At 9:23 PM -0600 1/14/97, Paul F. Evans wrote: >List,In some reasearch in Lamentations, I came across this figurative expression which is use in Rev. 8:11 without explanation. It is APSINQOS, translated wormwood. My question is about the Greek side of this word. Is this a the word used to translated the 8 or so Hebrew instances of "wormwood" (LAANAH) in the LXX? The only connection I can establish is OT, with the notion of talking wildly. J. A. Seiss in his "Apocalypse," speaks of this as being an intoxicating herb that is capable of producing convulsions and paralysis. Leon Morris says that it is not poisonous. They are obviously speaking of different things! This doesn't tell me if, assuming there is a connection is with wild talking, whether it is induced by intoxication or poisoning or both are characteristic. For John it is obviously poisonous or is there a reality that stands behind it? In the OT it is used entirely firguratively, sometimes with heavy hints that it refers to some real plant or herb. Is the word used in extra-biblical Greek literature in a way that pinpoints, or clarifies its meaning? Scholars seem to assume that it is a herb, some that it was medicinal, others that the hebr was poisonous and others that it was not. All seem to agree that the figure dpends upon a supposed severe bitterness of taste. I am trying to determine if wormwood is entirely figurative and is idiomatically understood, or if it has foundation in some thing real. I have no means of access to these soruces, and I know that some of you can do this is a few key strokes. There are problems on the Hebrew OT and LXX side about which I can say nothing, but I can point to a significant extra-biblical reference: Lucretius, the Roman Epicurean poet, in De Rerum Natura, his poetic exposition of Epicurean doctrine, has a few lines that appear in the proem of Book I (I think he uses the same lines somewhere else wihin the 6 books of the poem also, but the Book I reference is easy enough to find; I don't have the exact line numbers because I don't have a text at hand): he speaks of Epicurean philosophy as a bitter medicine that needs to be taken if one is to be of sound mind about the universe and appreciate the good things of life without looking to post-mortal blessings or fearing post-mortal punishments (because it is based upon a materialist atomist doctrine and denies the immortality of the soul). He says that parents when they give wormwood (Latin n. pl. absinthia) to children as a medicine the taste is so bitter that the children would refuse it, so the parents coat the rim of the goblet with honey--the ancient Roman equivalent of a sugar-coated pill. I can't say anything more about the wormwood, but it may possibly be one of those drugs that are poisonous if taken in an excessive quantity but medicinal in the right dosage. At any rate, it definitely has the reputation of exceeding bitterness. I just realized that I do have Louw-Nida ready to hand. It says that the herb APSINQOS, normally translated "wormwood" in English, was used to kill intestinal worms--so there, I assume, is the source of the NAME of the herb in English; it says also that the chief association with APSINQOS is the bitter taste, and this, it asserts, is the primary meaning in Rev. 8:11: #79.43 "... the meaning of APSINQOS in Re 8.11 is not that the waters turned into a particular plant but that the waters came to be as bitter as the plant in question." Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics, Washington University One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130 (314) 935-4018 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/