Paaagans who worship false gods, and are not acquainted either with the doctrines of the Old Testament or the Christian dispensation. For many ages before Christ, the nations at large were destitute of the true religion, and gave themselves up to the grossest ignorance, the most absurd idolatry, and the greatest crimes. Even the most learned men among the heathens were in general inconsistent, and complied with or promoted the vain customs they found among their countrymen. It was, however, divinely foretold, that in Abraham’s seed all nations should be blessed; that the heathen should be gathered to the Saviour, and become his people, Gen 22:18. Gen 49:10. Psa 2:8. Isa 42:6-7. Psa 72:1-20: Isa 60:1-22: In order that these promises might be accomplished, vast numbers of the Jews, after the Chaldean captivity, were left scattered among the heathen. The Old Testament was translated into Greek, the most common language of the heathen; and a rumour of the Saviour’s appearance in the flesh was spread far and wide among them. When Christ came, he preached chiefly in Galilee, where there were multitudes of Gentiles.
He assured the Greeks that vast numbers of the heathen should be brought into the church, Mat 4:23. Joh 12:20; Joh 12:24. For 1700 years past the Jews have been generally rejected, and the church of God has been composed of the Gentiles. Upwards of 480 millions (nearly half the globe, ) however, are supposed to be yet in pagan darkness. Considerable attempts have been made of late years for the enlightening of the heathen; and there is every reason to believe good has been done. From the aspect of Scripture prophecy, we are led to expect that the kingdoms of the heathen at large shall be brought to the light of the Gospel, Mat 24:14. Isa 60:1-22: Psa 22:28-29. Psa 2:7-8. It has been much disputed whether it be possible that the heathen should be saved without the knowledge of the Gospel: some have absolutely denied it, upon the authority of those texts which universally require faith in Christ; but to this it is answered, that those texts regard only such to whom the Gospel comes, and are capable of understanding the contents of it.
The truth, says Dr. Doddridge, seems to be this; that none of the heathens will be condemned for not believing the Gospel, but they are liable to condemnation for the breach of God’s natural law: nevertheless, if there be any of them in whom there is a prevailing love to the Divine Being, there seems reason to believe that, for the sake of Christ, though to them unknown, they may be accepted by God; and so much the rather, as the ancient Jews, and even the apostles, during the time of our Saviour’s abode on earth, seem to have had but little notion of those doctrines, which those who deny the salvability of the heathens are most apt to imagine, Rom 2:10-22. Act 10:34-35. Mat 8:11-12. Mr. Grove, Dr. Watts, Saurin, and Mr. Newton, favour the same opinion; the latter of whom thus observes: "If we suppose a heathen brought to a sense of his misery; to a conviction that he cannot be happy without the favour of the great Lord of the world; to a feeling of guilt, and desire of mercy, and that, thought he has no explicit knowledge of a Saviour, he directs the cry of his heart to the unknown Supreme, to have mercy upon him; who will prove that such views and desires can arise in the heart of a sinner, without the energy of that Spirit which Jesus is exalted to bestow? Who will take upon him to say, that his blood has not sufficient efficacy to redeem to God a sinner who is thus disposed, though he have never heard of his name? Or who has a warrant to affirm, that the supposition I have made is in the nature of things impossible to be realized?" Newton’s Messiah; Dr. Watts’s Strength and Weakness of Human Reason, p. 106; Saurin’s Sermons, vol. 2: p. 314; Grove’s Mor. Phil. vol. 1: p. 128; Turret Loc. vol. 1: quxst. 4. $1, 2, 17; Doddridge’s Lectures, lec. 240. vol. 2: 8 vo. edit. Bellamy’s Religion Delineated, p. 105; Ridgley’s Body of Div. qu. 60; Gale’s Court of the Gentiles; Considerations on the Religious Worship of the Heathen; Rev. W. Jones’s Works, vol.xii.
Heathen. See Gentiles.
The Hebrew word goi is also translated ’Gentiles,’ and ’people,’ and very often ’nations:’ it is used in contrast to Israel irrespective of those designated being civilised or not. All the nations were idolaters, but this is not implied in the word goi, nor in the
HEATHEN.—The Anglo-Saxon heathen, ‘one who lives on the heaths and in the woods,’ as opposed to a town-dweller; cf. ‘pagan,’ from paganus, ‘a countryman or villager.’ This word is an indication of the fact that, as a rule, country-dwellers were Christianized later than those living in towns and cities. ‘Heathen’ occurs in Authorized Version of the Gospels in Mat 6:7; Mat 18:17, and not at all in Revised Version NT 1881, OT 1885 , which gives ‘Gentiles’ and ‘Gentile’ respectively in these two places (see Gentiles).
It has been pointed out that paganus also means ‘a civilian’ in opposition to ‘a soldier,’ and that thus a pagan would also mean one who was not a soldier of Christ. This secondary meaning of pagan probably came into use through a contemptuous designation by soldiers of non-military persons as ‘countrymen.’
Literature.—Murray, New English Dictionary; and Encyc. Bibl. s.v.; Bigg, The Church’s Task under the Roman Empire, Lect. ii. p. 42, note 2; Trench, Study of Words.
Albert Bonus.
See GENTILE:
HEATHEN.—See Idolatry, Nations.
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 Authorized Version (Mat_6:7; Mat_18:7, Act_4:25, 2Co_11:26, Gal_1:16; Gal_2:9; Gal_3:8). ‘Gentiles’ is substituted for it throughout in the text of the Revised Version . It first appears in the Gothic Version of Ulfilas (a.d. 318-388) in Mar_7:26, where Ἐëëçíßò is rendered by haiþnô. The etymology is uncertain. It was long believed to have come from the Gothic haiþi, ‘heath,’ and to have denoted 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 Words8, p. 77). Doubt has been cast, however, on this derivation by S. Bugge (Indoger. Forschungen, v. [1895] 178), who takes haiþnô as indicating a masc. haiþans, which he refers to Armenian het‘anos, ‘heathen,’ an adaptation of Gr. ἔèíïò (cf. OED [Note: ED Oxford English Dictionary.] , vol. v., s.v. ‘Heathen,’ where Bugge’s theory is not accepted).
A similar etymological uncertainty presents itself in the care or 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 [pagi] after Christianity had been generally accepted in the towns and cities of the Roman Empire’ (OED [Note: ED Oxford English Dictionary.] , vol. vii., s.v. ‘Pagan’). But the application to non-Christian probably arose at an earlier date, and in a different way (Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 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 or 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_6:14 f, 2Ti_2:3), and for which they found a further warrant in the early application of the word sacramentum, ‘the military oath,’ to baptism, regarded as pagani (‘outsiders,’ not soldiers at all)* [Note: Fr. pékin-a name originally given by the soldiers under Napoleon 1. to any civilian (OED vii. 622).] those who had not abandoned heathenism and committed themselves to Christ as their leader. This derivation seems to have been first suggested by Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury, ii. 394 n. [Note: . note.] , 176), and has been adopted by Zahn (NKZ [Note: KZ Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift.] x. [1899] 28f.) and Harnack (Expansion of Christianity, i. 315, ii. 22).
Our Lord’s three allusions to the heathen [ïἱ ἐèíéêïß,† [Note: ἐèíéêüò occurs in the NT 4 times (Mat_5:47; Mat_6:7; Mat_18:17, 3Jn_1:7). Neither ἐèíéêüò nor ἐèíéêῶò (Gal_2:14) is found in the LXX.] ôὰ ἔèíç) in the Sermon on the Mount were designed to illustrate His teaching respecting the righteousness of the Kingdom of God, as a righteousness which demanded, in loving one’s neighbour, much more than that reciprocity of courtesy which even heathens practised (Mat_5:47); in prayer, a childlike trustfulness of asking, unlike the wordy clamour of heathen worship (Mat_6:7); and in work, a loving dependence on God, which would exalt work, and make it quite a different thing from heathen drudgery (Mat_6:32).
The closing words of Mat_18:17 (ἔóôù óïé ὤóðåñ ὁ ἐèíéêὸò êáὶ ὁ ôåëþíçò) 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 (Mat_9:9), 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 (Mat_8:10, Mat_15:28). That the words imply personal contempt or dislike for the heathen and the publican, or pronounce a sentence of exclusion upon them, 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 Syrophœnician’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’ (Mar_7:27), is intentionally mitigated by the use of the diminutive êõíÜñéá, which is just ‘doggies’ in our language-no word of scorn, but one of affection and tenderness. Nor should we forget that the saying which immediately precedes is, ‘Let the children first be filled.’ The Syrophœnician, with the quick penetration of faith, perceived that the two sayings were to be taken together, and knew that she was not really repelled (cf. Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, ii. 347).
The Third Epistle of St. John is ‘a quite private note’ (Encyclopaedia Biblica ii. 1327), recommending to the kind attention of Gaius, a friend of his, some ‘travelling missionaries,’ described as men who ‘for the sake of the Name went forth, taking nothing of the heathen’ (3Jn_1:7 : ìçäὲí ëáìâÜíïíôåò ἀðὸ ôῶí ἐèíéêῶí). Seeing that these itinerant preachers of the gospel deem it most prudent not to accept hospitality from ‘them that are without’ (cf. 1Co_5:12, Col_4:5)-a course which St. John approves-they are the more dependent on the öéëïîåíßá of the few fellow-Christians who come in their way (cf. Zahn, Introd. to the NT, iii. 374). The cutting question which St. Paul addressed to St. Peter in the presence of the congregation at Antioch (Gal_2:14) was justly aimed against the moral inconsistency of his first eating with the Gentile converts (óý … ἐèíéêῶò æῇò; cf. Gal_2:12) and then withdrawing from table-fellowship with them. This vacillation, had it been allowed to go on without remonstrance, would have arrested the progress of the work of Christ among the heathen. Few occurrences in Church history are more full of warning than this memorable crisis, which might have divided more than the Christiana of Antioch into two opposing camps, and made the Lord’s Supper itself a table of discord (cf. Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iii. 765b).
Over against the dark picture of heathenism which he draws in Rom_1:18-32 St. Paul sets a very different presentment in 2:14f, where he depicts heathen human nature as bearing witness to a law written within, and being guided by it to well-doing. The Apostle also does justice to heathen ethics in Php_4:8 -‘an exhortation,’ as Weizsäcker says (Apostolic Age, ii. 354), ‘whose charm to this day rests on the appeal to the common feeling of humanity,’ and on the principle that ‘that which was valid … among heathens was also truly Christian’ (cf. article ‘St. Paul in Athens’ by Ernst Curtius, in Expositor, 7th ser. iv. 441f.).
Literature.-Encyclopaedia Biblica ii. [1901] 1327; Encyclopaedia Britannica 11 xiii [1910] 159, xx. [1911] 449; E. Curtius, in Expositor, 7th ser. iv. [1907] 441f.; E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, ed. Bury2, ii. [1897] 394: A. Harnack, Expansion of Christianity, Eng. translation , 1904-5, i. 315, ii. 22; E. Hatch H. A. Redpath, Concordance to the Septuagint , ii. [1893] s.v. ἔèíïò; Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) iii. 765b; J. Facciolati-A. Forcellini, Latin Lexicon, 1828, ii., s.v. ‘paganus’; OED [Note: ED Oxford English Dictionary.] v. [1901] s.v. ‘Heathen,’ vii. [1909] s. vv. ‘Pagan,’ ‘Pekin’; W. A. Spooner, Histories of Tacitus, 1891, iii. 24; R. C. Trench, Study of Words8, 1858, p. 76f.; C. von Weizsäcker, The Apostolic Age2, Eng. translation , ii. [1895] 352-354; H. H. Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus, Eng. translation , 1892, ii. 347; T. Zahn, Introd. to the NT, Eng. translation , 1909, iii. 374.
James Donald.