(earlier discussions)
>
>(snip)
>Thank you for your response. Pardon my ignorance: Does the use of the word
>ERWS in Homer mean it was current in NT times because the NT society was
>reading Homer, written +/- 800 years prior?
How about "maybe"? Traditional, upper-class Graeco-Roman education still
started with Homer, but I don't know what that would mean in the case of
any given NT reader.
>I had used Perseus prior to writing my post to b-greek, but I did not see
>any citations for ERWS from sources younger than 3-400 years at the time of
>the NT. Hence my question. But at your prompting I went back to Perseus
>with another idea, so thank you. I looked for uses of ERWS in Plutarch(ca.
>1st-2nd cent C.E.) He used the word in the general sense of love and
>affection, as in describing the love between Socrates and a devoted student.
>
>So am I correct in concluding the word was indeed in use at the time the NT
>was written?
>
>And my real interest once again: Is the word ERWS conspicuous in its
>absence from the NT?
>
>Bryan
I think you're right . A quick glance in Bauer et al. shows it in
Ignatius' letter to the Romans, in Philo, in Josephus, and in the Hermetic
corpus (esoteric writings attributed to the god Hermes, with interests in
magic, alchemy, astrology...), in LXX Proverbs. So it would not be a
particularly obscure or archaic term.
Both the exx. that have been cited to show the possibility that EROS
doesn't always have a sexual connotation are a little problematic. The
play _Agamemnon_ concerns itself a great deal with desire, and the context
is so highly charged that the audience would surely hear this undercurrent
in the question about desire for one's homeland. And Socrates himself,
apparently--if we can believe Plato & Xenophon--used to joke about his
susceptibility to good looks, altho', as Plato tells us, he sublimated (to
use an anachronistic term) that desire in the pursuit of knowledge of the
Forms.
Mary
Mary Pendergraft
Associate Professor of Classical Languages
Wake Forest University
Winston-Salem NC 27109 910-759-5331 pender@wfu.edu