Re: Anaphorics with a Capital

--- On Sat, 12/6/08, Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...> wrote:

> From: Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...>
> Subject: Re: [tied] Anaphorics with a Capital
> To: "Arnaud Fournet" <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Saturday, December 6, 2008, 12:04 PM
> At 11:27:00 AM on Saturday, December 6, 2008, Arnaud Fournet
> wrote:
>
> > I have read religious texts in Cyrillic alphabet
> written
> > at the end of the XIXth century.
>
> > I'm intrigued by the anaphorics He, His written
> with a
> > capital letter when they refer to Jesus. I may be
> wrong
> > but it seems this feature does not exist in western
> Europe
> > with texts written in French, English, German, etc.
>
> It is customary to capitalize the pronoun 'he' when
> it
> refers to the Christian god. There are Christians who
> capitalize pronouns referring to Jesus; you can see an
> example of this usage at
> <http://bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/CGG/ID/2875/Abiding-God.htm>.
>
> It isn't just a Christian usage, by the way. Wiccan
> usage
> is as varied as Wiccan practice generally, but it is not
> uncommon in Wiccan writing to see 'She' and
> 'He' when the
> pronouns refer to 'the Goddess' and 'the
> God'.
>
> Brian

References to Deities are capitalized whenever used for one's own deity/ies. So Muslim and Hindu pamphlets also capitalized His whenever referring to God, and Hindus Her when referring to Kali, etc.
But this rule is discarded when referring to defunct deities such as Zeus, Mars, Thor and Odin --sorry Torsten ;p