From: Will Wagers (hyle@gte.net)
Date: Mon Jul 13 1998 - 10:38:32 EDT
Jonathan writes:
>At 11:12 PM 11/1/97 -0500, B Rocine wrote:
>>Is the Gk noun ERWS conspicuous in its absence from the NT? One reason I
>>ask is because I do not have the experience or tools necessary to tell if
>>the word was in common use at the time the NT was penned.
...
>At least in Homer, ERWS can mean to lust after, to desire.
...
>The New Testament uses EPIQUMEW, a verb, for sexual desire.
Conspicuous, indeed.
1) Eros was, of a course, a god--the god of (sexual) love or desire, and, as
such, would be expected to be ignored or slighted in the NT.
As far as we know, Hesiod originates the notion of Eros as the primeval
cosmic force. From Aristophanes' parody of _Theogony_ spoken by birds:
First of all was Chaos and Night and black Erebos and wide Tartaros,
and neither Ge (i.e. Earth) not Aer (i.e. air) nor Ouranos (i.e.
Heaven)
existed; in the boundless bosoms of Erebos black-winged Night
begets, first a wind-egg from which in the fulfillment of of the
seasons ardent Eros burgeoned forth, his back gleaming with golden
wings, like as he was to the whirling winds. Eros, mingling with
winged, gloomy Chaos in broad Tartaros, hatched out our race and
first brought it light É".
-Aristophanes
Parmenides introduces Eros as philosophical principle.
She {the goddess who governs all things in the midst of the rings
of fire and night} devised Eros as the very first of all gods É
-Parmenides
It is the old religious necessity, realised long before by Pherekydes,
who said that, when Zeus set about making the world, he changed
himself into Eros. This Desire is the mythical Demiurge of the Timaeus,
who, being good and therefore without jealousy É
-Cornford
In Plato's Symposium, Diotima teaches Socrates that Eros is "the intermediary
between mortals and immortals."
In the Orphic theogonies, in which many find precursors of Christian myth,
Phanes is Zeus, as Zeus became Phanes by swallowing him and as
Phanes is Dionysos, because in that form he was reborn from Zeus. Phanes
is never mentioned before the Hellenistic age. He is called "Protogonos".
As Protogonos, first born son of Zeus, divine intermediary, and principle of
creation, Eros is clearly a forerunner of Jesus.
2) Eros is a word used in a technical philosophical sense for the substance
which causes unlike things to combine in creation: it is sexual attraction with
"sexual" referring simply to the combination of opposites into wholes, e.g.
male and female. In other words, sexual attraction is a metaphor for what we
would call today simply "attraction" or "force". This connotation is preserved
in our scientific term "attraction. " Whereas moderns would say that iron is
*attracted* to a magnet, the ancients would say that iron and magnet
*desire* each other. Consequently, the new cosmology of the NT would be
expected to ignore or slight the term.
Will Wagers hyle@gte.net "Reality is the best metaphor."
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