Gentile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Following Christianization of the Roman Empire, the general implication of the word gentile became "non-Jew".
The Greek ethnos were translated as Gentile in the context of Early Christianity implied non-Israelite. There was a question among the disciples whether receiving the Holy Spirit through proselytization would be restricted to Israelites or whether it would include the gentiles (the Greco-Roman population of the Roman Empire), as in Acts 10:34–47:
And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?"
Attached to this question was the circumcision controversy in early Christianity, i.e., does a Gentile need to follow all of the Mosaic Laws? The position of the Judaizers was that this was a necessity for salvation. The Council of Jerusalem decided to give the new converts four things that they had to do.
"28 It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29 You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality."
As in the King James Bible, from the 17th century onward Gentile was most commonly used to refer to non-Jews. This was in the context of European Christian societies with a Jewish minority. For this reason Gentile commonly meant persons brought up in the Christian faith, as opposed to the adherents of Judaism, and was not typically used to refer to non-Jews in non-Western cultures.
"Gentile" also appears in compounds such as "antigentilism", hostility of Jews to non-Jews.
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