverence for tradition annoyed the liberals.
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Athenagoras of Athens
133 - 190 (57 years)
Athenagoras was a Father of the Church, an Ante-Nicene Christian apologist who lived during the second half of the 2nd century of whom little is known for certain, besides that he was Athenian , a philosopher, and a convert to Christianity.
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Johann Salomo Semler
1725 - 1791 (66 years)
Johann Salomo Semler was a German church historian, biblical commentator, and critic of ecclesiastical documents and of the history of dogmas. He is sometimes known as "the father of German rationalism".
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Tyrannius Rufinus
345 - 411 (66 years)
Tyrannius Rufinus, also called Rufinus of Aquileia , was a monk, philosopher, historian, and theologian who worked to translate Greek patristic material, especially the work of Origen, into Latin. Life Rufinus was born in 344 or 345 in the Roman city of Julia Concordia , near Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic Sea. It appears that both of his parents were Christians.
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John Scotus Eriugena
810 - 877 (67 years)
John Scotus Eriugena, also known as Johannes Scotus Erigena, John the Scot, or John the Irish-born was an Irish Neoplatonist philosopher, theologian and poet of the Early Middle Ages. Bertrand Russell dubbed him "the most astonishing person of the ninth century". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that he "is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic period. He is generally recognized to be both the outstanding philosopher of the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm".
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Gerhard von Rad
1901 - 1971 (70 years)
Gerhard von Rad was a German academic, Old Testament scholar, Lutheran theologian, exegete, and professor at the University of Heidelberg. Early life, education, career Gerhard von Rad was born in Nuremberg, Bavaria, to Lutheran parents. His family were part of the patrician class. He was educated at the University of Erlangen and further at the University of Tübingen.
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Pelagius
354 - 420 (66 years)
Pelagius was a Romano-British theologian known for promoting a system of doctrines which emphasized human choice in salvation and denied original sin. Pelagius was accused of heresy at the synod of Jerusalem in 415 and his doctrines were harshly criticized by Augustine of Hippo, especially the Pelagian views about mankind's good nature and individual responsibility for choosing asceticism. Pelagius especially stressed the freedom of human will. Very little is known about the personal life and career of Pelagius.
Go to Profile#4067
Thomas William Rhys Davids
1843 - 1922 (79 years)
Thomas William Rhys Davids was an English scholar of the Pāli language and founder of the Pāli Text Society. He took an active part in founding the British Academy and London School for Oriental Studies.
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George Fox
1624 - 1691 (67 years)
George Fox was an English Dissenter, who was a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends. The son of a Leicestershire weaver, he lived in times of social upheaval and war. He rebelled against the religious and political authorities by proposing an unusual, uncompromising approach to the Christian faith. He travelled throughout Britain as a dissenting preacher, performed hundreds of healings, and was often persecuted by the disapproving authorities. In 1669, he married Margaret Fell, widow of a wealthy supporter, Thomas Fell; she was a leading Friend.
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Didymus the Blind
313 - 398 (85 years)
Didymus the Blind was a Christian theologian in the Church of Alexandria, where he taught for about half a century. He was a student of Origen, and, after the Second Council of Constantinople condemned Origen, Didymus's works were not copied. Many of his writings are lost, but some of his commentaries and essays survive. He was seen as intelligent and a good teacher.
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David Kimhi
1160 - 1235 (75 years)
David Kimhi , also known by the Hebrew acronym as the RaDaK , was a medieval rabbi, biblical commentator, philosopher, and grammarian. Early life Kimhi was born in Narbonne, a city in Hachmei Provence, Occitania, then under the rule of Philip II of France. He was the youngest son of Rabbi Joseph Kimhi and the brother of Moses Kimhi, both also biblical commentators and grammarians.
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Charlotte von Kirschbaum
1899 - 1975 (76 years)
Charlotte von Kirschbaum was a German theologian who assisted Karl Barth in writing his Church Dogmatics. She was born in Ingolstadt. In 1916 her father died in the war, which inspired her to be trained as a nurse. In 1924 she met Karl Barth, and became his pupil; she later contributed to all of Karl Barth's academic publications. Historians have discussed at length her romantic relationship with Barth, and its possible impact on his theology. The letters between von Kirschbaum and Barth express "the deep, intense, and overwhelming love between these two human beings."
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H. Richard Niebuhr
1894 - 1962 (68 years)
Helmut Richard Niebuhr is considered one of the most important Christian theological ethicists in 20th-century America, best known for his 1951 book Christ and Culture and his posthumously published book The Responsible Self. The younger brother of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Richard Niebuhr taught for several decades at the Yale Divinity School. Both brothers were, in their day, important figures in the neo-orthodox theological school within American Protestantism. His theology has been one of the main sources of postliberal theology, sometimes called the "Yale school". He influenced suc...
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Albrecht Ritschl
1822 - 1889 (67 years)
Albrecht Benjamin Ritschl was a German Protestant theologian. Starting in 1852, Ritschl lectured on systematic theology. According to this system, faith was understood to be irreducible to other experiences, beyond the scope of reason. Faith, he said, came not from facts but from value judgments. Jesus' divinity, he argued, was best understood as expressing "revelational-value" of Christ for the community that trusts him as God. He held the Christ's message to be committed to a community.
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Hosea
784 BC - Present (2810 years)
In the Hebrew Bible, Hosea , also known as Osee, son of Beeri, was an 8th-century BCE prophet in Israel and the nominal primary author of the Book of Hosea. He is the first of the Twelve Minor Prophets, whose collective writings were aggregated and organized into a single book in the Jewish Tanakh by the Second Temple period but which are distinguished as individual books in Christianity. Hosea is often seen as a "prophet of doom", but underneath his message of destruction is a promise of restoration. The Talmud claims that he was the greatest prophet of his generation. The period of Hosea's...
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Papias of Hierapolis
70 - 150 (80 years)
Papias was a Greek Apostolic Father, Bishop of Hierapolis , and author who lived c. 60 – c.130 AD He wrote the Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord in five books. This work, which is lost apart from brief excerpts in the works of Irenaeus of Lyons and Eusebius of Caesarea , is an important early source on Christian oral tradition and especially on the origins of the canonical Gospels.
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Jude the Apostle
10 - 62 (52 years)
Jude was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is generally identified as Thaddeus and is also variously called Judas Thaddaeus, Jude Thaddaeus, Jude of James, or Lebbaeus and is considered as the founding father and the first Catholicos-Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He is sometimes identified with Jude, the brother of Jesus, but is clearly distinguished from Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus prior to his crucifixion. Catholic writer Michal Hunt suggests that Judas Thaddaeus became known as Jude after early translators of the New T...
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William Robertson Smith
1846 - 1894 (48 years)
William Robertson Smith was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica. He is also known for his book Religion of the Semites, which is considered a foundational text in the comparative study of religion.
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August Hermann Francke
1663 - 1727 (64 years)
August Hermann Francke was a German Lutheran clergyman, theologian, philanthropist, and Biblical scholar. Biography Born in Lübeck, Francke was educated at the Illustrious Gymnasium in Gotha before he studied at the universities of Erfurt and Kiel — where he came under the influence of the Pietist Christian Kortholt — and finally Leipzig. During his student career he made a special study of Hebrew and Greek; and in order to learn Hebrew more thoroughly, he for some time put himself under the instructions of Ezra Edzardi at Hamburg. He graduated at Leipzig, where in 1685 he became a Privatdoze...
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Martin Bucer
1491 - 1551 (60 years)
Martin Bucer was a German Protestant reformer based in Strasbourg who influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices. Bucer was originally a member of the Dominican Order, but after meeting and being influenced by Martin Luther in 1518 he arranged for his monastic vows to be annulled. He then began to work for the Reformation, with the support of Franz von Sickingen.
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Albertus Magnus
1193 - 1280 (87 years)
Albertus Magnus , also known as Saint Albert the Great, Albert of Swabia or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. Canonized in 1931 as a Catholic saint, he was known during his lifetime as Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus; late in his life the sobriquet Magnus was appended to his name. Scholars such as James A. Weisheipl and Joachim R. Söder have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church distinguishes him as one of the 37 Doctors of the Church.
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Joachim Jeremias
1900 - 1979 (79 years)
Joachim Jeremias was a German Lutheran theologian, scholar of Near Eastern Studies and university professor for New Testament studies. He was abbot of Bursfelde, 1968–1971. He was born in Dresden and spent his formative years in Jerusalem, where between 1910 and 1918 his father, Friedrich Jeremias , worked as Provost of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. He studied Lutheran theology and Oriental languages at the universities of Tübingen and Leipzig. In Leipzig he obtained both a "Doctor philosophiae " and a "Doctor theologiae " degree , followed by his Habilitation . His mentor was the re...
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Ernst Troeltsch
1865 - 1923 (58 years)
Ernst Peter Wilhelm Troeltsch was a German liberal Protestant theologian, a writer on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history, and a classical liberal politician. He was a member of the history of religions school. His work was a synthesis of a number of strands, drawing on Albrecht Ritschl, Max Weber's conception of sociology, and the Baden school of neo-Kantianism.
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John of Patmos
50 - 100 (50 years)
John of Patmos is the name traditionally given to the author of the Book of Revelation. Revelation 1:9 states that John was on Patmos, a Greek island where, according to most biblical historians, he was exiled as a result of anti-Christian persecution under the Roman emperor Domitian. Christian tradition has considered the Book of Revelation's writer to be John the Apostle, purported author of the Gospel of John. A minority of senior clerics and scholars, such as Eusebius , recognize at least one further John as a companion of Jesus, John the Presbyter. Some Christian scholars since medieval...
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Abu Mansur al-Maturidi
893 - 944 (51 years)
Abū Manṣūr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Ḥanafī al-Māturīdī al-Samarqandī , often referred to as Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī for short, or reverently referred to as Imām al-Māturīdī by Sunnī Muslims, was a Muslim scholar of Ḥanafī jurisprudence, scriptural exegete, reformer , and scholastic theologian , renowned for being the eponymous founder of the Māturīdī school of Islamic theology, which became the dominant Sunnī school of Islamic theology in Central Asia, and later enjoyed a preeminent status as the theological school of choice for both the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire.
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Robert Bellarmine
1542 - 1621 (79 years)
Robert Bellarmine, SJ was an Italian Jesuit and a cardinal of the Catholic Church. He was canonized a saint in 1930 and named Doctor of the Church, one of only 37. He was one of the most important figures in the Counter-Reformation.
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Philip Melanchthon
1497 - 1560 (63 years)
Philip Melanchthon was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
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Samson Raphael Hirsch
1808 - 1888 (80 years)
Samson Raphael Hirsch was a German Orthodox rabbi best known as the intellectual founder of the Torah im Derech Eretz school of contemporary Orthodox Judaism. Occasionally termed neo-Orthodoxy, his philosophy, together with that of Azriel Hildesheimer, has had a considerable influence on the development of Orthodox Judaism.
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Clemens August Graf von Galen
1878 - 1946 (68 years)
Clemens Augustinus Emmanuel Joseph Pius Anthonius Hubertus Marie Graf von Galen , better known as Clemens August Graf von Galen, was a German count, Bishop of Münster, and cardinal of the Catholic Church. During World War II, Galen led Catholic protests against Nazi euthanasia and denounced Gestapo lawlessness and the persecution of the Church in Nazi Germany. He was appointed a cardinal by Pope Pius XII in 1946, shortly before his death, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
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B. B. Warfield
1851 - 1921 (70 years)
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield was an American professor of Reformed theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887 to 1921. He served as the last principal of the Princeton Theological Seminary from 1886 to 1902. After the death of Warfield in office, Francis Landey Patton took over the functions of the office as the first president of seminary. Some conservative Presbyterians consider him to be the last of the great Princeton theologians before the split in 1929 that formed Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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Roger Bacon
1220 - 1292 (72 years)
Roger Bacon , also known by the scholastic accolade Doctor Mirabilis, was a medieval English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on the study of nature through empiricism. In the early modern era, he was regarded as a wizard and particularly famed for the story of his mechanical or necromantic brazen head. He is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method, along with his teacher Robert Grosseteste. Bacon applied the empirical method of Ibn al-Haytham to observations in texts attributed to Aristotle. Bacon discove...
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Johann Philipp Gabler
1753 - 1826 (73 years)
Johann Philipp Gabler was a German Protestant Christian theologian of the school of Johann Jakob Griesbach and Johann Gottfried Eichhorn. Gabler was born at Frankfurt-am-Main. In 1772 he entered the University of Jena as a theological student. In 1776 he was on the point of abandoning theology when the arrival of Griesbach inspired within him a new enthusiasm for the subject. After having been successively Repetent in the University of Göttingen and teacher in the public schools of Dortmund and Altdorf , he was appointed second professor of theology at the University of Altdorf in 1785, the...
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Cerinthus
100 - 200 (100 years)
Cerinthus was an early Gnostic, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers. Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion. Similarly to the Ebionites, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a mere man, the biological son of Mary and Joseph.
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Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
1802 - 1869 (67 years)
Ernst Wilhelm Theodor Herrmann Hengstenberg , was a German Lutheran churchman and neo-Lutheran theologian from an old and important Dortmund family. He was born at Fröndenberg, a Westphalian town, and was educated by his father Johann Heinrich Karl Hengstenberg, who was a famous minister of the Reformed Church and head of the Fröndenberg convent of canonesses . His mother was Wilhelmine then Bergh. Entering the University of Bonn in 1819, Hengstenberg attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Freytag for Oriental languages and of Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler for church history, but his energies we...
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Henry Edward Manning
1808 - 1892 (84 years)
Henry Edward Manning was an English prelate of the Catholic Church, and the second Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death in 1892. He was ordained in the Church of England as a young man, but converted to Catholicism in the aftermath of the Gorham judgement.
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Franz Delitzsch
1813 - 1890 (77 years)
Franz Delitzsch was a German Lutheran theologian and Hebraist. Delitzsch wrote many commentaries on books of the Bible, Jewish antiquities, Biblical psychology, as well as a history of Jewish poetry, and works of Christian apologetics. Today, Delitzsch is best known for his translation of the New Testament into Hebrew , and his series of commentaries on the Old Testament published with Carl Friedrich Keil.
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Padre Pio
1887 - 1968 (81 years)
Pio of Pietrelcina , widely known as , was an Italian Capuchin friar, priest, stigmatist, and mystic. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, celebrated on 23 September. Pio joined the Capuchins at fifteen and spent most of his religious life in the convent of San Giovanni Rotondo. He was marked by stigmata in 1918, leading to several investigations by the Holy See. Despite temporary sanctions imposed by the Vatican, his reputation kept increasing during his life, attracting many followers to San Giovanni Rotondo. He was the founder of the Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza, a hospital ...
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Isaac Watts
1674 - 1748 (74 years)
Isaac Watts was an English Congregational minister, hymn writer, theologian, and logician. He was a prolific and popular hymn writer and is credited with some 750 hymns. His works include "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross", "Joy to the World", and "Our God, Our Help in Ages Past". He is recognised as the "Godfather of English Hymnody"; many of his hymns remain in use today and have been translated into numerous languages.
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Charles Grandison Finney
1792 - 1875 (83 years)
Charles Grandison Finney was an American Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United States. He has been called the "Father of Old Revivalism." Finney rejected much of traditional Reformed theology.
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Novatian
220 - 258 (38 years)
Novatian was a scholar, priest, and theologian. He is considered by the Catholic Church to have been an antipope between 251 and 258. Some Greek authors give his name as Novatus, who was an African presbyter.
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William Tyndale
1494 - 1536 (42 years)
William Tyndale was an English biblical scholar and linguist who became a leading figure in the Protestant Reformation in the years leading up to his execution. He is well known as a translator of the Bible into English, and was influenced by the works of prominent Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther.
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