Greek-speaking Christians, like Jews before them, called all non-Christians who were not Jews ‘Hellenes’, a word to which a sneer was attached, but it was probably during the third century that Western Latin-speaking Christians developed their own contemptuous term for this same category: pagani. The word means ‘country folk’, and the usual explanation is that urban Christians looked down on rural folk who stuck like backwoodsmen to traditional cults. More likely is that the word was army slang for ‘non-combatants’: non-Christians had not enrolled in the army of Christ, as Christians did in
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