Author: A. N. Gavrichenkov (Kaluga State Institute of modernisation and education)

Summary\n: According to E. Benveniste, IE *kred- saved in Skr. śrad-dhā- and Lat. crēdō means «the act of trusting God, which implies the receiving of the reward in the form of the benefit provided by the divine goodness to the believer». *Kred- is «something material which also concerns personal feelings, some kind of deposit or rate». E. Benveniste considers that it is hardly possible to determine the term more precisely. But it seems impossible so long as we are based only on formal compliance and semantic analysis, i.e. on the internal language resources. The linguistic, historical and cultural analysis as a common approach, i.e. the review of the history of the word together with the history of the concept («faith») expressed in this word, allows us to take a further step towards the study of this complex and extremely confusing issues of Indo-European linguistics. This «act of faith...» is the faith as a victim in the form of material expression of desire for a certain good.

References\n

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