The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (759 page)

 
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(507–81).
San-lun
Buddhist teacher. He devoted himself to combining in practice
Vinaya
rules and
dhy
na
meditation. In 558 he established a school at (present-day) Nanking, and his teaching was continued by a pupil,
Chi-tsang
.

 
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Falashas
.

Jews of Ethiopian origin. The Falashas themselves claim to be descended from Menelik, the son of King
Solomon
and the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10. 1–13). Most experts believe they belong to the Agau family of tribes to whom Judaism spread from S. Arabia. They call themselves ‘Beta Esrael’ (House of
Israel
) and live in their own separate villages, the best known of which are near the town of Gondar. They keep the ritual
food
law of the
Pentateuch
; they
circumcise
their sons on the eighth day; they observe the
Sabbath
and
Day of Atonement
, and they offer
sacrifice
and eat unleavened bread (
mazzah
) during the
Passover
season. Their precise personal status as Jews is still in some dispute among the Israeli religious establishment. In 1985, many Ethiopians demonstrated in Jerusalem against the
Chief Rabbi
, who had demanded symbolic conversion for those among them who wished to marry—because of doubts about their divorce procedures and personal status. The insistence on symbolic recircumcision was withdrawn, but not ritual immersion.

 
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(1680–1756).
Jewish
halakhic
authority. As
rabbi
of Lemberg, his
yeshivah
became the largest in Poland. He was a determined opponent of
Shabbateanism
, siding with Jacob
Emden
against Jonathan
Eybeschuetz
. He is best known as the author of
Penei Yehoshu‘a
(The Face of Joshua) published in separate parts (1739, 1752, 1756, and 1780), which is a series of novellae on the
Talmud
, and a defence of
Rashi
, still respected and consulted.

 
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Fall
.

The act of disobedience of
Adam
and Eve which according to the Bible story in Genesis 2–3 was responsible for the human condition of pain, toil, and (already in ancient exegesis) mortality. The Jewish interpretation of the Genesis story does not see in it anything like the same radical, vitiating, fault: there is a sense in which ‘the fall’ is a fall upwards, into the opportunity of choice, action, and responsibility: see
FELIX CULPA
.

 
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A Chinese movement founded by Li Hongzhi in 1992. Drawing on ancient practices in the Chinese tradition, mainly Taoist and Buddhist, Falun Gong secured many adherents in the 1990s, perhaps as many as 2 million in China (including members of the Communist party) and more overseas. Its teaching, Falun Dafa, is advocated in Li Hongzhi's book,
Zhuan Falun
. It draws particularly on meditation and breathing (
ch'i
) techniques to offer its adherents control over life and its vicissitudes, including illness and death. Following a demonstration of 10,000 members in Beijing in 1999, it was condemned and attacked by the Chinsese authorities, who identified it as the latest in the many Chinese religious
societies
that have combined religious assurance with political dissent (see, e.g.,
Boxer rebellion
,
Eight Trigram Society
,
Taiping rebellion
). Falun Gong claimed not to be an organization, despite a closely connected membership, achieved not least through the internet.