12-31-14 – PRAYING IN THE SPIRIT #17 “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27 John Gager, professor of Religion at Princeton University points out that the word “religion” did not exist before the Christian era. The idea is worth consideration and investigation. If Gager’s claim is true, then James (among others) could not have said “pure and undefiled religion.” His use of the Greek threskeia would not mean the same thing that we think of when we hear the word “religion.” In fact, this translation would mislead us. Wikipedia offers some abbreviated insight. “Religion (from Old French religion meaning a religious community, from Latin religionem (nominative religio) meaning “respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods,” “obligation, the bond between man and the gods” is derived from the Latin religiō, the ultimate origins of which are obscure. One possibility is an interpretation traced to Cicero, connecting lego “read”, i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense of “choose,” “go over again” or “consider carefully.” Modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell favor the derivation from ligare “bind, connect,” probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or “to reconnect,” which was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius.” The English word’s etymology is NOT set in stone. Pay close attention to this etymological note. Did you see the names Cicero, Augustine and Lactantius? Do you recognize these men as Romans or Christians? Did you notice that the word comes from Latin, not Hebrew or Greek? Did you know that early Christian apologists adopted the rhetoric of Cicero in efforts to distinguish Christianity (as a religion) from Judaism? Did you realize that Judaism as a religion didn’t exist in the first century either? As a religion, it came into existence under the definition of the Christian Church. The Wikipedia article notes that what we call religion in ancient times is much closer to the idea of law. What we know as Judaism was Israel’s national law! Law governs actions, i.e. behavior. In ancient cultures including Hebrew, the focus was on behvior in daily life. It wasn’t religion as we think of it. IT WAS A WAY OF LIVING. Perhaps that’s why it was impossible to separate how one lives from what one believes in the ancient world. They were essentially the same. But not anymore. In western civilization religion is a set of beliefs, a system of thoughts, an institution of culture. How I actually live, in western civilization is only tangentially connected to these statements of faith. It’s no longer what I do that matters. It’s what I say, especially what I say I believe. That is what causes the problem.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 22:37:22 +0000
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