SEE ALSO Dhikr; QurDa ̄n; Rites of Passage, article on Mus-
lim Rites; Sama ̄E; Tafs ̄ır.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The standard work on the QurDa ̄n is by Theodor Nöldeke, Frie-
drich Schwally, and others, Geschichte des Qora ̄ns, 2d rev. ed.,
3 vols. (1909-1938; reprint, New York, 1970), of which the
third volume by Gotthelf Bergsträsser and Otto Pretzl, Die
Geschichte des Korantexts, 2d ed. (Leiden, 1938), contains in-
formation about QurDa ̄n recitation. Another standard source
of information is Ignácz Goldziher’s Die Richtungen der is-
lamischen Koranauslegung (1920; reprint, Leiden, 1970), es-
pecially pages 1–54. A summary of European scholarship on
QurDa ̄n recitation is presented in Rudi Paret’s “Kira ̄Da,” in
The Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed. (Leiden, 1960-). Useful
information about tajw ̄ıd may be found in Edward Sell’s The
Faith of Islam, 3d ed. (London, 1907); see appendix A,
“EIlmu’t-tajwid.”
The most important modern research on QurDa ̄n recitation has
been done by Kristina Nelson; see The Art of Reciting the
QurDan (Austin, 1985). Also useful is the International Con-
gress for the Study of the QurDan, series 1, 2d ed., edited by
A. H. Johns (Canberra, 1982); see especially Frederick M.
Denny’s “The Adab of QurDan Recitation: Text and Con-
text,” pp. 143–160, and John Bowman’s “Holy Scriptures,
Lectionaries and QurDan,” pp. 29–37. On QurDa ̄n recitation
in the wider context of Islamic culture, see Frederick M.
Denny’s “Exegesis and Recitation: Their Development as
Classical Forms of QurDa ̄nic Piety,” in Transitions and Trans-
formations in the History of Religions: Essays in Honor of Joseph
M. Kitagawa, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and Theodore M.
Ludwig (Leiden, 1980), pp. 91–123, and my own “Under-
standing the QurDan in Text and Context,” History of Reli-
gions 21 (May 1982): 361–384.
Most Muslim works on the QurDa ̄n are written in Arabic and thus
little known in the West except among specialists. An excep-
tion is Labib al-Said’s The Recited Koran: A History of the First
Recorded Version, translated and edited by Bernard Weiss, M.
A. Rauf, and Morroe Berger (Princeton, 1975).
RICHARD C. MARTIN (1987)
TILLICH, PAUL JOHANNES (1886–1965), Ger-
man-American theologian and philosopher, was born in
Starzeddel (now Starosiedle, Poland), in Brandenburg, Ger-
many, on August 20, 1886, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He
attended the University of Berlin, from which he received his
Ph.D., and the University of Halle, where he received his
doctorate in theology. After passing his second theological
examination at Halle, he was ordained into the ministry in
1912.
CAREER AND THEORY FORMULATION. During World War
I Tillich served as a military chaplain. These years had a pro-
found impact on Tillich’s understanding of human reality.
The effect of the war’s devastation, both physical and spiritu-
al, is reflected in a letter that he wrote in November 1916:
“I have become purely an eschatologist [in that] what I, along
with others, am experiencing is the actual end of the world
of this time.” Completing his military service in December
1918, Tillich received his qualification for university teach-
ing (Habilitation) at the University of Berlin in 1919. This
was also the year in which he published one of his most influ-
ential essays, “On the Idea of a Theology of Culture” (Über
die Idee einer Theologie der Kultur). The essay presented the
principles for interpreting culture theologically that Tillich
followed throughout his career and that became the basis of
a new field of theological study. The guideline that Tillich
used for such an interpretation was, in his formulation, that
the Gehalt (import, or substance) of a cultural work is
“grasped in the content (Inhalt) by means of the form and
given expression.” Expressionistic art is an example. In such
art, the forms of everyday reality—for example, the human
shape or the shapes of everyday objects—are distorted in
such a way that this distortion expresses a power, or reality,
that manifests itself by the very way in which it breaks
through the form and content of the objects. A theology of
culture undertakes to interpret the meaning of this “sub-
stance” (Gehalt), or depth content, which thus breaks
through the form into the content. Accordingly, an interpre-
tation of culture always involves a reference to three elements
of cultural works: the form, the content (Inhalt), and the
substance (Gehalt).
In the spring of 1929 Tillich accepted a call to teach
philosophy and sociology at the Univeristy of Frankfurt. It
was there that, in 1933, he published the work that was to
cause his emigration to the United States, Die sozialistische
Entscheidung (The Socialist Decision). In content, this was a
cautious analysis of socialism and a critique of unrestrained
capitalism. It was based upon the idea of kairos (right
time)—the idea that, even politcally, there are “right” times
for accomplishing certain things—and upon an analysis of
German democrary as only an abstract, not yet a real, demo-
crary. Tillich drew the conclusion that the time was ripe for
a new socialism, specifically, for a religious socialism that
could incorporate democracy. National Socialism, however,
was not what Tillich envisaged. Hence, the essay also con-
tained a criticism of the totalitarian element in the National
Socialist movement, and as a result Tillich became one of the
many educated Germans who emigrated under the threat of
those years as the movement developed.
Tillich left Germany in October 1933. In February
1934 he began his long teaching career at Union Theological
Seminary in New York, remaining there until his retirement
in 1955. He then became University Professor at Har-
vard—a great distinction—and in 1962 he became, with
similar distinction, the Nuveen Professor of Theology at the
University of Chicago. His last public address, “The Signifi-
cance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theolo-
gian,” delivered at the University of Chicago shortly before
his death on October 22, 1965, reflected the direction that
his thought had taken toward the questions raised by the en-
counter of Christianity with other religions. These differed
from the questions he had treated in his earlier works because
they involved differences in the religious symbols themselves.TILLICH, PAUL JOHANNES 9203