Gentiles
A term for non-Jews, with roots in Latin and shaped by Bible translations and rabbinic thought.
Gentile is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other groups that also claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, have historically used the term gentile to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is used as a synonym for pagan. As a term used to describe non-members of a religious/ethnic group, gentile is sometimes compared to other words used to describe the 'outgroup' in other cultures.
Quick Facts
- Number of passages
- Over 100 (e.g., 123 in the KJV New Testament alone)
Lore & Background
The English word gentile derives from the Latin word gentilis, meaning 'of or belonging to the same people or nation' (from Latin gēns 'clan, tribe, people, family'). Archaic and specialist uses of the word gentile in English (particularly in linguistics) still carry this meaning of 'relating to a people or nation.' The development of the word to principally mean 'non-Jew' in English is entwined with the history of Bible translations from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and English. Its meaning has also been shaped by Rabbinical Jewish thought and Christian theology. In Saint Jerome's Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate, gentilis was used along with gentes, to translate Greek and Hebrew words with similar meanings when the text referred to the non-Israelite peoples. The most important of such Hebrew words was goy (גוי, plural, goyim), a term with the broad meaning of 'people' or 'nation' which was sometimes used to refer to Israelites, but with the plural form goyim tending to be used in the Bible to refer to non-Israelite nations. Other words translated in some contexts to mean 'gentile/s' in the modern sense were the Biblical Hebrew word nokhri (נכרי – often otherwise translated as 'stranger') and for the New Testament Greek word éthnos (ἔθνος).
Reader's Guide
In some translations of the Quran, gentile is used to translate an Arabic word that refers to non-Jews and/or people not versed in or not able to read scripture. The Hebrew Bible does not have a word which directly corresponds to the modern concept of a gentile. Instead, the Bible views different groups of gentiles in different ways. The Hebrew Bible does not show much concern for non-Israelites except insofar as they interact with the people of Israel. Nonetheless, because the God of Israel is a universal God, there must be some relationship between gentiles and God. It was rabbinic literature of the first centuries CE that developed the concept of the gentile as we understand it today - as 'any individual who is not a Jew, erasing all ethnic and social differences among different others.'
Elsewhere in Figures of Scripture
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