How I crashed the Open AI on my first encounter - asking questions about Greek vocabulary of love

 

I searched the Internet for articles on the Greek word AGAPE (love) and got really frustrated how oversaturated it was with shallow Christian philosophising, sermonising and unsubstantiated linguistics. I thought, now I know what is present on the Internet, let me now ask AI (my very first try of this thing) let me see how AI works with the stuff available to it on the Internet.

Well it struggled mightily, it was able to filter out most of the Christian lingo, but was clearly under the spell of those Christian resources and unable to liberate itself from Christian pseudolinguistics, and eventually it crashed.  

What is the meaning of the Greek word AGAPE?

The Greek word "agape" (ἀγάπη) generally refers to selfless, unconditional love or benevolent affection. It is often associated with the highest form of love, characterized by sacrifice, compassion, and care for others, regardless of their actions or circumstances. Agape love is not dependent on personal gain or reciprocation but is driven by a genuine concern and goodwill towards others. In some philosophical and theological contexts, it is seen as a divine or transcendent love that goes beyond human understanding.

Is there any other possible occasional meaning of the Greek word AGAPE beside selfless love?

Yes, the Greek word "agape" can also be used to refer to a meal or feast. In ancient Greek culture, an "agape" was a communal meal shared among friends or members of a community. It was often associated with a religious or social gathering where people came together to share food, fellowship, and celebrate. However, it is important to note that the primary and most common meaning of "agape" is indeed selfless love. The occasional meaning of a meal or feast is less common and may vary depending on the specific context.

Any other possible meaning of AGAPE besides selfless love and a meal?

No, in the Greek language, the word "agape" primarily carries the meanings of selfless love and a communal meal. These are the most commonly recognized and used meanings of the term. However, it is worth noting that words can sometimes have expanded or additional meanings in different contexts or as they evolve within a language. So while it is possible that "agape" may carry other meanings in certain specific contexts, these would be less widely known or used beyond the primary meanings mentioned earlier.

And what about AGAPAO as a verb?

"Agape" functions as a noun, whereas "agapao" is the verb form derived from it. "Agapao" carries the primary meaning of "to love" or "to show love" in a selfless and sacrificial way. It is used to describe the act of demonstrating unconditional love, kindness, and affection towards others. This verb form emphasizes the action or expression of love rather than the concept or feeling of love itself. It is often associated with the idea of active, intentional love that is not based on personal gain or selfish motives.  (NOTE - ANSWER TOOK SUBSTANTIALLY LONGER)

Can you compare AGAPE with other Greek words for love?

Certainly! In Greek, there are several words used to describe different types or aspects of love. Here are a few notable ones:

1. Eros (ἔρως): This word refers to passionate, romantic love or desire. It is often associated with the physical and sensual aspects of love.

2. Philia (φιλία): Philia denotes friendship or affectionate love between friends or family members. It conveys a sense of camaraderie, loyalty, and deep connection.

3. Storge (στοργή): Storge refers to natural affection or familial love, particularly the bond between parents and children or within a family unit. It emphasizes a sense of familiarity, protectiveness, and attachment.

4. Agape (ἀγάπη): As discussed earlier, agape signifies selfless, unconditional love that is characterized by compassion, care, and sacrifice. It is a higher form of love that is not dependent on personal gain or reciprocation.

While these words are distinct, it is important to note that they are not always mutually exclusive. Love in its entirety is a multi-dimensional concept and can often encompass various elements from these different types of love.

Can AGAPAO be used for objects?  Can you give examples?

While the primary usage of "agapao" is to describe love towards people, it can occasionally be used metaphorically to express deep fondness or devotion towards objects or activities. However, it is important to note that this usage is less common and may depend on context. Here are a few examples where "agapao" can be metaphorically applied to objects:

1. One may say, "I agapao this book" to indicate a deep love or admiration for a particular book, perhaps due to its profound impact on their life or personal attachment to its content.

2. Similarly, someone may say, "I agapao this painting" to express a significant appreciation and emotional connection to a specific work of art.

3. One could also use "agapao" to describe love for an activity or hobby. For instance, someone might say, "I agapao playing the piano" to convey a deep passion and enjoyment for playing the instrument.

It should be noted that while the metaphorical usage of "agapao" for objects is possible, it is not as common as expressing love towards people or living beings.

Would you know what was the old (Homeric and possibly pre-Homeric) meaning of AGAPAO?

Yes, in ancient Greek literature, particularly in Homeric and pre-Homeric texts, the word "agapao" had a slightly different meaning compared to its later Christian and philosophical interpretations. In these early contexts, "agapao" was often used to convey a sense of preference, attachment, or fondness for someone or something, rather than denoting selfless, sacrificial love as it came to be understood later.

In the Homeric poems, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, "agapao" is used to express affection, favor, or even desire. It can refer to the love between family members, as seen in the relationship between Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Additionally, it may be used to describe the desire or fondness that gods have for a mortal, or the attachment a king might have for his loyal subjects.

Over time, as Greek philosophical and theological thought evolved, the concept of "agape" took on deepened significance, moving towards a more selfless and universal understanding of love. This development is prominent in the New Testament of the Bible, where "agape" is often associated with divine or unconditional love.

So, while the early meaning of "agapao" included elements (ENDED MID-SENTENCE)

I read that AGAPAO meant "fond greeting". Is it so?

TOOK VERY LONG TIME - SEVERAL MINUTES AND THEN THIS MASSAGE APPEARED:

An error occurred. Either the engine you requested does not exist or there was another issue processing your request. If this issue persists please contact us through our help center at https://help.openai.com.

So I did not learn anything new. To the contrary, the first answers were shallow and banal. When prompted and asked about deeper meanings it struggled a little but eventually brought some correct answers (yet not particularly poignant and revealing). And when I asked a question it did not know, it pretended to crash...

And here is a link to a short video about this exchange and some more information.
https://youtu.be/JkLIl0wQ8Rw

 

 

God against censorship

American white evangelicals have been recently up in arms, yelling at teachers and being rude at school board meetings, attempting to ban books from classrooms and school libraries, demanding gagging orders forbidding teachers to talk about race or LGBT issues. Dozens of innocent books have been banned.

     And it did not stop at school boards! There are now more than 150 legislative bills introduced in 38 states of our union that attempt to censor what teachers are allowed to say or teach in their classrooms.
      It is quite upsetting but also mildly amusing coming form specifically those groups. How come these racist fundamentalists don’t know their bibles? Or are they just hypocrites and their “Christianity” is just a cloak for bigotry and racism? In the Bible there is a story about censorship with a lesson they certainly should hear and learn.
      In Jeremiah 36 we hear how scribe Baruch wrote down Jeremiah’s prophecy King Jehoiakim, probably unable to read, asked it to be read to him, and as they were reading it, the king would use his knife and cut it and burn it piece by piece until he burned the entire scroll. King thought, that was the end of it.
      But God commanded Jeremiah: Get another scroll and write in it all the words that were in the original burned scroll. And so Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to his scribe, and he dictated and Baruch recorded all that has been burned. Only this time, it has been substantially expanded!
     So here you have it! The Bible itself is teaching that burning books and censorship are impotent and futile. And that is something you might not know about the bible. And that is also good news for all freedom loving people everywhere. Freedom loving, free consciousness loving, free spirit loving, freedom of speech loving. And for us in our current context there is reassurance to fight back censorship. Any racist attempts to censor black history will NOT succeed.

And if you read this far: there is another interesting biblical exegetical aspect and theological insight.
     The story about the burning of a prophetic scroll from Jeremiah 36 has a close antipodal parallel in the 2 Kings 22 in a story about the discovery of the Torah scroll in the temple supposedly at the time of king Josiah.
     Modern scholarship suspects that both these stories are in fact much later literary fictions. They required certain conceptual and mentality preconditions among the authors as their audience. It could have been written and made sense to the readers only after they encountered and became familiar with the Babylonian legal tradition and especially after they experienced the Persian administration relaying on written documents.
     The Persian setting - after the time of Ezra, Nehemiah - is to me the terminus post quem and possibly a much later moment for creation of these literary fictions. They are two complementary parts of the same biblical sermon teaching something similar to this - When encountering a challenging, uncomfortable writing – we all can chose – do we want to be like Josiah embracing the text and learning from it or do we want to be like Jehoiakim burning it?
     Recognizing this connection and dating this dual sermon to the Persian period or even later makes this argument only stronger and more plausible. This late Persian, and possibly even Hellenistic homily about two approaches to the challenging message is another aspect you might not know about the Bible. It might be a literary fiction but at the same time a powerful encouragement not to burn, ban or censor uncomfortable books but to study them and take them seriously.

Was Jesus illiterate?

Mapping the US book deserts.
A percentage of homes with at least 100 books.
Interactive map can be found here.

Video version of this blog can be found here on YouTube.

 

Scholars and theologian are all but unanimous that Jesus and his Galilean disciples were almost certainly unable to read or write. But please, note that I did not call them illiterate! That would be a gross misrepresentation of their reality. Modern scholarship calls such people nonliterate.

            There is an important distinction between illiterate and nonliterate. Illiterate are people who had opportunity to learn reading and writing and yet had never done so. Meanwhile nonliterate persons are those who never had the chance to learn these skills because they lived in a society where hardly anyone could read or write. Such a setting is being described as preliterate society.

            In our world and time illiteracy often comes with a stigma, a value judgement about the person’s mental acuity. In the preliterate society inability to read and write was common and did not come with such a stigma.

            Literacy all around the Ancient Mediterranean world was about 5%. And our best estimates of literacy among the Jews living in Palestine (from Judea to Galilee) was hardly any larger. And those literate were members of an elite class, who almost certainly did not live in a Galilean rural hamlet like Nazareth. The setting of Jesus’ movement was indeed an oral,  preliterate society. And Jesus and his disciples’ inability to read did not mean they were stupid.

            On the contrary, anthropologists tell us that nonliteracy gave people some unique and special faculties. Preliterate oral cultures had a phenomenally better narrative memory. From my study of Hawaiian history and culture I am aware of early missionaries in Hawai’i reporting with  astonishment the ability of nonliterate locals to reliably memorize entire biblical books. And that has been reported all over the world.            Mental capacities of nonliteral peoples are not hindered by literacy. Their intellect is not under the spell of the written. They have a different, intuitive, and broader, more holistic, perception of reality.

            In addition and interestingly, to my best knowledge, all the main world religions were born in this twilight zone of literacy, inspired by nonliterate founders, and only later scriptualized - written down. In fact if Jesus and his first Galilean disciples were literate, it would had been a highly irregular and hence suspicious.

            The very fact that Jesus and his first disciples were nonliterate, the fact that there was a period of oral transmission, the fact that the Bible was written only about a generation or two later, all of it is an important factor which we normally do not fully appreciate but which was a contributing reason that we have Christianity and our New Testament Bible.  And that is something you might not know about the Bible.  

 

Join us this Sunday when we will discern and contemplate the only one New Testament story about reading Jesus (Luke 4:16ff). It might be a wishful projection of a highly educated evangelist, but exactly as a projection it still contains a beautiful and powerful message of divine love and respect for everyone, and especially for those left out and forgotten.

God and her loom

The Bible is full of surprising images and metaphors when it speaks about God. Take for instance Jesus’ parable of the lost coin. In it God is compared to a housewife sweeping the floor.

     The Hebrew Bible contains similarly surprising metaphors. When, for instance, Job (7:6-8) and prophet Isaiah (38:12) lament the fleeting nature of human life they use a metaphor of weaving. Job is the most evocative comparing human life to a weft, the thread swiftly flying off the shuttle.

            That is a highly surprising image because within the context it implies that God is the weaver. And here you need to understand that throughout the Middle East the spinning and weaving were activities for women. We know it from myths, documents, as well as, artwork. And it is confirmed by the bible itself. Delila is to fasten and weave Samson’s hair in her loom (Jdg 16:13). And part of the Josiah reform, we are told (2Ki 23:7), was that he threw out female weavers from the temple.

            For all the ancient middle eastern people a weaver God takes up a clearly feminine role, female household work. As much as the Hebrew Bible is predominantly patriarchal and God is portrayed as male, there are these surprising depictions of God clearly taking over female gender roles. And that is something you might not know about the Bible.

 

Join us this first Sunday of the year 2022, we will lift up and expound this image of a divine weaver – far from talking about a loom of gloom, it in reality contains a beautiful, illuminating and hopeful message.

 

- - - - - - -

And for those who read this far and might be interested in understanding the Bible within the context of the Ancient Near Eastern religion here are a few more words.

            In the mythology from Ugarit (Ball cycle, KTU 1.4.ii), it is the goddess Asherah who is depicted as spinning and dyeing a yarn. And those earlier mentioned female weavers who were thrown out of the temple by Josiah, were allegedly making fabric for the same goddess. 

            It is therefore possible that in the process of monotheisation of the biblical religion, this single Biblical God absorbed some attributes, functions and activities of the goddess Asherah, thus combining gender roles, and becoming biblical version of divine Herm-Aphrodite.

            Earlier we made several short videos and some blog entries linked here:

 

"Does YHWH Have a Womb?" https://youtu.be/5AYosnwrtz0 "God Our Mother" https://youtu.be/WssQ06JRw24

Fragrant Christ

It is a sign of biblical literacy, if not basic cultural competence, to know that “Christ” was not Jesus’ second name nor his surname. Children in the Sunday School learn that Christ is from the Greek word χριστὸς and itself is a translation of Hebrew word Messiah מָשִׁיחַ and in both cases the meaning is “The anointed one”. And they also learn that anointing was an Ancient Near Eastern act of promoting persons to some high offices, to priesthood, kingship, occasionally to a role of prophet. Thus sur-name “Christ” is in fact an honorific title. Our modern theology and liturgy tries to highlight this original meaning by using expression "Jesus the Christ".      
    Nevertheless, the New testament writings and the Early Christianity were fully immersed in the Hellenistic Greek Culture and in it the inaugural anointing was not widely used and known. And thus already from the later parts of the New Testament onward the title Christ lost the meaning of an honorific title and started to function as a second name, it became part of a holy name (nomen sacrum).
    And this early (biblical) onset of pious ignorance is something you might not know about the New Testament Bible.

 

I mentioned that the Hebrew word messiah מָשִׁיחַ was an honorific title indicating that the person was inaugurated into some higher-ranking position by the act of anointing - pouring fragrant oil over them. Kings, priests and prophets were called anointed. 

    But the act of religious anointing (root משׁח) was not reserved for people alone. Religiously anointed were also the temple furniture (ark, lampstand, incense table, utensils) even the sanctuary/tabernacle itself. Anointing was a religious ritual consecrating objects or people as holy, setting them apart for special religious functions.

    Anointing was in fact a liturgically enacted metaphor with several interconnected meanings. 

Oils have preservative faculties that slow down rusting or rotting - thus anointing visualized and represented this desire to forestall decay. Before the invention of soap, oils played an important role in personal hygiene (rubbing oils on skin and scraping off dirt) - thus anointing was associated with cleanliness. Oils and ointments especially infused with herbs are used until now in medicine - thus anointing represented this desire to protect the health of the anointed. Oils infused with herbs were also used as perfumes, covering or repelling unpleasant odors. Here you need to understand that in ancient times it was about more than just cosmetics. Demons were believed to reek - thus anointing actualized repelling demons.

    Anointing was associated with preservation, cleanliness, health and repelling of demons, it was in fact apotropaic magic - a high brow religious ritual to set objects or persons apart and to express desire in protecting them from evil influences. 

    And this deep apotropaic function of anointing is something you might not know about the Bible (biblical religion).

 

And here is a YouTube video of the sermon: Fragrance of Loving Care.

Mythic Grains

Ugaritic tablet KTU 1.6 with text of part of Baal Cycle.

Among the Ugaritic Mythological texts, there is this interesting part of Baal myth (KTU 1.6.ii.31-37 in my translation and partly reconstructed from parallels).

     Goddess Anat grasped divine Mot,

     with a trashing blades she split him,

     with a fan she winnowed him,

     with fire she parched him,

     with millstones she ground him,

     on the steppe she scattered him,

     in the furrows she sowed him.

     His remains the birds did indeed eat,

     his remnants the sparrows did consume.

 

     Do you recognize how similar it is to the parable which Jesus said?! The one about the different seeds landing in different soils and about their different destinies.

     Well, I am not suggesting that Jesus copied ancient Canaanite myths, of course he did not. Those myths are twelve hundred years older and were buried in the ruins of the city for centuries.

     But Jesus was certainly drawing from the same treasure of religious metaphors. Those religious metaphors about grain date from great antiquity, from the beginning of farming, thousands of years before the time of Jesus or the time of Ugarit.

            And these mythical metaphors were not limited to Hebrew or Semitic people. It is likely that similar grain metaphors played an important role in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. And among the hairs of Celtic religion and culture are present in the ballad John Barleycorn must die (A friend Neil Nash alerted me to this fact.)

            In the New Testament Jesus is not the only one who uses this grain metaphor. Apostle Paul reached out to the same mythic treasure when he tried to explain to the Corinthians (1Cor15) the resurrection. He used the similar metaphor of grain being buried and then rising to new life.

            And thus through Apostle Paul and the parables of Jesus we share this important, meaningful and beautiful connection with the dawn of civilization, the beginning of agriculture, and the oldest shared hopes of transcending our mortality.

            And that is something you might not know about the Bible, about the New Testament metaphors and their deep, meaningful, mythical roots. 

 

Video version of this blog can be found here.