Literature. — H. Cremer, Lex. of NT Greek^, Edinburgh, 1880, s.v. KapSia, and PRE^ vii. 773 ; J. Laidlaw, Bible Doctrine of Man, new ed., Edinburgh, 1895, p. 121 ; B. Weiss, Biblical Theology of the NT, Eng. tr., do. 1882-3, 1. 348.
J. C. Lambert. HEATHEN.— The word 'heathen' still finds a measure of favour with the OT Revisers, and, in order to prevent it from being entirely excluded from the NT, it might well have been retained in at least one or two of the passages where it occurs in the AV (Mt 6^ 18^ Ac 4^, 2 Co ll^*, Gal l'« 2« 3^). ' Gentiles' is substituted for it throughout in the text of the RV. It first appears in the Gothic Version of Ulfilas (a.d. 318-388) in Mk 7^^, where 'EWrjvh is rendered by haibnO. The etymology is uncertain. It was long Ijelieved to have come from the Gothic haijpi, 'heath,' and to hare de- VOL. I.— 34
noted the 'dwellers on the heath,' who, on the introduction of Christianity, stood out longest in their adherence to the ancient deities (cf. Trench, Study of Words^, p. 77). Doubt has been cast, however, on this derivation by S. Bugge (Indoger. Forschungcn, v. [1895] 178), who takes haibno as indicating a masc. hai\>ans, which he refers to Armenian hetanos, ' heathen,' an adaptation of Gr. 'iQvo's (cf. OED, vol. v., s.v. 'Heathen,' where Bugge's theory is not accepted).
A similar etymological uncertainty presents itself in the case of the synonym, 'pagan.' The application of this word to non-Christians was long thought to be due to the fact that ' the ancient idolatry lingered on in the rural villages and hamlets \X>agi\ after Christianity had been generally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire' (OED, vol. vii., s.v. ' Pagan '). But the application to non-Christians probably arose at an earlier date, and in a diflferent way (££rii xx. 449). In the course of the 1st cent., paganus came to mean in classical Latin, 'a civilian,' as opposed to a miles. The 'raw half-armed rustics who sometimes formed a rude militia in Roman wars' were not looked upon as a regular branch of the service, or as deserving the honourable appellation of milites, soldiers of the standing army. They were pagani (Tac. Hist. i. 53, ii. 14 : ' paganorum manus . . . inter milites ' ; ii. 88, iii. 24, 43, 77, iv. 20: 'paganorum lixarumque'; Pliny, Ep. X. 18: 'et milites et pagani'). Christians, then, having taken the title of milites Dei or milites Christi for their own, which St. Paul had warranted them in doing (Eph 6'4f., 2 Ti 23), and for which they found a further warrant in the early application of the word sacramentum, ' the military oath,' to baptism, re- garded as pagani ('outsiders,' not soldiers at all)* those who had not abandoned heathenism and committed themselves to Christ as tlieir leader. This derivation seems to have been first suggested by Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury, ii. 394 n., 176), and has been adopted by Zahii (NKZ X. [1899] 28 f.) and Hamack (Expansion of Christianity, i. 316, ii. 22).
Our Lord's three allusions to the heathen {ol i6vtKoL,i rd iOvrj) in the Sermon on the Mount were designed to illustrate His teaching respecting the righteousness of the Kingdom of God, as a right- eousness which demanded, in loving one's neigh- bour, much more than that reciprocity of courtesy which even heathens practised (Mt 5*^) ; in prayer, a childlike trustfulness of asking, unlike the wordy clamour of heathen worship (6'') ; and in work, a loving dependence on God, which would exalt work, and make it quite a different thing from heathen drudgery (6^^).
The closing words of Mt 18" (^irrw aoi &a-irep 6 iOpiKbi Ktti 6 reXuiJ'Tjs) must give us pause. Had they stood alone, we might have inferred that Jesus acquiesced in the judgment which put the heathen and the publican under the ban. But a publican had already been taken into the number of the Twelve (9"), and he is the very apostle who reports these words. St. Matthew has also recorded before this how Jesus had put forth His miraculous power in response to the 'great faith' of a heathen centurion and a distressed heathen mother (8^' 15-8). That the words imply personal contempt or dislike for the heatlien and the publican, or pronounce a sentence of exclusion upon thern, is, accordingly, out of the question. This saying is to be regarded as an obiter dictum of our Lord's, spoken to His disciples from their present Jewish standpoint, and therefore of use to them at the moment in interpreting His meaning. Current Jewish opinion is made the medium of conveying moral and evangelical guidance.
The healing of the Syrophoenician's daughter is another occasion on which our Lord appears to speak the language of His time. Here, however, the severity of the words, ' It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs' (Mk 1^), is intentionally mitigated by the use^ of the diminutive Kwdpia, which is just 'doggies' in our language — no word of scorn, but one of afiection
* Of. Fr. pekin — a name originally given by the soldiers under Napoleon i. to any civilian (OED vii. 622). „,, „ , ^