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One definition of “Pagan” refers to the common belief of the country folk, or rustics, as opposed to the more nuanced and refined beliefs of the court. Of course at that time the court beliefs of the rarefied elite at the court were that of the Christians. The rarefied elite selected fairly new texts that served as their received texts, thus defining what was the ‘New Testament’.

Only later did the Jews settle on what documents were excluded from the Old Testament. The Roman Catholic church differed from the Jews, and so some books (like Tobit and Sirach) (and sections of Daniel) are retained in the RC bible, and excluded from the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings accepted by the Jews.

Today the rarefied elite is atheist. The common folk adhere to ancient virtues of the ‘G-ds of the Copybook Headings’ as rendered by Kipling’s poem and recently promulgated by Glen Beck. They often arrive at their justification of ancient virtues by analysis of ancient texts.

The cynics of the rarefied elite don’t care to be restricted by such virtues and texts. I look at them as the heirs of the Sadducees, or later of the Christian bishops of the court of Constantinople.

Some disagree with the Sadducees and would add more rules, restrictions upon restrictions, blocking the easy path to virtue and salvation provided by our limited understanding of the Divine will. Such are the heirs to the Pharisees. In like manner previous practices of veneration of icons were rejected by adherents of Islam. Perhaps after losing a few debates, the iconoclasts moved to the center of power, and soon became as corrupt as their predecessors.

And then there are the rest of us, trying to pass Charybdis and Scylla. As you may recall, Ulysses/Odysseus was counseled that it was better to accept a small loss to Scylla than loss of all to Charybdis. So we fools err on the side of virtue, such as we can perceive it.