I need your help.
If not now, when?
If not you, who else? The other reader of this blog?!
But you kind of have to know a little Greek—or at least know the letters and basic ideas about conjugation.
Here’s my problem: BDAG, the standard Κοίνη Greek lexicon, is telling me that someone used the word ἀγάπη in an inscription a long time ago, and a transcription of that inscription is in an 1885 book, Inscriptiones antiquae orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et Latinae, edited by B. Latyschev (isn’t Google Books amazing!).
BDAG also says that that the inscription is to be found at “359, 6” within this volume. But I can’t find any 359s! There’s no page 359. There’s no inscription 359! And in that case, what would the 6 be doing? I even did a search inside the volume for “359.” I can’t figure it out. One free book from my secret stash to anyone who can!
P.S. Here is what BDAG says in full: “[Ἀγάπη’s] paucity in general Greek literature may be due to a presumed colloquial flavor of the noun (but see IPontEux I, 359, 6 as parallel to 2 Cor 8:8 below). No such stigma attached to the use of the verb ἀγαπαω.”
P.P.S.: Here are links to the other two volumes of that series, volumes II and IV (volume III, BDAG says, was never published). I did wonder if BDAG got the volume number wrong. Apparently not, as best I can tell. But I’m still stumped.