The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1504 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
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Maskilim
(proponents of the Haskalah, enlightenment):
Maslow, Abraham Harold
(1908–70).
Psychologist and theorist of human personality. He proposed ‘a hierarchical prepotency of basic needs’, goals to which we address ourselves in roughly the same order, with one desire rapidly succeeding another when the first is satisfied: physiological, safety, love, esteem, self-actualization. The self-actualized person exhibits unusual degrees of detachment and self-dependence. S/he also achieves peak-experiences in greater number, which take the individual far beyond the ordinary levels of striving to achieve more proximate goals. He argued that religions derive from founders who have sustained extended peak-experiences.
Masorah
.
The rules and practices of reading certain books of the Hebrew Bible in Jewish public worship. Among
Ashkenazi
Jews, a tradition of cantillated reading of the
Torah
and
liturgy
developed which was recorded by special accents and marks placed in the texts. These conventions were developed in the 6th–9th cents. CE by scholars known as the masoretes whose aim was to preserve the authentic Hebrew text. The accepted text is that determined by Aaron ben Asher of the Tiberias School of Masoretes.
Masoret
(tradition):
Masowe Apostles
(Independent Christian movement in Africa):
Mass
(Lat.
missa
, from the words
Ite
,
missa est
, ‘Go, you are dismissed’ at the end). In the
Roman Catholic Church
, and among
Anglo-Catholics
, the usual title for the
eucharist
. Outside Catholic circles, the word has come to be associated in theological contexts with the doctrine of the eucharistic
sacrifice
.

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