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by mkoubaa 408 days ago
Just because a slur happens to be the same word as a technical term doesn't mean it can't be used as a technical term anymore. Anyone working in the field or had awareness of it knows the appropriate connotation.

It causes me physical pain when scientists change their practice to appease pearl clutching amateurs
1 comments
colechristensen 408 days ago
It's not a technical term, calling things that aren't Christian "pagan" especially from before Christianity was prominent is silly and inaccurate.
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mkoubaa 408 days ago
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C44&q=%22...
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philosophty 408 days ago
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%5Bpre+-+Chris...

Clearly modern scholars disagree with you, and it's not a matter of pearl clutching.

It just doesn't make sense to, for example, define an ancient Roman library as "pagan" (or even "pre-Christian") as if that is its defining characteristic. Unless you happen to be a medieval Christian monk of course, and then it makes complete sense.

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inglor_cz 407 days ago
Pre-Christian would make a lot of sense for me, precisely because in the Christian era, many of the pagan (!) authors and their works would be considered "problematic", if not outright purge-able.

The content of Roman libraries is likely to depend on their pre-Christian vs. Christian characters.

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colechristensen 407 days ago
It shouldn't.

Christianity wasnt the official state religion of Rome until 380 CE at which point it only had legal status for 67 years. Christianity wasn't done covering europe until iceland in 1000 CE.

What might count as prechristian wasn't at all clear and depended on where you were and how official you want things to be, it also was absolutely not like flipping a switch or even gradual, it was rocky and complicated.

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Aloisius 408 days ago
Uh. The first page of that seems to consist entirely of articles about Christians and their views of the ancient Greeks except for one article on neo-Paganism.

If anything, that seems to prove people's point that the term is of questionable value, except perhaps when discussing early Christians or I suppose if one is writing about Christianity.

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