ciple of love, as we are further taught by Christ ~ example, and by apostolic teaching, there lies, not only the fulfilling of the law, but a great, nay. the chiefest, part of practical religion (Ja 1” And we are reminded that it is
Q14-18 lJn 415-17),
LOVE (BROTHERLY)
LOVE-FEASTS
157
precisely these deeds of love which the King is represented as inquiring into at the great last day of account, and it is by their presence or absence that men’s everlasting destinies are adjudged (Mt 25%),
Jesu, vol. ii; Weiss, NT scat Ritschl, Recht. und ii. iii thics of Martensen (vol. i.) J. ORR.
LOVE (BROTHERLY).—See BROTHERLY LOVE.
LOVE, LOVELY, LOVER.—In 1 Es 4” we find ‘love’ used in the concrete, one that is loved, ‘when he hath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love’ (τῇ ἐρωμένῃ ; vole. amabili suae; Wye. ‘leef’ [=loved one]; Cov. ‘his love’). Cf. Shaks. Venus and Adonis, 867—
‘She hears no tidings of her love.’
The adj. lovely has come to be used somewhat carelessly, and now means scarcely more than attractive; but in AV it always carrics a distinet sense of its origin. It has two meanings, however. 1. Worthy of being loved, Ezk 33° ‘thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a leasant voice’ (0°33y, Vv’, lit. as AVm ‘a song of oves,’ RVm ‘a love song’); (δ 515 ‘he is altogether lovely ? (pvADAD tba, lit. ‘all of him is loveablenesses’); Ph 4° ‘ whatsoever things are lovely’ (ὅσα προσφιλῆ). Cf. Preface to AV, ‘A man may be counted... a comely man and dorely, though he have some warts upon his hand’; Tindale, Expositions, p. 26, ‘If thou believe in Christ, that he is thy Saviour, that faith will lead thee in immediately, and show thee God with a lovely and amiable countenance’; Fletcher, Wildgoose Chase, i. 3—
‘Mir. Can you love a man? Lil. Yes, if the man be lovely, That is, be honest, modest.’
Milton, PL ix. 232—
‘Nothing lovelier can be found In woman than to study household good.’
2. Loving, 2S 1% ‘Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant in their lives’ (0°37"32, lit. ‘ the loved,’ LXX οἱ ἠγαπημένοι). Cf. Chaucer, Miller's Tale, i. 156— ᾿
‘Many a lovely look on hem he caste." Shaks. Taming of Shrew, M1. ii. 125—
*I should bid good-morrow to my bride, And seal the title with a lovely kiss.’
Lover has become restricted in meaning. Its wider Sea formerly may be seen in Tindale’s tr. of 6 ‘For the very synners love their lovers’; 15° ‘And when she hath founde it she calleth her lovers and her neighbours’; 15°’ ‘and yet gavest thou me never soo moche as a kyd to make mery with my lovers’; 3 Jn ™ ‘The lovers salute the. Grete the lovers byname.’ So in AV, 1 K 5! ‘Hiram was ever a lover of David’; Ps 38} ‘My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore.’ But if it was wider, it was also darker in meaning sometimes and definite enough, as in Hos 2°‘ bor their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them rath ἐπ shamefully ; for she said, I will go after my lovers.’ Cf. Knox, Works, iii. 196, ‘And Jeremie lykewyse in mokage of thame, sayis, Lat thy loveris delyver thee; call upon thame, and lat tham heir thee! Thow hast committed fornicatioun with thame, and hes com- mittit huredome with stoke and stone.’
J. HASTINGS.
LOVE-FEASTS (ἀγάπαι, Jude 13 and some MSS of 2P 218, δοχή, Apost. Const. ii. 28; ὑποδοχή or Naxovla τραπεζῶν, Julian, reg. Lpist. p. 305 (ed.
Spenheim, 1696]; δημώδης éorlacis, Clem. Alex. Ped. τι. i. 12; cf. συνευωχεῖσθαι, Jude, 2 P, Ul.cc. ; Latin, dere Jude ™, Vulg. convivium, 2 P 215 id., but, technically, agape from the 2nd cent. »nwards (ef. Tert. Apo/. 39, ‘ccena nostra... id vocatur quod dilectio apud Graecos est’; Acta Perpet. et Fel. 17; Aug. ὁ. Faustum, xx. 20]; Eng. RV ‘ feasts of charity ’).—These feasts sprang out of the common meals of the early Christian Church, in which all the members of the local church shared, and which served at once as a token of brotherhood (Ac 2“) and as a method of helping the poor (Ac 61:3; ef. Chrys. ad 1 Co 11" καὶ yap ἀγάπης ὑπόθεσις ἦν καὶ πενίας παραμυθία Kal πλούτου σωφρονισμὸς Kal φιλοσο- φίας ἀφορμὴ τῆς μεγίστης καὶ ταπεινοφροσύνης διδα- σκαλία). They probably originated in an imitation of the private meal of a Jewish household, widened out by the Christian conception of brotherhood, and consciously reproducing the last Supper which the Lord had kept at Jerusalem; but their wide dissemination among the Gentile Christians would have been facilitated by the similar common meals which were usual in the pagan religious brother- hoods (Hatch, BL ii. p. 31 note). The fullest account of a love-feast in the NT is to be found in 1Co 11)7*; in subsequent writers, in Tert. Apol. 39.
The feast was an afternoon meal at which rich and poor met together in one common building. Formal prayers of benediction, based upon the Jewish benedictions, were said over the food; the prayers preserved in Didaché, c. 9, are possibly easy of those used at the Agape. The ‘Kiss of Charity’ (φίλημα ἀγάπης, 1 P δ᾽") perhaps concluded the meal. After the meal, hands were washed, lights were lit (cf. Ac 207), and there followed singing and prayer under the leadership of a prophet (Did. ο. 14) or some other minister. The Agape stood in close connexion with the Eucharist, which possibly preceded it (so Chrys. loc. cit.), but more probably followed it ; and hence the phrase ἀγάπην ποιεῖν seems to include the Eucharist in Ign. ad Smyrn. c. 8 (where see Lightfoot), and εὐχαριστία is applied to Christian meals in Clement of Alexandria (Ped. ii. 10).