The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (680 page)

 
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(Gk.,
doke
, ‘I seem’). The doctrine that the humanity and sufferings of Christ were apparent rather than real. The view that Jesus miraculously escaped death on the cross (such as, on the usual or orthodox understanding of the Arabic, in the Qur’
n, 4. 157) may also be termed docetic.

 
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Doctors of the Church
.

Title given by the Roman Catholic Church to certain
saints
who were also outstanding theologians. The first to be named were
Gregory the Great
,
Ambrose
,
Augustine
, and
Jerome
, by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298.
The title
doctor
is also unofficially used with distinguishing adjectives for the various
scholastic
teachers, e.g.
Doctor Angelicus
(Thomas
Aquinas
),
Doctor universalis
(
Albertus Magnus
), etc.

 
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Doctrine of the Mean
.

Eng. rendering of
Chung Yung
, one of the group of
Four Books
in the
Confucian Classics
. Like the
Great Learning
(
Ta Hsüeh
) it was extracted from the
Records of Rites (
Li Chi
)
by the
neo-Confucians
of the Sung dynasty (960–1279) because of its relevance to their pursuit of sainthood through self-cultivation. The text deals with the existential situation of humans as moral beings in a moral universe, and the burden on the noble individual (
chün tzu
) to act and live accordingly. This expressed exactly the religious philosophy of the neo-Confucians.

 
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(Turk., ‘apostates’). Followers of the Jewish false
messiah
,
Shabbetai Zevi
, who converted to Islam. Shabbetai Zevi himself converted to Islam in 1666, and a small group of his disciples felt it was their duty to follow his example. By the 1720s, there were three Doenmeh sects, the Izmirim, the Jakoblar, and the Karakashlar, probably numbering about 600 families. They were generally believed to be sexually promiscuous and orgiastic ceremonies were claimed to have taken place on the Spring Festival, Hag ha-Keves (Festival of the Lamb); but such accusations are common against
new religious movements
. Although compelled to move from Salonika in 1924, and despite widespread
assimilation
, still exists.

 
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