Anathema

Anathema, in common usage, is something or someone detested or shunned. In its other main usage, it is a formal excommunication. The latter meaning, its ecclesiastical sense, is based on New Testament usage. In the Old Testament, anathema was a creature or object set apart for sacrificial offering and thus removed from ordinary use and destined instead for destruction.

Etymology

Anathema derives from Ancient Greek: , ''anáthema'', meaning "an offering" or "anything dedicated", itself derived from the verb , , meaning "to offer up". In the Old Testament, it referred to both objects consecrated to divine use and those dedicated to destruction in the Lord's name, such as enemies and their weapons during religious wars. Since weapons of the enemy were considered unholy, the meaning became "anything dedicated to evil" or "a curse".

In New Testament usage a different meaning developed. St. Paul used the word anathema to signify a curse and the forced expulsion of one from the community of Christians. By the 6th century, the liturgical meaning evolved again to mean a formal ecclesiastical curse of excommunication and the condemnation of heretical doctrines, the severest form of separation from the Christian church issued against a heretic or group of heretics by a Pope or other church official. The phrase la, anathema sit ("let him be anathema"), echoing Galatians 1:8–9, was thus used in decrees of councils defining Christian faith.

Examples include:
*"It's no wonder then, that Paul calls down God's curse, God's anathema, His ban on those behind their potential defection from Christ."
*"He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema."
*"In 1054, an anathema was issued by Rome against the Eastern Patriarch who then issued another one against the cardinal who delivered it."

In 1526, the word ''anathema'' appeared in modern English for the first time and was used in the sense of "something accursed". The "consecrated object" meaning was also adopted a short time later, but is no longer widely used. Its most common modern usage is in secular contexts where it is used to mean something or someone that is detested or shunned.

Examples include:
*"Racial hatred was anathema to her."
*"The idea that one would voluntarily inject poison into one's body was anathema to me."
*"This notion was anathema to most of his countrymen."

Religious usage

The Old Testament applied the word to anything set aside for sacrifice, and thus banned from profane use and dedicated to destruction—as, in the case of religious wars, the enemy and their cities and possessions. The New Testament uses the word to mean a curse and forced expulsion of someone from the Christian community.Encyclopædia Britannica: "anathema (religion)"
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Judaism

The Greek word (''anathema''), meaning something offered to a divinity, appeared in the translation of the Jewish Bible