The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (756 page)

 
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Ezra
.

A
priest
and
scribe
after whom a book in the Hebrew
Bible
is named. Ezra himself was described as both a priest and scribe, and he had a major role in the rebuilding of the
Jerusalem
Temple
after the Babylonian
exile
. Ezra was regarded as second in piety only to
Moses
.

 
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Ezra and Nehemiah, Books of
.

Two books belonging to the
Writings
of the Hebrew Bible and to the historical books of the Christian Old Testament. In some Roman Catholic Bibles the titles are 1 and 2
Esdras
respectively. The books continue the history of
Chronicles
down to the end of the 5th cent. BCE, and may be the work of the same compiler (‘the Chronicler’).

 
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(Heb., ‘Court of Women’). A courtyard in the
Jerusalem
temple
.
Women
were not permitted to pass beyond the Ezrat Nashim, and later, the term was applied to the section of the
synagogue
reserved for women.

 
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Chin. for
dharma
.

 
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Face/body marks in Hinduism
:

see
TILAKA
.

 
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One of the Six Ways of Chinese Religion. The historian Ssu-ma Tan (d. 110 BCE) wrote of its followers: they advocated deterrent law and punishment, especially in Han Fei Tzu, and in his work of that name, often compared to Machiavelli's
The Prince
; in Fa-chia, the Tao is simply the working out of power politics: the past is not revered as a repository of wisdom, as it was for Confucius and Mo Tzu: what matters is how the ruler exercises ‘the two handles’ of reward and punishment’.