b. After his death, the kingdom disintegrated and was annexed by the British. His son, Duleep Si
gh, the first Sikh to live in Britain, has achieved a symbolic importance in the community.
Ransom
.
It is recognized in Judaism that compensation can be paid to avoid punishment, slavery, or death. In ancient Israel, it was common to pay ransom as an alternative to corporal punishment except in the case of murder (Numbers 35. 31–4). The issue of whether a ransom is possible, or whether exact retribution must be made, was disputed between
Sadducees
(who maintained that no ransom by way of payment is possible) and their opponents (who held that substitution by way of payment is possible except in cases of wilful murder). This means that the remark attributed to Jesus in Mark 10. 45 is more likely to be authentic than not, since there are other instances of Jesus using the current debates to make his own creative interpretation.
Ranters
.
A loosely organized mid-17th-cent. radical group with
antinomian
tendencies. Its leaders substantiated their individualistic teaching by appealing to revelatory experiences of the
Spirit
or the indwelling
Christ
. Jacob Bauthumley's
The Light and Darker Sides of God
expounds their ‘
inner light
’ teaching. The movement died out in the 17th cent., but the term was later used colloquially to describe the
Primitive Methodists
.
Rant
(Jap., ‘egg-shaped tower’). The tower which surmounts the tomb of a Zen monk.
Raphael
(Heb., ‘God is healing’). An angel recognized in Judaism and Christianity. Raphael appears in the
Apocrypha
(
Tobit
12. 15 and 1
Enoch
20. 3).
Rapture
(Lat.,
raptus
, ‘seized’). The action in which believers will be ‘caught up’ (1 Thessalonians 4. 17;
Vulgate
,
rapiemur
) to meet Christ in the air at his second coming (
parousia
). In mystical Christianity, rapture is the carrying away of the believer by the overwhelming power of God, a ‘flight of the spirit’.