Agape vastete kujunemisest eesti piiblitõlgetes
On the formation of the equivalents of Greek agape in Estonian Bible translations

Summary/Abstract: The development of the lexicon and conceptual system of Estonian has been influenced by the translation of Bible into Estonian. In order to achieve a more precise translation, new words were created either by means of borrowings or derivation using extant word stems. One of the central concepts in Christianity is agape (love), which was translated in early Estonian texts mostly by the word ‘arm’, which was a word with a rather broad meaning. During the Bible translation in the beginning of the 18th century, a new term ‘armastus’ was derived from the same-stem verb ‘armastama’, as an exact counterpart for Greek agape. In the later development of Estonian, the meaning of this term expanded. In the article, the development of Estonian counterparts of agape and the closely related concepts charis and eleos are examined with the comparisons of Latin and German terms, which were languages also used in Estonia during the missionary work and Bible translation.

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