Definition - Pagan

From the dictionary's point of view, it defines a person that is holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions. In this case, holding a belief outside of what is truth. Truth can be defined as the only belief that is taught in the Bible, the pure worship of Jehovah. It is perhaps misleading even to say that there was such a religion as “paganism” at the beginning of [the Common Era] ... It might be less confusing to say that the pagans, before their competition with Christianity, had no religion at all in the sense in which that word is normally used today. They had no tradition of discourse about ritual or religious matters (apart from philosophical debate or antiquarian treatise), no organized system of beliefs to which they were asked to commit themselves, no authority-structure peculiar to the religious area, above all no commitment to a particular group of people or set of ideas other than their family and political context. If this is the right view of pagan life, it follows that we should look on paganism quite simply as a religion invented in the course of the second to third centuries AD or CE, in competition and interaction with Christians, Jews and others. Defining paganism is problematic. Understanding the context of its associated terminology is important. Early Christians referred to the diverse array of cults around them as a single group for convenience and rhetoric. While paganism generally implies polytheism, the primary distinction between classical pagans and Christians was not one of monotheism versus polytheism. Not all pagans were strictly polytheist. Throughout history, many of them believed in a supreme deity. (Although, most such pagans believed in a class of subordinate gods/daimons, henotheism or divine emanations.) To Christians, the most important distinction was whether or not someone worshipped the one true God. Those who did not (polytheist, monotheist, atheist, or otherwise) were outsiders to the Church and thus pagan. Similarly, classical pagans would have found it peculiar to distinguish groups by the number of deities followers venerate. They would have considered the priestly colleges (such as the College of Pontiffs or Epulones) and cult practices more meaningful distinctions.

Referring to paganism as "pre-Christian indigenous religions" is equally untenable. Not all historical pagan traditions were pre-Christian or indigenous to their places of worship. Owing to the history of its nomenclature, paganism traditionally encompass the collective pre- and non-Christian cultures in and around the classical world; including those of the Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic tribes. However, modern parlance of folklorists and contemporary pagans in particular has extended the original four millennia scope used by early Christians to include similar religious traditions stretching far into prehistory ie:

First - In a wider sense, paganism has also been understood to include any non-Abrahamic, folk, or ethnic religion. Abrahamic religion is the worship of the True God Jehovah as it was then taught through Moses. It was known as "The Law"

In later centuries, The term pagan is from or is applied to Late Latin paganus, revived during the Renaissance. Itself deriving from classical Latin pagus which originally meant "region delimited by markers", paganus had also come to mean "of or relating to the countryside", "country dweller", "villager"; by extension, "rustic", "unlearned", "yokel", "bumpkin"; in Roman military jargon, "non-combantant", "civilian", "unskilled soldier". It is related to pangere ("to fix", "to fasten") and ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European *pag- ("to fix").

Second - paganism within the Roman Empire centred on cities. The concept of an urban Christianity as opposed to a rural paganism would not have occurred to Romans during Early Christianity.

Third, unlike words such as rusticitas, paganus had not yet fully acquired the meanings (of uncultured backwardness) used to explain why it would have been applied to pagans.

Thus the sense of ʽam ha·ʼa′rets changed from one of general respect to one of religious opprobrium, much as the Latin term paganus, from which the English word “pagan” is derived. ... Pagan originally meant simply a dweller in a rural community, but since those country people were often the last to be converted, it came to be used by city dwellers as applying to all who did not adopt their professed Christian beliefs. The Israelites were not even to mention the names of the pagan gods in their day to day discussions, not that they would fail to warn their children about these gods, but they would not mention them with any esteem.

Interesting to note that Pagan nations identified their particular gods with certain stars and thus took a nationalistic view of those stellar bodies. It is also notable that only these pagan astrologers “saw” the star. And in my research, I found no other mention of true Christians seeing them or making note of them as being significant in any way. I further found it interesting that “each different nation came to be a maker of its own god.” No names were used by the Hebrews for the days of the week, except for the seventh day, called the Sabbath. Reference was made to the various days by their numerical order. In the days of Jesus and his apostles, the day preceding the Sabbath was called the Preparation. (Matthew 28:1; Acts 20:7; Mark 15:42; John 19:31;) The practice of naming the days after the names of the planets and other heavenly bodies was of pagan origin. The Romans named the days after the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, but in northern Europe, four of these names were later changed into the Germanic equivalents of the Roman gods whom the days represented.

Concerning the pagan view of dreams, it is stated: “Babylonians had such trust in dreams that on the eve of important decisions they slept in temples, hoping for counsel. Greeks desiring health instruction slept in shrines of Aesculapius, and Romans in temples of Serapis. Egyptians prepared elaborate books for dream interpretation.” (Harper’s Bible Dictionary, edited by M. and J. L. Miller, 1961, p. 141) But such practices did not exist among faithful Hebrews and early Christians. The Scriptures warn against looking for omens, whether in natural dreams or in various incidents.—Deuteronomy 18:10-12; False dreams are Biblically condemned. According to the Law, a false dreamer who urged the committing of idolatry was to be put to death. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5) God might sometimes speak to his true prophets by means of dreams (Numbers 12:6), but he was against “the prophets of false dreams,” who led his people away from true worship. (Jeremiah 23:25-32; 27:9, 10) Practicers of divination were described as speaking “valueless dreams.”—Zechariah 10:2.

Joshua’s words at Joshua 24:14 show that the Israelites had been affected to some extent by the false worship of Egypt during their sojourn there, while Ezekiel indicates that such pagan practices continued to plague them long afterward. (Ezekiel 23:8, 21) For this reason some scholars consider that the divine decree issued in the wilderness to prevent the Israelites from making “sacrifices to the goat-shaped demons” (Leviticus 17:1-7) and Jeroboam’s establishing priests “for the high places and for the goat-shaped demons and for the calves that he had made” (2Chronicles 11:15) indicate there was some form of goat worship among the Israelites such as was prominent in Egypt, particularly in Lower Egypt. Herodotus (II, 46) claims that from such Egyptian worship the Greeks derived their belief in Pan and also in the satyrs, woodland gods of a lustful nature, who were eventually depicted as having horns, a goat’s tail, and goat’s legs. Some suggest that such half-animal form of these pagan gods is the source of the practice of picturing Satan with tail, horns, and cloven feet, a custom prevalent among professed Christians in the Dark Ages.

Just what such “hairy ones” (seʽi·rim′) actually were, however, is not stated. While some consider them to be literal goats or idols in the form of goats, this does not necessarily seem to be indicated; nor do other scriptures provide evidence of that nature. The term used may simply indicate that in the minds of those worshiping them such false gods were conceived of as being goat-like in shape or hairy in appearance. Or, the use of “goats” in these references may be merely a means of expressing contempt for all idolatrous objects in general, even as the word for idols in numerous texts is drawn from a term originally meaning “dung pellets,” not denoting, however, that the idols were literally made of dung.—Leviticus 26:30; Deuteronomy 29:17. All these uses were found in Pagan relationships and not in the worship of the True God Jehovah.

In showing how one thing often led to another, there was the Effect of Hellenization on the Jews. When Greece was divided among Alexander’s generals, Judah became a border state between the Ptolemaic regime of Egypt and the Seleucid dynasty of Syria. First controlled by Egypt, the land was seized by the Seleucids in 198 B.C.E. In an effort to unite Judah with Syria in a Hellenic culture, Greek religion, language, literature, and attire were all promoted in Judah. Greek colonies were founded throughout Jewish territory, including those at Samaria (thereafter called Sebaste), Acco (Ptolemais), and Beth-shean (Scythopolis), as well as some set up on previously unsettled sites E of the Jordan River. (See DECAPOLIS.) A gymnasium was established in Jerusalem and attracted Jewish youths. Since Greek games were linked with Greek religion, the gymnasium served to corrupt Jewish adherence to Scriptural principles. Even the priesthood suffered considerable infiltration by Hellenism during this period. By this means, beliefs previously foreign to the Jews gradually began to take root; these included the pagan teaching of the immortality of the human soul and the idea of an underworld place of torment after death. Antiochus Epiphanes’ desecration of the temple at Jerusalem (168 B.C.E.) by introducing the worship of Zeus there marked the extreme point of Hellenization of the Jews and led to the Maccabean Wars.

During the period of persecution that the early Christian congregation experienced at the hands of the Roman Empire, professed Christians were at times induced to deny their Christian discipleship, and those who did so were required to signify their apostasy by making an incense offering before some pagan god or by openly blaspheming the name of Christ. It is evident that there is a distinction between a ‘falling’ due to weakness and the ‘falling away’ that constitutes apostasy. The latter implies a definite and willful withdrawal from the path of righteousness. (1Jo 3:4-8; 5:16, 17) Whatever its apparent basis, whether intellectual, moral, or spiritual, it constitutes a rebellion against God and a rejection of his Word of truth.—2Thessolonians 2:3, 4

Some of the Pagan terms commonly used in this era some 2,000 years ago were:
Pagan city's, sites, society's, world & nations (even names like pagan Rome, pagan Greece, pagan Corinth, pagan Hamitic Canaanites, pagan Philistines etc.) Pagan priests worship, rites, religion, alter, & cults (even pagan gods like Zeus of Olympus, Hermes, Roman Jupiter and Mercury and goddesses like Ashtoreth & Ashtoreth images), Pagan dancing, festivities, idolatry, Pagan influence, concepts, ideas, teachings, practices, rituals, & philosophy's, Pagan sacrificing, Pagan enemies, Pagan kings (such as pagan king Ethbaal, and the bible refers to a powerful ruler who, prior to the Israelite attack at Bezek, had humbled 70 pagan kings by cutting off their thumbs and great toes. A similar practice was employed at one time by the ancient Athenians, who decreed that prisoners of war should lose their thumbs. Thereafter they could row but were unfit to handle a sword or spear. Soon after Joshua’s death the combined forces of Judah and Simeon clashed with 10,000 troops of the Canaanites and Perizzites at Bezek, causing Adoni-bezek to flee from the defeat. Upon being captured, his thumbs and great toes were also severed, at which time he declared: “Just the way I have done, so God has repaid me.” He was transported to Jerusalem, where he died.—Judges 1:4-7).