ABOUT THE WORDS “PAGAN” AND “IDOLATER”
In the Haykian teaching, Man is the result of the material and biological history of the Universe, possessing Creator-like qualities – consciousness, ideas, and the ability to create values. Since ancient times, Man has been creating: building, sculpting, and depicting, embodying his conceptions, values, high moral standards, and perception of beauty…
Man creates art, and conversely, art shapes Man: it educates and forges his worldview. Art, like language, is a means of communication with its symbols and expressive means. And ancient images, sculptures forged or hammered from various materials, were transmitters of ideas: the educators of generations, which, through the figures of the Deities, instilled the pursuit of perfection and expressed the harmony of strength, beauty, and goodness…
After the spread of Christianity, the denial, rejection, negation, and repudiation of the culture of the preceding era continued for centuries, and to this day, many have misconceptions about Armenian national culture, even though the continuously celebrated holidays and rituals are rooted exactly in the national worldview.
A brief explanation regarding the words “PAGAN, IDOL AND IDOLATER”, interpreted by Priest Mihr Haykazuni, is presented below.
ABOUT THE WORDS “PAGAN” AND “IDOLATER”
Language is not only a means of communication but also a way of thinking, a worldview. Accordingly, when examining the writings of manuscript books, the era, the author, the original language, the entire complete speech, and the overall content are taken into account…
Many words go through a “long journey” over the centuries: the world changes, and under the influence of “historical processes,” words sometimes undergo semantic changes. They lose their original meaning, undergo value changes, and are reinterpreted…
Therefore, it is necessary to know the etymology of the word in question, its ancient meaning, its written usage in original sources, its medieval reinterpretation, and its subsequent semantic shift.
Such words include “hetanos” (pagan), “kurk” (idol), and “krapasht” (idolater).
The original meaning of these words, frequently used in modern Armenian, differs strictly from the current religious, Christian “negative” and defamatory perception.
Etymologically, the word “hetanos” comes from the Greek word “ethnos” (ἔθνος) – “people”, “nation”, “tribe” (in Latin: “ethnicus” – “pagan”, “heathen”).
This word “ethnos” is the basis of many modern scientific terms that define a historically formed human group with common cultural, linguistic, or identity characteristics. In Syriac, it appears in the forms “htnos / hetnos / hetanos”.
From the same root as the word “ethnos” is formed the adjective “ethnikos” (ἐθνικός) with the meaning “national”, “belonging to the people”, and later, in Christian literature, it acquires the meaning “non-Hebrew”, “non-Christian” – “of another religion”, often with a strictly negative meaning of “impure” or “abominable”.
In the Greek translation of the Old Testament books, the “Septuagint”, which was made before the Roman era in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC in the city of Alexandria, Egypt, and from which the translation into classical Armenian (Grabar) was later made, the word “ethnos” is used to denote other nations apart from the people of Israel, meaning “foreigner” – as a person belonging to another nation – as an equivalent to the Hebrew word “goy”, which originally meant exactly “nation”, generally in the sense of “any nation”, but was subsequently used as an expression of insult and disrespect, with a disdainful, strictly contemptuous tone.
In other words, those who call the Haykian teaching – which glorifies Creation, Wisdom and Light, and one’s own Ancestors – “pagan” or “heathen”, defile, condemn, humiliate and desecrate Armenian sanctities, Armenianness, and Armenian identity…
In the case of the words “kurk” (idol) and “krapasht” (idolater), there has also been a change in meaning and significance due to historical circumstances. At their root is “kurn, kur” with the meaning of “solid, dense, hard, firm, strong”, and the verb – krel – to strengthen, to hammer, to cast, metaphorically: to forge, to prepare, to create.
“Kur – the root of krel (to forge) and kran (hammer): as “forged, beaten, cast and trampled, solid, dense, thick, firm, steadfast, strictly hard, durable. …(«Do not deviate from the solid (kur) royal highway»):
In ancient times, sculptures and statues forged, hammered, or cast from stone, wood, or metal were symbols of the presence of the Deities, reminders of their Creative power, and the “embodiment” of their qualities and virtues.
After the spread of Christianity, as an expression of its worldview, former beliefs and teachings different from Christianity were rejected, treated negatively, and presented as symbols of “error”, “evil”, “immorality”, “darkness and delusion”. Therefore, those cast, forged, and hammered sculptures, as well as images made of wood or stone, were labeled as “idolatry”, although to this day, within Christianity itself, these same sculptures, images, and frescoes have been used in even greater manifestations as an accessible “illustrated history” of Christian themes for the ignorant, telling religious “stories” and conveying the content of “religious writings” to illiterate believers who could not read…
The Armenian, faithful to the teaching of his Ancestors, always strove to cling to the luminous ideas of Sun-worship, continuing his national holidays and rituals, in defiance of the religion imposed with great violence by foreigners.
He consciously rejected the appellation “pagan” given by another nation, which denied, condemned, and devalued the national – the Haykian teaching – the path leading to Knowledge and Light, to High consciousness, and denied the national identity: it considered the Armenian national culture “darkness”, “error”, “vulgar”, “evil”, and erased the memory of the Armenian Forefathers, the songs and stories immortalizing their heroic deeds…
Let us be conscious and dignified Haykazunis, upholding the Haykian value system and national identity. Contrary to the usage that has continued for centuries, let us not tolerate the degrading labels of “pagan” and “heathen” given to the highly valuable culture created by the Armenian, and the ideological struggle waged against Light and Knowledge, which has been imposed since the 4th century…
