[tied] re Religion

From: Gordon Selway
Message: 30439
Date: 2004-02-01

Well, Lewis and Short is 125 years old this year, iirc - my copy is
currently inaccessible (as is Munro's commentary on Lucretius), and
there is now a new OLD, which I do not have a copy of (apart from the
first fascicle): anyone able to tell us whether it says anything
different?

So, 'modern' would mean 'of the third third of the nineteenth
century? And how good is even Tully as an accurate commentator on
how Latin came to be as it was in the 1st C BCE?

Best wishes,


Gordon
<gordonselway@...>

At 4:07 pm +0000 01/02/2004, Daniel J. Milton wrote:
>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:
>> did the word "religion" appeared just after the Christian faith became the
>> official religion of Roman Empire or is this word mentioned some time
>> before?
>
>> I think at "re-ligion" as "re-bind" , thus to rebind to a new unity with the
>> divinity this is why I asked myself if the word as such spreaded from the
>> time the emperor (CG) decided the new religion is the religion of the Roman
>> Empire.
>>
>> Alex
>*********
> You may think of re-ligion as something to do with binding,
>and if so, you are in distinguished company, back at least to St.
>Augustine. There is an alternative etymology however, going back
>still further to Cicero, deriving it from relego rather than religo,
>I take in a sense more or less of "checking things twice".
>
>>From Lewis and Short:
> "religio (in poetry also relligio , to lengthen the first
>syllable), ônis, f. [Concerning the etymology of this word,
>various opinions were prevalent among the ancients. Cicero (N. D. 2,
>28, 72) derives it from relegere, an etymology favored by the
>verse cited ap. Gell. 4, 9, 1, religentem esse oportet, religiosum
>nefas; whereas Servius (ad Verg. A. 8, 349), Lactantius (4, 28),
>Augustine (Retract. 1, 13), al., assume religare as the primitive,
>and for this derivation Lactantius cites the expression of Lucretius
>(1, 931; 4, 7): religionum nodis animos exsolvere. Modern
>etymologists mostly agree with this latter view, assuming as root
>lig, to bind, whence also lic-tor, lex, and ligare; hence, religio
>sometimes means the same as obligatio; v. Corss. Aussprache, 1, 444
>sq.; cf. Munro ad Lucr. 1, 109.]"
>
> I'm not sure the "Modern etymologists mostly agree" is correct;
>I've seen both etymologies supported.
>Dan
>
>
>
>
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