Post by Ed CryerPost by bertietaylorWhat's the difference between "pagan" and "heathen"?
I've always thought Shakespeare gave a good, running description for
"heathen".
FIRST WITCH
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
SECOND WITCH
When the hurly-burly’s done,
When the battle’s lost and won.
THIRD WITCH
That will be ere the set of sun.
FIRST WITCH
Where the place?
SECOND WITCH
Upon the heath. *****************
THIRD WITCH
There to meet with Macbeth.
Possibly.
As I understand it, "pagani" was Roman military slang for "civilians",
rather like the BrE usage "punters" (which in SAfE means "people who
bet, mostly on horse races").
As Fox describes it, it was adopted by Christians in the Roman empire
for non-Christians, those who had not enlisted to fight in the
spiritual battle that shaped the Christians' worldview.
Pagani, for the most part, were unbelievers *within* the Roman empire
and therefore "civilised" (one could have an interesting discussion
about the difference between "civilisation" and "urbanisation").
But in the north of Europe Christianity began to spread beyond the
pale, beyond the boundary of the shrinking Roman empire, initially
mostly among people who spoke Germanic languages, and the Germanic
term "heathen" came to be used by Christians for unbelievers who were
regarded by those living within the civilised Roman empire as
"barbarians".
As time passed, for English-speaking Christians the two terms became
synonymous. I'm not sure what happened to them among speakers of other
Germanic languages, but here we are concerned primarily with English
usage.
With the advent of modernity in Western Europe, shaped by the
Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment, the concept of
"religion" and "religions" developed --- the book to read is:
Harrison, Peter. 1990. "Religion" and the religions in the
English Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
ISBN: 0-521-38530-X
Dewey: 291.0942
The origin of the modern idea of religion can
be traced to the Enlightenment. This study
shows how the concepts "religion" and "the
religions" arose out of controversies in 17th
& 18th-century England. The birth of "the
religions", conceived to be sets of beliefs
and practices, enabled the establishment of a
new science of religion in which the various
"religions" were studied and impartially
compared. Dr Harrison thus offers a detailed
historical picture of the emergence of
comparative religion as an academic
discipline.
And some scholars of religion developed the term "monotheism" and
began to use the term "pagan" to refer to those who did not belong to
religions they regarded as "monotheistic" -- mainly Judaism,
Christianity and Islam.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries the term "pagan" beganto be used
by and of the cultured despisers of Christianity -- secular humanists
etc. And the term "heathen" began to be used by some Christians for
the UNcultured despisers of Christianity, the hoi polloi in Great
Britain who didn't go to church because they didn't see the point.
The second half of the second half of the 20th century saw the rise of
neopaganism as a kind of post-Christian phenomenon, those who revived
or adapted some of the pre-Christian religions, or invented new ones.
For them, "pagan" became a positive term, whereas hitherto it had been
a negative term, catergorising people by the religion they *didn't*
practise, and for neopagans it came to mean a religion they *did*
practise. So "paganism" became a thing, and not the mere absence of a
thing.
This is why the meaning of words like "pagan" and "heathen" depends on
when and where they were uttered, by whom, and referring to whom or
what.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk