[B-Greek] Greek for Laymen

Lira rosangelalira at terra.com.br
Thu Mar 11 08:03:28 EST 2004


On re-reading my previous post of two days ago, I felt that it was too poorly elaborated, which could lead to misinterpretations, and that the questions were not clearly stated. 

I said in my first comment that although it is clear that there is considerable overlapping of usage between AGAPAW and PHILEW, the word PHILEW does seem to be more focused upon love or affection based on interpersonal association, as Louw & Nida points out, and as can be also seen by the fact that it is frequently translated as "to kiss". Thus, the impression I get is that it would be somewhat awkward to use PHILEW to refer to love for enemies, and that AGAPAW seems to be a better option. My original question then, was if this (love for enemies) could be considered an instance in which AGAPAW and PHILEW could not be used interchangeably.

As to my second comment, although I said that the fact that there are a higher and a lower kind of love must have originated the popular concept that AGAPAW is higher than PHILEW, I didn´t mean to say that I agree with this popular concept. While love for "your enemies" is obviously of a higher nature than love for "those who love you"(Matt. 5:44, 46), both kinds of love are here expressed by the verb AGAPAW. My second question, then, was if the popular view of a hierarchy between AGAPAW and PHILEW didn't just originate from a wrong syllogism (something like: if there are two kinds of love in the Bible, and if there are two words for love in the Bible, then each word must refer to a different kind of love).

I understand you may not want to go back to this topic, or may want to reply off-list, since the subject was already exhaustively discussed (unfortunately I was travelling on the occasion). But I just wanted to clear matters up, since my previous post seems to have been completely unclear.  



Rosangela Lira



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