The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (884 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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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
.

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