Messiah: Did you mean...?

The Twelve Tribes of Israel refer to the sons of the Jewish Patriarch Jacob and are important for the tribal lineages of those who constituted the nation of Israel. In the ancient world, all ethnic groups developed stories...

The central pillars of Christianity originate from the story of the trial, crucifixion, and death of Jesus Christ. The events cover the time when Jesus of Nazareth and his followers entered Jerusalem for...

The only sources for the life of Jesus of Nazareth are in the canonical gospels (or the gospels that were included in the authorised version of the New Testament). We have no contemporary, eyewitness testimony...

Ancient Persian culture flourished between the reign of Cyrus II (The Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and the fall of the Sassanian Empire in 651 CE. Even so, the foundations of Persian...

Zoroastrianism is the monotheistic faith established by the Persian prophet Zoroaster (also given as Zarathustra, Zartosht) between c. 1500-1000 BCE. It holds that there is one supreme deity, Ahura Mazda (Lord of Wisdom), creator...

Yahweh is the name of the state god of the ancient Kingdom of Israel and, later, the Kingdom of Judah. His name is composed of four Hebrew consonants (YHWH, known as the Tetragrammaton) which the prophet Moses is said to have revealed...

Ancient Persian religion was a polytheistic faith which corresponds roughly to what is known today as ancient Persian mythology. It first developed in the region known as Greater Iran (the Caucasus, Central Asia, South...

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (from the Latin trinus, meaning "threefold") professes that there is one God, but three eternal and consubstantial persons (aspects): the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the God...

Zarathustra (also given as Zoroaster, Zartosht, Zarathustra Spitama, l. c. 1500-1000 BCE) was the Persian priest-turned-prophet who founded the religion of Zoroastrianism (also given as Mazdayasna “devotion to Mazda”), the first monotheistic...

Pontius Pilate was the fifth magistrate to serve in the Roman province of Judea, created in 6 CE by Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 BCE to 14 CE). His term of office was during the subsequent reign of Tiberius from 26-36 CE. He became...