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On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 18:52 +0000, Gordon Henderson wrote: > On Wed, 3 Feb 2010, Simon Robert wrote: > > > And can we quit using religious language when discussing this. If > > someone described linux as a gospel to me I would never give it another > > thought... > > As a confirmed atheist myself, I have no issues with the word "gospel", > although it has many meanings, I don't see any real religious overtones > using the way we're using it here. > > http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gospel > > If you're on about the writings of people going on about the bloke who > allegedly got nailed to a tree ~2000 years ago, it's usually capitalised. > > You'll be winging about holy wars (cf. vi vs. emacs) next ;-) > > Gordon > > > OK I know the literal translation is "Good News", but both capitalised and lowercased the word has strong religious connotations. In biblical studies the term Gospel usually refers to the written books of the canonical bible, while gospel refers to non canonical (hmm, "canonical". Where have I heard that word in a different context? Maybe the 'buntus are synoptic Gospels?) written works and stuff transmitted orally - i.e. when Paul in his epistles bangs on about how he's telling you the gospel (he can't be talking about the Gospels because they weren't written, infact he wasn't even talking about a physical JC but some sort of Hebrew neo platonic logos type thing!). Digression over.... Simon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html