The
Proto-Germanic meaning of and its etymology is uncertain. It is generally agreed that it derives from a
Proto-Indo-European neuter
passive perfect participle . Depending on which possibility is preferred, the
pre-Christian meaning of the Germanic term may either have been (in the "pouring" case) "
libation" or "that which is libated upon,
idol" — or, as Watkins opines in the light of
Greek "poured earth" meaning "
tumulus", "the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" — or (in the "invoke" case) "invocation, prayer" (compare the meanings of Sanskrit '''') or "that which is invoked." The earliest uses of the word God in Germanic writing is often cited to be in the
Gothic Bible or Wulfila Bible, which is the Christian Bible as translated by
Ulfilas into the
Gothic language spoken by the Eastern Germanic, or Gothic, tribes. The oldest parts of the Gothic Bible, contained in the
Codex Argenteus, are estimated to be from the fourth century. During the fourth century, the
Goths were converted to Christianity, largely through the efforts of Bishop Ulfilas, who translated the Bible into the Gothic language in
Nicopolis ad Istrum in today's northern Bulgaria. The words and were used for God in the Gothic Bible.
Influence of Christianity God entered English when the language still had a system of
grammatical gender. The word and its cognates were initially neuter but underwent transition when their speakers converted to Christianity, "as a means of distinguishing the personal God of the Christians from the impersonal divine powers acknowledged by pagans." However, traces of the neuter endured. While these words became syntactically masculine, so that
determiners and
adjectives connected to them took masculine endings, they sometimes remained morphologically neuter, which could be seen in their inflections: In the phrase, , "my God," from the Gothic Bible, for example, inflects as if it were still a neuter because it lacks a final , but the possessive adjective takes the final that it would with other masculine nouns. ==Translations==