Apropos charting the ups and downs of certain dislogistic terms in the recent columns, I was reminded of a remark made by Richard Trench (1807-86) in a speech to the Philological Society of London that “the history of … the wrong ways into which a language has wandered… may be nearly as instructive as the right ones.” The Society, on Trench’s suggestion, decided to undertake the complication of A New English Dictionary that was eventually published as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), justly called `the mother’ of all English dictionaries.

As an example of the twists and turns of etymology, particularly the pejorative mantle that certain words took on in a religious sense, the last column traced the life history of `ethnic’. Ethnic was born, as it were, as ethnos (through Greek ta ethne), meaning “a band of people living together, nation, people”, then “people of one’s own kind”, but began to mean a heathen, a barbarous or unenlightened person, and was applied to all people except Christians, Jews, and Muslims until reverting to its ancient, original meaning only over a century ago. 

As the etymology of pagan and heathen will show, villain (originally a villager, farm hand) itself is the villain of the piece. Why one religion so disparaged people living upcountry or in rural settings is anyone’s guess; the truth is that English has an inordinately large number of dislogistic terms for people generally thought to be simple and natural, namely: country yokel/bumpkin/hick, and for the place they lived: the backwoods, the boondocks, the sticks.

Shades of meaning

Heathen, a Germanic word that made its way into English, originally referred to “one who lived in the country or on the heaths (moors) and in the woods” and, therefore, was considered to be uncultured or savage. Such shading of meaning influenced its association with an inhabitant of unbelieving nations, or those that worshipped idols and did not acknowledge the true God, that is, the God of Christianity. Although that use of heathen is now considered old fashioned, its pejorative context has remained intact.

St. Patrick’s proclamation is a case in point: “If I be worthy, I live for my God to teach the heathen, even though they may despise me.” Carl Jung, enlightened as he was, held that “The Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.” Serj Tankian underlined the word’s new avatar in “We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.”

Pagan (from Latin pagus “rural district”, paganus “a country dweller or villager”, the opposite of urbanus,) meant exactly the same as heathen. Paganism for non-Christian practices can be traced back to 1433, as applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers to 1908. One explanation offered for its use for someone not Christian or Jew is that certain ancient religions practising idolatry persisted in the rural districts long after Christianity had been generally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire. While it may be true that the older Roman religions lingered in the rural hinterland, the second explanation of the word’s origin gained more credence.

Which is that paganus was Roman military jargon for “civilian, incompetent soldier”. Some early Christian authors, for example, Tertullian and Augustine, called themselves milites Christi “soldiers of Christ”. It, therefore, became a practice to refer to those who were not Christians as pagani “civilians”. The early Christians in Rome, taking seriously St. Paul’s instruction to put on the whole armour of God, adopted the same vocabulary as Roman soldiers and began using paganus for a person who was not a Christian.

Creative use

Literature abounds with pagan’s creative use as a metaphor: “The Christian fear of the pagan outlook has damaged the whole consciousness of man.” (D. H. Lawrence) In his inimitable style, Lord Byron wrote: “There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.” And “Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan — spoiled.” (Israel Zangwill)

It’s ironic that early Christians, in spite of negative connotations of pagan, could not free themselves of pagan influences and practices. In the early days of the English church, it adopted an existing pagan festival and gave it a Christian interpretation. In pagan England, the vernal equinox was celebrated as the festival of Eostre, Teutonic goddess of the dawn. Each year, on the first Sunday after the full moon which falls on or after the vernal equinox, western Christians observe Easter, also called `moveable feast’ the date of which changes every year.

Source

• Of pagans and heathens. (2007, March 4). Hindu, India. Retrieved March 4, 2007.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 4th, 2007 at 6:43 pm and is filed under History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.