The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (884 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
6.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Great schism
.
Either
(1) the excommunication by Rome in 1054 of the
patriarch
of
Constantinople
, and the patriarch's excommunication of the
pope
; or
(2) the
schism
in the W. Church, 1378–1417 when there were two, and for a time three, contenders for the title of pope
.
Great synagogue
.
Perhaps better translated ‘
great assembly
’, a Jewish administrative council during the Persian period (538–331 BCE).
Great tradition
,
little tradition
.
Categories introduced by the sociologist, Robert Redfield (
Peasant Society and Culture
, 1956) to distinguish between the major, continuing components of a religious tradition and the appropriation of them at local or village level. An example is M. E. Spiro's distinction between nibbanic Buddhism as a religion of ultimate salvation and kammatic Buddhism as a religion of proximate salvation, which, in practice, is the highest that most people can aim for.
Great vehicle
(the development of Buddhism)
:
see
MAH
Y
NA
.

Other books

Echo City by Tim Lebbon
Ike's Spies by Stephen E. Ambrose
Billiards at Half-Past Nine by Heinrich Boll, Patrick Bowles, Jessa Crispin
A Midsummer Night's Sin by Kasey Michaels
Sea Breeze by Jennifer Senhaji, Patricia D. Eddy
What Now? by Ann Patchett
King Con by Stephen J. Cannell
Iloria by Moira Rogers
Cambodian Hellhole by Stephen Mertz
A Catered Mother's Day by Isis Crawford