eros in lxx concluding lexicographic note this might be better directed to s r c bible study which i have begun reading but since my earlier notes were posted to this forum i will conclude here as well a week ago i managed to find time to consult a septuagint concordance and a lxx text with apparatus at the library and i can now usefully conclude my look at the greek words for love as used in the christian background of the septuagintal translation of the jewish scriptures the principal result is that there is a cluster of uses of the verbal noun from erao eraste s meaning lover this cluster occurs just where one might most expect it in the propethic image and accusation of israel as faithless spouse to yhwh the verses in question are hosea jeremiah lamentations and ezekiel and hosea seems to have originated this usage which jeremiah and ezekiel picked up lamentations is dependent on though not likely written by jeremiah the erotic meaning in its allegorical use not at all literally is evident so too in english unless you complement it with a phrase like of the arts the word lover is going to have an overtone of sexual relationship there is no surprise here but it is worthwhile to see that standard greek usage does show up in the translations from the hebrew more interestingly and some confirmation of my guess that later koine usage avoided the verb erao because of its homonymy to ero say eromai ask there is an error in codex vaticanus normally a very valuable witness where a form of erao is used in a completely absurd context samuel where the meaning must be say in addition to the above and the uses i have already mentioned in proverbs esther uses the verb in its most natural application kai e rasthe ho basileus esthe r and the king loved esther and rather more interestingly samuel supplies a modest degree of support to the gay appraisal of the relationship of david and jonathan kai io nathan huios saoul e i reito ton dauid sphodra and jonathan saul s son loved david intensely i m using the bracketed i for io ta subscript which i don t yet have a reasonable ascii convention for the relevance of this to the gay issue is not anything implicit about the historical facts but just that a quasi official translation of the hebrew text in the hellenistic period makes no bones about using the erotic verb in this context given the quite general usage of agapao for erotic senses this need not mean anything more than agapao alone would mean but it does disambiguate the relationship as far as this translator goes michael l siemon i say you are gods sons of the mls panix com most high all of you nevertheless or you shall die like men and fall mls ulysses att com like any prince psalm
