1 min readMar 26, 2020
Amazing piece, thank you.
The quasi-erotic relationship of older man to younger man is at the heart of all Jewish and Christian theology. Kenneth Dover notes in Greek Homosexuality that “agapē, the abstract noun corresponding to agapān, was later appropriated by Christian writers…” The agape love which Christians see as God’s own love, in classical Greek, “denotes the attitude of erastes to eromenos”—that is, older man to younger man.
But this is clearly the relationship of Yahweh to David, his boy-favorite, and of Jesus to the Beloved Disciple.