Hellenism Defined
The Definition from the Modern Greek Dictionary
Hello reader - Happy Friday.
A quick post today, nothing too deep and serious. This post adds more detail to a previous post and much of my overall work concerning the appropriation of Hellenism within Pagan communities. In my article, The Appropriation of “Hellenism” - A "Profound Offense" - I wrote that within neopagan circles, Hellenism is being used to indicate a Pagan religion created and defined by other Pagans. This redefinition raises major ethical concerns about cultural appropriation, as it detaches “Hellenism” from its authentic cultural context and reduces it to a religious label. I argue that the neopagan repurposing of “Hellenism” constitutes deeply harmful cultural appropriation. Read full below article here
Throughout my work I always do my best to express what Hellenism means - it embodies the entire Greek cultural experience, including language, history, and national pride. However it did not dawn one me to actually reference a Greek dictionary, why it didn’t, I don’t know. Sometimes the obvious thing to do escapes us.
So I looked up the entry for Hellenism in The Dictionary of Modern Greek (Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας) by Greek Georgios Babiniotis, a Greek linguist and philologist. The entry for Hellenism (Ἑλληνισμός) is below
Translation
ἑλληνισμός (noun, masculine):
[collective, singular]
The totality of Greeks who live all over the world; the Greek nation.
Syn.: Romiosýni (ῥωμιοσύνη)
The totality of Greeks who live in a specific geographic area outside of Greece.
Example uses: apódimos (ἀπόδημος = diaspora), mikroasiatikós (μικρασιατικός = Asia Minor Greek), της διασπορᾶς (of the diaspora), της Κύπρου (of Cyprus)
Greek civilization and the totality of Greeks as bearers of that civilization.
It is important that our dictionary be used so that people understand the definitions I have been giving Hellenism aren’t just my own opinion - but are standard. It also drives home my point that Pagans who use Hellenism as a Pagan religion are by definition, are engaging in unethical cultural appropriation and to refer back to my previous article on appropriation, redefining Hellenism from the outside is not a organic shift in a language’s natural evolution.
A common counterargument that neopagans provide to justify their appropriation is that words change meaning over time. While linguistic evolution is natural, it’s important to distinguish organic shifts within a community from external appropriations that impose new meanings. Language changes are typically driven by those who use the words, and Greek society has not adopted “Hellenism” as a neopagan religion. This redefinition comes from outside, disregarding the Greek experience embedded in the term. Such an imposition undermines Greek agency over their cultural symbols.
Okay, I lied; there is a serious part to this, lol. I write this post, in part, as a response to recent slander. Just last week, on BlueSky, a scholar of Late Antiquity publicly defamed me by labeling me a “militant ethno-nationalist” along with accusations of being an “unapologetic transphobe” - I don’t understand how these lies become a thing. It does upset me.
It bothers me to be slandered for explaining basic concepts, like what Hellenism means. Hellenism, according to sources like the Dictionary of Modern Greek, primarily refers to the Greek people, not a political entity or state. It extends beyond Greece and includes the global Greek diaspora. Hellenism signifies the Greek people and their civilization—past, present, and future. This is not ethno-nationalism.
My goal has never been to exclude others from worshipping the Gods, but to affirm that Hellenism is a living cultural identity rooted in a specific people - it is not a religion, it is not a dead relic of the past.
This defamation by a scholar of Late Antiquity underscores my observations that there is a significant disconnect between academics who study the past and are ignorant of the present. Conflicts that arise when the two worlds intersect. In my opinion, scholars who study the dead Greeks of antiquity often become annoyed when they encounter living Greeks who talk back - and I love to talk back
Have a good weekend!