At 09:53 AM 9/27/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Dear All
>Sometimes I dream of a world in which the word 'pagan' was banished from
>scholarly discourse.
>
>Which of us in discussing the political history of a particular country would
>think of doing so in terms of 'indigines' and 'foreigners', except very
>occasionally in the case of topics such as zenophobia or migration.
>Graham Jones
>
what about "gentiles," which doesn't have the necessarily negative
connotations of pagan. gentile philosopher makes more sense than pagan
(peasant) philosopher, and is unquestionably an accurate description of how
both christians and jews saw such people as plato and virgil.
richard
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