From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Oct 18 1998 - 10:23:48 EDT
<x-rich>At 10:57 PM -0500 10/17/98, Robert E. Sackett wrote:
<excerpt>
<bold><fontfamily><param>Arial</param>From:
</fontfamily></bold><fontfamily><param>Arial</param>Robert E. Sackett
<<<<mailto:sackett@wport.com>sackett@wport.com>
<bold>Date: </bold>Saturday, October 17, 1998 8:08 PM
<bold>Subject: </bold>agape'
</fontfamily>I'm trying to find in the classical Greek works where the
word agape' is used. I only care about the noun use and not the verb
use. I have tried the Perseus site
but it does not work right in that it gives too much garbage.
thanks
Bob Sackett
Seattle Wa
</excerpt>
Having checked the Perseus web site, I see what you mean: 60 instances
of the verb AGAPAW are actually indexed in the Perseus texts. What I
think this means, however, is simply that only the verb AGAPAW is
actually found in the Perseus texts, not the noun AGAPH at all. You
should realize that, although the Perseus texts do include Homer,
Hesiod and major 5th and 4th century classical Greek writers, the
Perseus 2.0 database is far from a complete database of classical Greek
literature. For that you would have to go to the TLG database--or the
TLG CD-ROM and a search program that will read it.
I just now ran a search for AGAPH as a single word--which gets all
instances of either the nom. or dative (AGAPHi) through the letter C in
the complete works on the TLG disk: 171 hits, all of them
post-Christian. You'd have to run a similar search for AGAPHS to get
the genitive singular and for AGAPHN to get the accusative singular.
I'm not going to try it, but this is the way you'd have to go about it,
and then you'd have to analyze your findings--probably very few hits
for the noun AGAPH in pre-Christian Greek literature. You'd more
quickly learn what you want, I think, simply by consulting BAGD and/or
LSJ-Glare: they've already done that work of analysis, although it is
certainly conceivable that you could analyze all your findings and
disprove what they offer as the probable sense in all relevant Greek
texts.
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/
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