--- g <
george.st@...> wrote:
>
> >(GK)To assume that "biserica" did the trick
> >right away is just not credible.
>
> Why not? Also preserved by two smaller Romance
> groups. On top of that, the Dalmatians and
> Rheto-Romans were much closer to (so to speak)
> Rome (i.e. their ties to the rest of "Romania" were
> never severed to the extent in the case of Proto-
> Romanians and later Romanians).
>
> Romanians could have well replaced "biserica"
> with other terms, e.g. "templu", "locaS/l�cas"
> (this under Hungarian influence: Romanian "loc"
> (place) reinforced by Hungarian "lak�S" (dwelling),
> even by "cas�", again under Hungarian influence:
> "egyh�z" (verbatim "one house") is the Hungarian
> term for church and Church ("templom" is
> colloquial).
>
> For the figurative way of speaking, there was
> "turma" for "flock;" otherwise, they had "adunare,"
> and the Slavic loanword "sobor" (so that there is
> the pleonastic wording "soborniceasca adunare" :-).
> So, one can see that "ecclesia" and "synod" weren't
> at all terms of the sine-qua-non kind.
*****GK: The point is, that in both "elevated" and
"simple" Christian propaganda in Roman Imperial times
the basic term standing for "congregation of
believers" in Latin and Greek contexts was "ecclesia"
(var.). "Basilica" began its career as "ecclesiastical
building" from ca. 313 (as Marius stated) [eventually
evolving into "biserica" in Romanian]. But "basilica"
NEVER stood for "congregation of believers" in
Latin/Greek Christianity, and even lost out as a
standard word for "ecclesiastical building" relatively
quickly. A population which did not have "ecclesia"
for the Gospel and Epistle "congregation" meanings
would not have been a Christian population in the
Roman Empire of the 4th century. Of course we do have
historical situations where the term for
"ecclesiastical building" also takes on the other
meanings of "church". This is what happened in the
Germanic languages (variants of "church", kirche,
cirice (OE) etc. same root everywhere I suppose), and
in the Slavic languages. In the latter "tserkov"
(var.)stood for all the meanings of "church" because
the early translation of the Christian texts used it
in this way (what is the explanation for the
universality of "church" in the Germanic languages?).
And that is the situation in modern Romanian also
("biserica" is the universal root). I do not see how
"biserica" could already have played this role in the
4th-6th centuries for the PR if they were Christians.
Note BTW that the Gothic term for "church" (and this
must have spread to all Germanic Arian churches too)
was not the later Germanic term, but rather
"aikklesjon" (var.), testifying to the power of this
term in the Balkans. Due to the influence of the
church hierarchy of course.******
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