Re: [tied] some terms for George ( it was Re: Historical ...)

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 23320
Date: 2003-06-15

15-06-03 14:49, alex wrote:
Christianity without Jesus seems to make no sense. Jesus as non inherited word does not fit good with biserica and cruce as inherited words, don't you find?
I don't. "Without Jesus" is not the same as "without the word J-E-S-U-S". Christianity without the latter is perfectly thinkable. You'll find the same even in English. The word <church> goes back to early (apparently pre-Christian!) West Germanic *kirik(j)o:n (ultimately a loan from Greek), whereas <Jesus> (<iesu>, <ihesus>, etc.), borrowed from Mediaeval Latin and Old French, began to be used in Middle English times (about the 12th c.) and did not become really common until the 16th century, by which time Anglo-Saxon Christianity was almost a millennium old. In Old English times, the normal word for 'the Son of God' was <hæ:lend> 'saviour', now completely obsolete. Whatever the earliest Romanian term for "Jesus Christ" was, at some point it was replaced by <Isus Hristos>, and then forgotten.

Piotr