question concerning dictionary entries

Trevor & Julie Peterson 06peterson at cua.edu
Mon Mar 11 05:43:33 EST 2002


Denny wrote:
>
> I guess I should have made that clear--no scholarly sources, just
> fellas making reference to different Greek words for "love".  Granted
> that "love" is both a noun and a verb, but to me it would make more
> sense to list all noun forms or all verb forms, but for whatever
> reason AGAPH is given, then FILEW...  (instead of FILOS).

Ah, I suspected as much. Well, FILOS wouldn't work, since it's not the
abstract noun anyway. It's a friend, not love itself. I've tended to think
that it's because FILIA is so rare in the NT. It seems only to appear once,
and there it refers to the friendship of the world, which is really enmity
with God--not a good example for teaching about love, don't you think? I
suspect that for this practical reason, someone chose the verbal form, which
is much more conducive to a quick topical study on the concept. Then again,
maybe they should have used the verbal forms throughout to be consistent,
but perhaps no verbal form for EROS appears anyway. Getting back to
Randall's point on a similar thread, it's nice to use words and forms that
really exist anyway, so we're probably better off that AGAPAW isn't used. (I
realize it is the lexical form, but it is a construct after all.)

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics




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