More to think about by intelligent Pagans: the terminology at our disposal was that invented by late antique Christians. The Latin paganus, whose original meaning is ‘peasant’, ‘rustic’, ‘unlearned’, eventually becomes the opposite of ‘Jewish’ and especially ‘Christian’ (...) the term ‘pagan’ is hardly appropriate to describe those highly articulate thinkers like Plotinus or Proclus, who systematically defended their cultural patrimony against the enemy within and without the empire. Moreover those who were grouped together as pagans by the Christian Apologists, partly for reasons of convenience and partly for reasons of propaganda, would certainly not originally at least have seen themselves as forming one religious entity. What is interesting, though not surprising, in this connection is that certain ‘pagans’ within the Roman empire eventually came to view themselves as a group with a common cultural past and a common interest, and began to behave accordingly. But this was not a natural development; it came as a reaction to Christian polemic. - Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Ed: P. Athanassiadi, M. Frede
Posted on: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 17:04:53 +0000