Talk:Gentiles
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The Hebrew word "goy" does not mean "gentile". It means "nation". Both the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and the Siddur use this term in a non-perjorative fashion, to simply mean nation. The Jewish people, in fact, is referred to in the Siddur as a "goy achad", a "unique nation". In Yiddish the word "goy" has a perjorative meaning, but that has no connection to this word's use in the Bible or in classical Jewish texts. I question the derivation of the word "gentil" as it was presented in the original version of this article; I think its incorrect. To the best of knowledge, there is no one word used in the Hebrew Bible that corresponds to gentile. I think that some translators chose one word to use in a number of cases where non-Jewish groups are mentioned, either in a good, bad or neutral sense. Does anyone have a copy of the OED? RK