HEATHEN

heathen, a term originally applied to all persons or races who did not hold the jewish or christian belief, thus including mahommedans. it is now more usually given to polytheistic races, thus excluding mahommedans. the derivation of the word has been much debated. it is common to all germanic languages; cf. german _heide_, dutch _heiden_. it is usually ascribed to a gothic _haithi_, heath. in ulfilas' gothic version of the bible, the earliest extant literary monument of the germanic languages, the syrophoenician woman (mark vii. 26) is called _haithno_, where the vulgate has _gentilis_. "heathen," i.e. the people of the heath or open country, would thus be a translation of the latin _paganus_, pagan, i.e. the people of the _pagus_ or village, applied to the dwellers in the country where the worship of the old gods still lingered, when the people of the towns were christians (but see pagan for a more tenable explanation of that term). on the other hand it has been suggested (prof. s. bugge, _indo-german. forschungen_, v. 178, quoted in the _new english dictionary_) that ulfilas may have adopted the word from the armenian _hetanos_, i.e. greek [greek: ethne], tribes, races, the word used for the "gentiles" in the new testament. _gentilis_ in latin, properly meaning "tribesman," came to be used of foreigners and non-roman peoples, and was adopted in ecclesiastical usage for the non-christian nations and in the old testament for non-jewish races.