The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (424 page)

(1575–1624).
German
Lutheran
theosophical writer. Son of a farmer, from 1599 to 1613 he lived as a cobbler in Görlitz in Silesia. He claimed to be a mystic, writing under direct divine inspiration. From the publication of his first work,
Aurora
(1612), he provoked official opposition. Most of his works were published posthumously, including the famous
Signatura Rerum
and
Magnum Mysterium
. Boehme is obscure and difficult, using much abstruse terminology. Boehme was enormously influential, especially on German idealism, and also in England.

 
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(
c.
480–
c.
524).
Roman philosopher and statesman. His most famous work,
On the Consolation of Philosophy
, is not specifically Christian, but was popular among Christians for its description of the soul attaining knowledge of the vision of God through philosophy.

 
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Boethusians
.

A Jewish sect of the 1st cent. BCE/CE. They may be the Herodians referred to in the New Testament.

 
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Boff, C. and L.
:

see
LIBERATION THEOLOGY
.

 
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Bogomils
.

A
dualist
Christian sect which flourished in Bulgaria from the 10th to as late as the 17th cent., and more widely in the Byzantine Empire in the 11th–12th cents. The name comes from their founder, a priest who took the name Bogomil
(= Gk.,
Theophilos
). They espoused the dualist and neo-
gnostic
doctrines of the Paulicians (e.g. belief in the devil as the creator of humanity and the world,
docetic
ideas of Christ, rejection of the Old Testament). They were also strongly ascetic, rejecting sex, marriage, and possessions, and not eating meat, believing that the soul must be freed from evil and thus the body. Bogomil influence can be discerned in the later
Catharism
of W. Europe.

 
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Bohemian Brethren
(Christian movement)
:

see
MORAVIAN BRETHREN
.

 
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