Other Religions
Inspiration for the Christian use of the name "pontiff" for a bishop could be found in the use of the same word (in Latin, pontifex, not "pontifex maximus") for the Jewish High Priest in the Vulgate Latin translation of the Scriptures, where it appears 59 times. For example, in the Vulgate Mark 15:11, "pontifices" (plural) is the Latin term used for "The Chief Priests", and in the Letter to the Hebrews "pontifex" (singular) is repeatedly used with reference to the Jewish High Priest and analogously to Jesus as the High Priest of Christians.
The word has been employed in English also for caliphs (Islam) and swamis and jagadgurus (Hinduism).
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Famous quotes containing the word religions:
“The ancients adorned their sarcophagi with the emblems of life and procreation, and even with obscene symbols; in the religions of antiquity the sacred and the obscene often lay very close together. These men knew how to pay homage to death. For death is worthy of homage as the cradle of life, as the womb of palingenesis.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Those who believe in their truth—the only ones whose imprint is retained by the memory of men—leave the earth behind them strewn with corpses. Religions number in their ledgers more murders than the bloodiest tyrannies account for, and those whom humanity has called divine far surpass the most conscientious murderers in their thirst for slaughter.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)