[B-Greek] AGAPAW, FILEW, etc. in the GNT

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Fri Feb 17 05:44:29 EST 2006


On Feb 17, 2006, at 1:59 AM, Tim Elliott wrote:

> I also appreciated the article on love as I recently completed a study
> on 1 Corinthians. The question that I have is: If these words for love
> are interchangeable, why didn't one of the three writers of the the
> "First and Second Commandment" use FILEW or where are the equal number
> of times FILEW is used compared to AGAPAW in 1 Corinthians 13?
>
> Just wondering...

I don't think it's argued that these two verbs are used  
interchangeably everywhere and by all NT authors. What has been  
argued is that the author(s?) of John's gospel in particular used  
them more or less synonymously. In the Pauline letters I find only  
two instances of FILEW:

	1 Cor 16:22 EI TIS OU FILEI TON KURION, HTW ANAQEMA.
	Titus 3:15 ASPAZONTAI SE hOI MET' EMOU PANTES, ASPASAI TOUS FILOUTAS  
hHMAS EN PISTEI.

On the other hand, there are 34 instances of AGAPAW in the Pauline  
corpus (and I'm making no distinction here between authentic and  
deutero-Pauline works). Clearly Paul prefers the verb AGAPAW.

In the entire GNT there are 143 instances of AGAPAW, 25 of FILEW.
In John's gospel there are 37 instances of AGAPAW, 13 of FILEW.
Clearly AGAPAW is the preferred verb throughout the GNT, but what  
cannot be affirmed convincingly is that AGAPAW is consistently used  
of some "higher" type of love.

There are numerous threads on this subject in our archives, most of  
them focused upon John 21 and the alternation there. What's  
remarkable about Johannine usage is that AGAPAW appears where we  
might, on the basis of what we used to be told about these verbs,  
expect to find a different verb, e.g.

	John 3:19 ... HGAPHSAN hOI ANQRWPOI MALLON TO SKOTOS H TO FWS ...
	John 12:43 HGAPHSAN GAR THN DOXAN TWN ANQRWPWN MALLON HPER THN DOXAN  
TOU QEOU


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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