The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (622 page)

 
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Deadly sins
or capital sins
.

In Christianity the root sins, usually listed as seven: pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. Cf. the three ‘deadly’ faults of
Buddhism
; the
five deadly sins
;
gogyaku-zai
;
five evil passions
.

 
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Dead Sea Scrolls
.

Collection of manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea. The scrolls, discovered between 1947 and 1956, date mainly between
c.
150 BCE and 68 CE. They seem to have belonged to a succession of communities based at
Qumran
, the last of which was destroyed by the Romans in the first Jewish revolt. They include manuscripts which seem to relate to a community or communities based in Qumran: the
Manual of
Discipline
, the
Damascus
Document
, the
Thanksgiving Psalms
, and the
War Scroll
.
The identification of those who produced the sectarian documents has been much disputed. Scholarly consensus favours a group closely related to the
Essenes
. However, it is at least equally likely that Qumran, because of its remoteness, was a haven of refuge for conservative groups in more than one period, who disapproved of (or were persecuted by) those who were running the
Temple
in Jerusalem.

 
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Dead Sea sect
:

see
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
;
QUMRAN COMMUNITY
.

 
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Dean
.

The title of various Christian officials, of which the most important are:

(i) the head of the
chapter
of a
cathedral
; and
(ii) the head of the chapter of a
collegiate church
which is a ‘peculiar’ (independent of any episcopal authority), e.g. Westminster Abbey.

 
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Death
.

The human and religious imagination of the nature and meaning of death has been prolific: virtually everything that can be imagined about death has been imagined. Yet almost universally the major religious traditions did not in origin have any belief that there will be some worthwhile continuing life after death. This is in strong contrast to the popular impression that religions came into being to offer ‘pie in the sky’—i.e. some compensation for the miseries and inequalities of this life. This erroneous view was elevated to a formal theory by such anti-religious theorists as
Marx
and
Freud
.
In fact, the early human imagination of death was entirely realistic: since the breath returns to the air and the body to the dust, there is nothing that
can
survive. Thus in both E. and W., the emphasis originally was on the positive worth of
this
life, not on some imagined heaven or hell.
The development of beliefs that there may be life beyond death (see
AFTERLIFE
) came about historically in different ways and with different anthropologies (accounts of human nature) in different religious traditions. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the belief developed in the 3rd or 2nd cent. BCE that the ‘friendship with God’ (as
Abraham's
relationship with God was described) might perhaps be continued by God through death. The imagination of how God might bring that about then varied.
In the E., the sense that death can be contested and, in favourable circumstances (especially with the help of sacrifices), be postponed, led to the belief in Hinduism that a self or soul is reborn many millions of times as it moves toward
mok
a
(release). In early Buddhism, it was accepted that there is continuing reappearance, but no self or soul being reborn. In China, the caution of
Confucius
was widely prevalent: ‘Confucius said, “If we are not yet able to serve humans, how can we serve spiritual beings?” Tzu-lu then said, “Then let me ask you about death.” Confucius said, “If we do not yet know about life, how can we know about death?” ’ But in the Immortality Cult, and even more in the development of
Taoism
, the quest for immortality was undertaken in the schools of
alchemy
, sometimes literally, more often in spiritual terms.
On the basis of these understandings of death, different religions have expressed different preferences in the treatment of dead bodies: see
CREMATION
; FUNERAL RITES. They have also been in agreement to a large extent that excessive grief or mourning is inappropriate. See also
AFTERLIFE.