AGAPH outside the New Testament
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 6 14:00:38 EDT 2002
At 8:12 AM -0400 6/6/02, Bryan Cox wrote:
>I have recently read that AGAPH took on a unique meaning for Christians
>and the New Testament, that of 'unconditional love'. If this is correct,
>could someone familiar with Greek texts outside the Bible tell me what
>this word seemed to mean to other ancient authors?
>
>The Septuagint, also, at a quick glace seems to use AGAPH to mean
>'unconditional love' as in the story of David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel.
>Is this, then, likely due to later Christian influence or has AGAPH really
>always meant 'unconditional love'?
Jim West has already given the dictionary definition (one of them) for
AGAPH. It's worth noting that, as anyone who's been around on b-greek a
while probably is well aware, this topic has been discussed repeatedly on
this list. One of the more recent go-rounds on the topic was in January of
2001:
Jan 5-9 11 messages: "John 21 - the significance of the OTHER synonyms"
Jan 7-9 4 messages w/ subj. header: "Re: Synonyms (AGAPAW-PHILEW)"
Jan 8-9 16 message: "Re: sorting out the slight distinctions of John 21"
These can be accessed at the list archives:
http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/2001-01/date.html
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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