Heathen

Heathen is an English word, originally meaning a dweller on the heath, which older English Bibles used to translate the Hebrew goy (plural goyim) and the Greek ethnos (plural ethnē), words whose plain sense is “nation” or “peoples” (this is a matter of established linguistic fact, and the same translation practice produced the Latin paganus and gentilis). In the King James Version and other older English versions it appears where modern versions usually read “nations” or “Gentiles” — as in Psalm 2:1, “Why do the heathen rage,” or Psalm 135:15, “The idols of the heathen are silver and gold.” The Hebrew goyim is not in itself a religious category: it can describe Israel as “a great nation” (Genesis 12:2) and “a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), though in the Prophets it most often denotes the peoples surrounding Israel.

Where Scripture uses the word of other nations, it frequently associates them with idolatry and with opposition to God’s people, yet it never treats them as beyond God’s rule or mercy. The text says in Daniel 4:17 that “the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever he will,” and the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar confesses in Daniel 4:3 that “his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.” Cyrus of Persia, a ruler who did not know Yahweh, is nonetheless stirred up by God to accomplish his word (Ezra 1:1; compare Isaiah 45:1). Jonah 3:10 records that God saw the works of Nineveh, that “they turned from their evil way,” and relented. The nations are judged and also summoned: “Sing, barren, you who didn’t give birth,” Isaiah 54:1 addresses the desolate city, and the prophets look toward peoples streaming to God’s house.

In the New Testament, ethnos underlies both “all nations” in the missionary charge (Matthew 28:19) and the standing contrast between Jews and “the Gentiles.” The text of Matthew 2:2 and 2:11 shows foreign astrologers from the east coming to worship the child, and Matthew 8:11–12 has “many” coming “from the east and the west” to sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob while “the children of the Kingdom” are thrown out. Acts 10:35 states that “in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.” At the same time the same writings use “Gentiles” as a moral description of idolatrous life — “Gentile sinners” (Galatians 2:15), those “who do not know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:5) — while insisting that the dividing wall has been broken down (Ephesians 2:14). The word therefore carries both a neutral ethnic sense and a pejorative religious one, and the two are not always separable in any given verse.

Christian traditions differ over how to carry the term forward. In some traditions “heathen” remains a working missionary word for peoples who have not heard the gospel, and Acts 10:35 and Romans 2:14–16 are read as evidence that God accepts those who respond to the light they have; other traditions stress Romans 10:14–15 and John 14:6 to insist that explicit faith in Christ is normally necessary, and treat the earlier verses as describing the scope of God’s impartiality rather than a separate path of salvation. Many modern translators and churches avoid “heathen” altogether as pejorative, preferring “nations,” “peoples,” or “those who do not know God,” while some modern Pagans have reclaimed the word as a self-description. One way to read the biblical material is that it consistently refuses to let any people be written off in advance — the same Scriptures that warn about the idolatry of the nations also record their repentance, their worship, and their inclusion at the table.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.