The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#4501
Johann Gerhard
1582 - 1637 (55 years)
Johannes Gerhard was a Lutheran church leader and Lutheran Scholastic theologian during the period of Orthodoxy. Biography He was born in the German city of Quedlinburg. During a dangerous illness, at the age of fourteen he came under the personal influence of Johann Arndt, author of Das wahre Christenthum, and resolved to study for the church. He entered the University of Wittenberg in 1599, and studied philosophy and theology. A relative then persuaded him to change his subject, and he studied medicine for two years. In 1603, he resumed his theological reading at Jena, and in the following year received a new impulse from J.W.
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Johann Gottfried Eichhorn
1752 - 1827 (75 years)
Johann Gottfried Eichhorn was a German Protestant theologian of the Enlightenment and an early orientalist. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History. Education and early career Born at Dörrenzimmern , in the Principality of Hohenlohe-Oehringen, Eichhorn was educated at the state school in Weikersheim, where his father was superintendent, at the gymnasium at Heilbronn and at the University of Göttingen , studying under Johann David Michaelis. In 1774 he received the rectorship of the gymnasium at Ohrdruf, in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha.
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Ulfilas
311 - 383 (72 years)
Ulfilas , also spelled Ulphilas and Orphila, all Latinized forms of the unattested Gothic form *𐍅𐌿𐌻𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌰 Wulfila, literally "Little Wolf", was a Goth of Cappadocian Greek descent who served as a bishop and missionary, participated in the Arian controversy, and is credited with the translation of the Bible into Gothic. He developed the Gothic alphabet – inventing a writing system based on the Greek alphabet – in order for the Bible to be translated into the Gothic language. Although the translation of the Bible into the Gothic language has traditionally been ascribed to Ulfilas, analysis ...
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Cotton Mather
1663 - 1728 (65 years)
Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in a colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, where he preached for the rest of his life.
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Walther Eichrodt
1890 - 1978 (88 years)
Walther Eichrodt was a German Old Testament scholar and Protestant theologian. From 1908 to 1914 he studied theology in Bethel, Greifswald and Heidelberg, obtaining his habilitation at the University of Erlangen in 1918. In 1922 he succeeded Albrecht Alt as an associate professor of history of religions and Old Testament studies at the University of Basel, where from 1934 to 1960 he taught classes as a full professor. In 1953 he was named university rector.
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József Mindszenty
1892 - 1975 (83 years)
József Mindszenty was a Hungarian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Esztergom and leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary from 1945 to 1973. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, for five decades "he personified uncompromising opposition to fascism and communism in Hungary". During World War II, he was imprisoned by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party. After the war, he opposed communism and communist persecution in his country. As a result, he was tortured and given a life sentence in a 1949 show trial that generated worldwide condemnation, including a United Nation...
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Peter Canisius
1521 - 1597 (76 years)
Peter Canisius was a Dutch Jesuit priest. He became known for his strong support for the Catholic faith during the Protestant Reformation in Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Switzerland and the British Isles. The restoration of the Catholic Church in Germany after the Protestant Reformation is largely attributed to the work there of the Society of Jesus, which he led. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as a saint and as a Doctor of the Church.
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Martin Grabmann
1875 - 1949 (74 years)
Martin Grabmann was a German Roman Catholic priest, medievalist and historian of theology and philosophy. He was a pioneer of the history of medieval philosophy and has been called "the greatest Catholic scholar of his time."
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Ekai Kawaguchi
1866 - 1945 (79 years)
was a Japanese Buddhist monk who was famed for his four journeys to Nepal and two to Tibet . He was the first recorded Japanese citizen to travel to either country. Early life and journey From an early age Kawaguchi, whose birth name was Sadajiro, was passionate about becoming a monk. In fact, his passion was unusual in a country that was quickly modernizing. He gave serious attention to the monastic vows of vegetarianism, chastity, and temperance even as other monks were happily abandoning them.
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Johann Adam Möhler
1796 - 1838 (42 years)
Johann Adam Möhler was a German Roman Catholic theologian and priest associated with the Catholic Tübingen school. He was born at Igersheim in the Bailiwick of Franconia of the Teutonic Order , and after studying philosophy and theology in the lyceum at Ellwangen, entered the University of Tübingen in 1817. Ordained to the priesthood in 1819, he was appointed to a curacy. He returned to Tübingen where he became privatdozent in 1825, an associate professor of theology in 1826 and a full professor in 1828.
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Kaufmann Kohler
1843 - 1926 (83 years)
Kaufmann Kohler was a German-born Jewish American biblical scholar and critic, theologian, Reform rabbi, and contributing editor to numerous articles of The Jewish Encyclopedia . Life and work Kaufmann Kohler was born into a family of German Jewish rabbis in Fürth, Kingdom of Bavaria. He received his rabbinical training at Hassfurt, Höchberg near Würzburg, Mainz, Altona, and at Frankfurt am Main under Samson Raphael Hirsch, and his university training at Munich, Berlin, Leipzig, and Erlangen ; his Ph.D. thesis, Der Segen Jacob's , was one of the earliest Jewish essays in the field of the high...
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Michał Sopoćko
1888 - 1975 (87 years)
Michael Sopoćko was a Polish Roman Catholic priest and professor at Vilnius University. He is best known as the spiritual director of Faustina Kowalska. He was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008.
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Raffaele Pettazzoni
1883 - 1959 (76 years)
Raffaele Pettazzoni was an Italian anthropologist, archaeologist, professor, and historian of religion. He was one of the first academics to propose a historical approach to the study of religions. He was editor-in-chief of the academic journal Numen published by Brill Academic Publishers, and president of the International Association for the History of Religions from 1950 to 1959.
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August Neander
1789 - 1850 (61 years)
Johann August Wilhelm Neander was a German theologian and church historian. Biography Neander was born in Göttingen as David Mendel. His father, Emmanuel Mendel, was said to have been a Jewish peddler. While very young, his parents separated and he moved with his mother to Hamburg. After completing grammar school , he enrolled in a gymnasium where he discovered Plato. Some of his fellow students included Wilhelm Neumann, writer Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, and poet Adelbert von Chamisso.
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Shah Waliullah Dehlawi
1703 - 1762 (59 years)
Qutb ud-Din Ahmad ibn ʿAbd-ur-Rahim al-ʿUmari ad-Dehlawi , commonly known as Shah Waliullah Dehlawi , was an Islamic Sunni scholar and Sufi of the Naqshbandi order, who is seen by his followers as a renewer. He emphasized the importance of following Sharia and believed in the unification of Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of law, aiming to reduce legal differences.
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Adam Clarke
1762 - 1832 (70 years)
Adam Clarke was a British Methodist theologian who served three times as President of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference . A biblical scholar, he published an influential Bible commentary among other works. He was a Wesleyan.
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William Ellery Channing
1780 - 1842 (62 years)
William Ellery Channing was the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and, along with Andrews Norton , one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. Channing was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. His religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists although he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. His espousal of the developing philosophy and theology of Unitarianism was displayed especially in h...
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Emil Schürer
1844 - 1910 (66 years)
Emil Schürer was a German Protestant theologian known mainly for his study of the history of the Jews around the time of Jesus' ministry. Biography Schürer was born in Augsburg. After studying at the universities of Erlangen, Berlin and Heidelberg from 1862 to 1866, he became in 1873 professor extraordinarius at Leipzig. Later on, he served as professor ordinarius at the universities of Giessen , Kiel and Göttingen . In 1876 he founded and edited the Literaturzeitung, which he edited with Adolf von Harnack from 1881 to 1910. He died after a long illness in 1910 in Göttingen.
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Johann Albrecht Bengel
1687 - 1752 (65 years)
Johann Albrecht Bengel , also known as Bengelius, was a Lutheran pietist clergyman and Greek-language scholar known for his edition of the Greek New Testament and his commentaries on it. Life and career Bengel was born at Winnenden in Württemberg. Due to the death of his father in 1693, he was educated by a family friend, David Wendel Spindler, who became a master in the gymnasium at Stuttgart. In 1703 Bengel left Stuttgart and entered the University of Tübingen as a student at the Tübinger Stift, where, in his spare time, he devoted himself especially to the works of Aristotle and Spinoza, and, in theology, to those of Philipp Spener, Johann Arndt and August Francke.
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Franz Rosenzweig
1886 - 1929 (43 years)
Franz Rosenzweig was a German theologian, philosopher, and translator. Early life and education Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel, Germany, to an affluent, minimally observant Jewish family. His father owned a factory for dyestuff and was a city council member. Through his granduncle, Adam Rosenzweig, he came in contact with traditional Judaism and was inspired to request Hebrew lessons when he was around 11 years old. Yet he did not learn of Sabbat eve until after he was in college. He started to study medicine for five semesters in Göttingen, Munich, and Freiburg. In 1907 he changed subje...
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Nikolaj Velimirović
1880 - 1956 (76 years)
Nikolaj Velimirović was bishop of the eparchies of Ohrid and Žiča in the Serbian Orthodox Church. An influential theological writer and a highly gifted orator, he was often referred to as the new John Chrysostom and historian Slobodan G. Markovich calls him "one of the most influential bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century".
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Lucian of Antioch
240 - 312 (72 years)
Lucian of Antioch , known as Lucian the Martyr, was a Christian presbyter, theologian and martyr. He was noted for both his scholarship and ascetic piety. History According to Suidas, Lucian was born at Samosata, Kommagene, Syria, to Christian parents, and was educated in the neighbouring city of Edessa, Mesopotamia, at the school of Macarius. However, this tradition might be due to a conflation with his famous namesake, Lucian of Samosata, the pagan satirist of the second century.
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Edmund Schlink
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Edmund Schlink was a German-Lutheran pastor and theologian. Between 1946 and his retirement in 1971 he was a professor of dogmatic and ecumenical theology at Heidelberg University. Biography Schlink was born in Darmstadt, near where his father, Wilhelm Schlink, was a professor of mechanics and aeronautics. The family of his mother, Ella, had been influenced by Herrnhut pietism. His only sibling, his sister Klara , who later called herself Mutter Basilea Schlink, became a popular religious writer and leader. Edmund Schlink attended public schools in Darmstadt. In 1922 he matriculated at Tübing...
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Zechariah
550 BC - 450 BC (100 years)
Zechariah was a person in the Hebrew Bible traditionally considered the author of the Book of Zechariah, the eleventh of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Prophet The Book of Zechariah introduces him as the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo. The Book of Ezra names Zechariah as the son of Iddo, but it is likely that Berechiah was Zechariah's father, and Iddo was his grandfather. His prophetical career probably began in the second year of Darius the Great, king of the Achaemenid Empire . His greatest concern appears to have been with the building of the Second Temple.
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E. W. Bullinger
1837 - 1913 (76 years)
Ethelbert William Bullinger was an Anglican clergyman, biblical scholar, and ultradispensationalist theologian. Early life He was born in Canterbury, Kent, England, the youngest of five children of William and Mary Bullinger. His family traced their ancestry back to Heinrich Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer.
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Robert Lewis Dabney
1820 - 1898 (78 years)
Robert Lewis Dabney was an American Christian theologian, Southern Presbyterian pastor, Confederate States Army chaplain, and architect. He was also chief of staff and biographer to Stonewall Jackson. His biography of Jackson remains in print today.
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John Murray
1898 - 1975 (77 years)
John Murray was born in Bonar Bridge, Scotland. He was a Scottish-born Calvinist theologian who taught at Princeton Seminary and then left to help found Westminster Theological Seminary, where he taught for many years. He was ordained in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1937.
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Johann Melchior Goeze
1717 - 1786 (69 years)
Johann Melchior Goeze was a Lutheran pastor and theologian during the period of Late Orthodoxy. From 1760 to 1770 he served as senior of Hamburg presiding as spiritual leader over the Lutheran state church of the city-state.
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Nathaniel William Taylor
1786 - 1858 (72 years)
Nathaniel William Taylor was an influential Protestant Theologian of the early 19th century, whose major contribution to the Christian faith , known as the New Haven theology or Taylorism, was to line up historical Calvinism with the religious revivalism of the time . A graduate of Yale College, he returned to found the school's first independent division, the Theological Department, an institution which later became the Yale Divinity School.
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Henry Scougal
1650 - 1678 (28 years)
Henry Scougal was a Scottish theologian, minister and author. Henry Scougal was the second son of Patrick Scougal and Margaret Wemys. His father was Bishop of Aberdeen for more than 20 years. Henry's younger brother was James Scougal, Lord Whitehill.
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James Petigru Boyce
1827 - 1888 (61 years)
James Petigru Boyce was an American pastor, theologian, professor and chaplain who was one of the founders of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Biography Early life James Petigru Boyce was born in 1827. He was educated at Brown University under Francis Wayland, whose sermons contributed to Boyce's conversion. In 1849 Boyce began studying at Princeton Theological Seminary. His acquaintance with Charles Hodge, a Presbyterian minister and fellow Princeton graduate himself, led Boyce to adopt Calvinistic theology.
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John Newton
1725 - 1807 (82 years)
John Newton was an English evangelical Anglican cleric and slavery abolitionist. He had previously been a captain of slave ships and an investor in the slave trade. He served as a sailor in the Royal Navy and was himself enslaved for a time in West Africa. He is noted for being author of the hymns Amazing Grace and Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.
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Vincenzo Gioberti
1801 - 1852 (51 years)
Vincenzo Gioberti was an Italian Catholic priest, philosopher, publicist and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Sardinia from 1848 to 1849. He was a prominent spokesman for liberal Catholicism.
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Jeremy Taylor
1613 - 1667 (54 years)
Jeremy Taylor was a cleric in the Church of England who achieved fame as an author during the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. He is sometimes known as the "Shakespeare of Divines" for his poetic style of expression, and he is frequently cited as one of the greatest prose writers in the English language.
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Rabanus Maurus
780 - 856 (76 years)
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius , also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, theologian, poet, encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis . He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible. He was one of the most prominent teachers and writers of the Carolingian age, and was called "Praeceptor Germaniae", or "the teacher of Germany". In the most recent edition of the Roman Martyrology , his feast is given as 4 February and he is qualified as a Saint .
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Girolamo Savonarola
1452 - 1498 (46 years)
Girolamo Savonarola, OP or Jerome Savonarola was an ascetic Italian Dominican friar from Ferrara and a preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He became known for his prophecies of civic glory, his advocacy of the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule, and the exploitation of the poor.
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Francis Turretin
1623 - 1687 (64 years)
Francis Turretin was a Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian. Turretin is especially known as a zealous opponent of the moderate Calvinist theology of the Academy of Saumur . He was an earnest defender of the Calvinistic orthodoxy represented by the Synod of Dort, and as one of the authors of the Helvetic Consensus, which defended the formulation of predestination from the Synod of Dort and the verbal inspiration of the Bible.
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Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless
1806 - 1879 (73 years)
Gottlieb Christoph Adolf von Harless , was a German Lutheran theologian. Life He was born on 21 November 1806 in Nuremberg. As a youth, he was interested in music and poetry, and was attracted by ancient and German classical literature, especially by Jean Paul. He was indifferent to Christianity. In 1823 he entered the University of Erlangen, at first studying philology, then law; but he finally tried theology. The teacher who particularly influenced him was Georg Benedikt Winer.
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Dietrich von Hildebrand
1889 - 1977 (88 years)
Dietrich Richard Alfred von Hildebrand was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and religious writer. Hildebrand was called "the twentieth-century Doctor of the Church" by Pope Pius XII. He was a leading philosopher in the realist phenomenological and personalist movements, producing works in every major field of philosophy, including ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, social philosophy, and aesthetics. Pope John Paul II greatly admired the philosophical work of Hildebrand, remarking once to his widow, Alice von Hildebrand, "Your husband is one of the great ethicist...
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John Gill
1697 - 1771 (74 years)
John Gill was an English Baptist pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian who held to a firm Calvinistic soteriology. Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he attended Kettering Grammar School where he mastered the Latin classics and learned Greek by age 11. He continued self-study in everything from logic to Hebrew, his love for the latter remaining throughout his life.
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Nicholas Wiseman
1802 - 1865 (63 years)
Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church who became the first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850.
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Barlaam of Seminara
1290 - 1348 (58 years)
Barlaam of Seminara , c. 1290–1348, or Barlaam of Calabria was a Basilian monk, theologian and humanistic scholar born in southern Italy. He was a scholar and clergyman of the 14th century, as well as a humanist, philologist and theologian.
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Theophanes the Confessor
759 - 817 (58 years)
Theophanes the Confessor was a member of the Byzantine aristocracy who became a monk and chronicler. He served in the court of Emperor Leo IV the Khazar before taking up the religious life. Theophanes attended the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 and resisted the iconoclasm of Leo V the Armenian, for which he was imprisoned. He died shortly after his release.
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Friedrich von Bodelschwingh
1877 - 1946 (69 years)
Friedrich "Fritz" von Bodelschwingh , also known as Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Younger, was a German pastor, theologian and public health advocate. His father was Friedrich von Bodelschwingh the Elder , founder of the v. Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten Bethel charitable foundations.
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Caspar René Gregory
1846 - 1917 (71 years)
Caspar René Gregory was an American-born German theologian. Life Gregory was born to Mary Jones and Henry Duval Gregory in Philadelphia. He was the brother of the American zoologist Emily Ray Gregory. After completing his bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1864, he studied theology at two Presbyterian seminaries: in 1865–1867 at the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, and in 1867–1873 at the Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1873, he decided to continue his studies at the University of Leipzig under Constantin von Tischendorf, to whose work on textual criticism of the New Testament he had been referred by his teacher Ezra Abbot.
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William Miller
1782 - 1849 (67 years)
William Miller was an American Baptist minister who is credited with beginning the mid-19th-century North American religious movement known as Millerism. After his proclamation of the Second Coming did not occur as expected in the 1840s, new heirs of his message emerged, including the Advent Christians , the Seventh-day Adventists and other Adventist movements.
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Increase Mather
1639 - 1723 (84 years)
Increase Mather was a New England Puritan clergyman in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and president of Harvard College for twenty years . He was influential in the administration of the colony during a time that coincided with the notorious Salem witch trials.
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Judas Maccabeus
Judah Maccabee was a Jewish priest and a son of the priest Mattathias. He led the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire . The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah commemorates the restoration of Jewish worship at the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE, after Judah Maccabee removed all of the statues depicting Greek gods and goddesses and purified it.
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Theophan Prokopovich
1681 - 1736 (55 years)
Feofan/Theophan Prokopovich was a Russian Imperial Orthodox theologian, writer, poet, mathematician, and philosopher of Ukrainian origin. Rector of the Academia Mohileana in Kiev , and Archbishop of Novgorod. He elaborated upon and implemented Peter the Great's reform of the Russian Orthodox Church. Prokopovich wrote many religious verses and some of the most enduring sermons in the Russian language.
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Jean Daniélou
1905 - 1974 (69 years)
Jean-Guenolé-Marie Daniélou was a French Jesuit and cardinal, an internationally well known patrologist, theologian and historian and a member of the Académie française. Biography Early life and studies Jean-Guenolé-Marie Daniélou was born on 14 May 1905 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He was the son of Charles Daniélou and Madeleine Clamorgan. His father was an anticlerical politician who several times as a minister served in the French government, while his mother was a Catholic educator and the founder of institutions for women's education. His brother Alain was a noted Indologist and historian.
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