An Old Irish Bog

They have found an old scripture in an Irish bog. It is ironic that it is a copy of the Book of Psalms, as the Russian word for God is "bog" (бог).

That stem appears in less reverent places in modern English.

During the Middle Ages, there was a sect in Bulgaria called bogomils, богомилы. The word бог conveniently meant "god", just like in modern Russian, and мил meant "sweet" (modern Russian милый) or "love", so the meaning would be something like "Godlovers".

The bogomils interpretation of Christianity was unusual. They believed Jesus was born man, and only became God through his baptism. They also seemed to have denied that God was omnipotent in the face of the power of evil. They denied most miracles, and they did not use crucifixes, as you were not supposed to make any picture of God.

It was not a time when unusual theories were taken lightheartedly, and as their ideas spread, they were despised by the established churches and called "heretic". Nowadays a person with unusual ideas is called a "blogger".

As the bogomils were known heretics, the term bogomil, in spite of its innocent original meaning, became synonymous with "strange". The last part of the word was dropped, and in today's English what remains of the word is used to describe the strange habits of a "bugger".

(The link above goes to an article, which calls the manuscript "Irish Dead Sea Scrolls". That is a silly thing to write of course. The Dead Sea scrolls contained plenty of original writing. The Book of Psalms is always the Book of Psalms and nothing more. Nor less.)