From: alex
Message: 30438
Date: 2004-02-01
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" <alxmoeller@...> wrote:Hmm. what is funny is that to bind appear here to have some relation with to
>> 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), �nis, 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