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,
#4601
Moses Mendelssohn
1729 - 1786 (57 years)
Moses Mendelssohn was a German-Jewish philosopher and theologian. His writings and ideas on Jews and the Jewish religion and identity were a central element in the development of the Haskalah, or 'Jewish Enlightenment' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Born to a poor Jewish family in Dessau, Principality of Anhalt, and originally destined for a rabbinical career, Mendelssohn educated himself in German thought and literature. Through his writings on philosophy and religion he came to be regarded as a leading cultural figure of his time by both Christian and Jewish inhabitants of German-speaking Europe and beyond.
Go to Profile#4602
Aphrahat
270 - 346 (76 years)
Aphrahat , venerated as Saint Aphrahat the Persian, was a third-century Syriac Christian author of Iranian descent from the Sasanian Empire, who composed a series of twenty-three expositions or homilies on points of Christian doctrine and practice. All his known works, the Demonstrations, come from later on in his life. He was an ascetic and celibate, and was almost definitely a son of the covenant . He may have been a bishop, and later Syriac tradition places him at the head of Mar Mattai Monastery near Mosul in what is now northern Iraq. He was a near contemporary to the slightly younger Ephrem the Syrian, but the latter lived within the sphere of the Roman Empire.
Go to Profile#4603
Hildegard of Bingen
1098 - 1179 (81 years)
Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history. She has been considered by scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.
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Thomas Cranmer
1489 - 1556 (67 years)
Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, which was one of the causes of the separation of the English Church from union with the Holy See. Along with Thomas Cromwell, he supported the principle of royal supremacy, in which the king was considered sovereign over the Church within his realm.
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Sergei Bulgakov
1871 - 1944 (73 years)
Sergei Nikolayevich Bulgakov was a Russian Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, and economist. Orthodox writer and scholar David Bentley Hart has said that Bulgakov was "the greatest systematic theologian of the twentieth century." Father Sergei Bulgakov also served as a spiritual father and confessor to Mother Maria Skobtsova .
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William F. Albright
1891 - 1971 (80 years)
William Foxwell Albright was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars", having become known to the public in 1948 for his role in the authentication of the Dead Sea Scrolls. His scholarly reputation arose as a leading theorist and practitioner of biblical archaeology.
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Abraham ibn Ezra
1089 - 1167 (78 years)
Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra was one of the most distinguished Jewish biblical commentators and philosophers of the Middle Ages. He was born in Tudela, Taifa of Zaragoza . Biography Abraham Ibn Ezra was born in Tudela, one of the oldest and most important Jewish communities in Navarre. At the time, the town was under the rule of the emirs of the Muslim Taifa of Zaragoza. However, when he later moved to Córdoba, he claimed it to be his place of birth. Ultimately, most scholars agree that his place of birth was Tudela.
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Lewis Sperry Chafer
1871 - 1952 (81 years)
Lewis Sperry Chafer was an American theologian. He co-founded Dallas Theological Seminary with his older brother Rollin Thomas Chafer , served as its first president, and was an influential proponent of Christian Dispensationalism in the early 20th century. John Hannah described Chafer as a visionary Bible teacher, a minister of the gospel, a man of prayer with strong piety. One of his students, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, who went on to become a world renowned theologian and scholar, stated that Chafer was an evangelist who was also "an eminent theologian."
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Dwight L. Moody
1837 - 1899 (62 years)
Dwight Lyman Moody , also known as D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher connected with Keswickianism, who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts , Moody Bible Institute, and Moody Publishers. One of his most famous quotes was "Faith makes all things possible... Love makes all things easy." Moody gave up his lucrative boot and shoe business to devote his life to revivalism, working first in the Civil War with Union troops through YMCA in the United States Christian Commission. In Chicago, he built one of the major evangelical centers in the nation, which is still active.
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Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab
1704 - 1792 (88 years)
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab ibn Sulayman al-Tamimi was a Sunni Muslim scholar, theologian, preacher, activist, religious leader, jurist, and reformer from Najd in central Arabia, considered as the eponymous founder of the so-called Wahhabi movement. His prominent students included his sons Ḥusayn, Abdullāh, ʿAlī, and Ibrāhīm, his grandson ʿAbdur-Raḥman ibn Ḥasan, his son-in-law ʿAbdul-ʿAzīz ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿūd, Ḥamād ibn Nāṣir ibn Muʿammar, and Ḥusayn āl-Ghannām.
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Luke the Evangelist
Luke the Evangelist is one of the Four Evangelists—the four traditionally ascribed authors of the canonical gospels. The Early Church Fathers ascribed to him authorship of both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Prominent figures in early Christianity such as Jerome and Eusebius later reaffirmed his authorship, although a lack of conclusive evidence as to the identity of the author of the works has led to discussion in scholarly circles, both secular and religious.
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Walter Rauschenbusch
1861 - 1918 (57 years)
Walter Rauschenbusch was an American theologian and Baptist pastor who taught at the Rochester Theological Seminary. Rauschenbusch was a key figure in the Social Gospel and single tax movements that flourished in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also the maternal grandfather of the influential philosopher Richard Rorty and the great-grandfather of Paul Raushenbush.
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Michael Servetus
1511 - 1553 (42 years)
Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and Renaissance humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as discussed in Christianismi Restitutio . He was a polymath versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry, and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages.
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Wilhelm Gesenius
1786 - 1842 (56 years)
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius was a German orientalist, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, Lutheran theologian, Biblical scholar and critic. Biography Gesenius was born at Nordhausen. In 1803 he became a student of philosophy and theology at the University of Helmstedt, where Heinrich Henke was his most influential teacher; but the latter part of his university course was taken at Göttingen, where Johann Gottfried Eichhorn and Thomas Christian Tychsen were then at the height of their popularity. In 1806, shortly after graduation, he became Repetent and Privatdozent at Göttingen; and, as he was later proud to say, had August Neander for his first pupil in Hebrew language.
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Francis Spellman
1889 - 1967 (78 years)
Francis Joseph Spellman was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. From 1939 to his death, he served as the sixth Archbishop of New York; he had served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston from 1932 to 1939. He was created a cardinal in 1946.
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William Booth
1829 - 1912 (83 years)
William Booth was an English Methodist preacher who, along with his wife, Catherine, founded the Salvation Army and became its first General . The Christian movement with a quasi-military structure and government founded in 1865 has spread from London to many parts of the world. It is known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid.
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Teresa of Ávila
1515 - 1582 (67 years)
Teresa of Ávila, OCD , also called Saint Teresa of Jesus, was a Carmelite nun and prominent Spanish mystic and religious reformer. Active during the Counter-Reformation, Teresa became the central figure of a movement of spiritual and monastic renewal, reforming the Carmelite Orders of both women and men. The movement was later joined by the younger Carmelite friar and mystic John of the Cross, with whom she established the Discalced Carmelites. A formal papal decree adopting the split from the old order was issued in 1580.
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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.
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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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