I just wanted to set the record straight on one little item here--it doesn't pay to rely too much on memory of verses: it can lead, as it did in this instance, to a seven-foot hexameter monstrosity squeezed together from an elegiac couplet. At 5:21 AM -0600 3/13/98, Carl W. Conrad wrote: The fact is that Clay has done very well here: QERAPEUW is much common in the NT in the sense of "heal," "render medical attention to," even if its older and more primary sense, the one actually seen in Acts 17:25 is "attend upon deity." In fact this is a grand word with a grand history. Homer's warriors are entitled QERAPONTES ARHOS, "servants of Ares," and Archilochus, the first Greek poet to sing in his own voice about his personal existence sang, EIMI D'EGW MOUSWN QERAPWN KAI ENUALIOIO ANAKTOS, "I am the servant of the Muses Lord Enyalios [= Ares}"--he was a vagabond mercenary soldier poet. So there's a link to the Hebraic notion of the EBED YHWH and even the Islamic notion of ABDUL, the 'servant of God.' The line(s)--two of them,in fact, that I had in mind read thus: EIMI D' EGW QERAPWN MEN ENUALIOIO ANAKTOS KAI MOUSEWN ERATON DWRON EPISTAMENOS. "I am a servant of Lord Enyalios [= Ares], and one who knows the lovely gift of the Muses." Socrates spoke of the most important concern of every human being as QERAPEIA THS YUCHS, and although that was translated into Latin as CURA ANIMAE, which eventually led to the ecclesiastical office of the "curate," the Socratic sense was "tendance," not "healing" but "tendance" hOPWS hWS BELTISTH Hi--so that one's YUCH may be "the best that it can be." It's true that the secondary meaning came to be the more common one, that medical tendance was the primary sort of tendance associated with QERAPEIA. It's much as competent verse composition came to be associated with POIHTHS as the primary association, although that word originally meant "creator" in every sense, even as Genesis in the LXX begins with EN ARCHi EPOIHSEN ... Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/