Bible Lexicons

In illustration of Titus 2:2; Titus 2:5 where the young women are exhorted φιλάνδρους εἶναι, φιλοτέκνους, σώφρονας, ";loving to their husbands, loving to their children, soberminded,"; Deissmann (LAE2, p. 315) has collected a number of exx. of this same use of σώφρων, as an ideal of womanhood, e.g. BCH xxv. (1901) p. 88 ἡ σόφρων (sic) καὶ φίλανδρος γυνὴ γενομένη, and ib. xxii. (1898), p. 496, ἡ φίλανδρος καὶ σ [ώ ]φρων ἡ φιλόσοφος ζήσασα κοσμίως (cf. 1 Timothy 2:9). In view of this, and of what is stated s.v. σωφροσύνη, we may be allowed to refer to a striking passage in Gilbert Murray’s Rise of the Greek Epic.3, p. 26, in which σώφρων or σαόφρων, ";with saving thoughts,"; is contrasted with ὀλοόφρων, ";with destructive thoughts."; ";There is a way of thinking which destroys and a way which saves. The man or woman who is sôphrôn walks among the beauties and perils of the world, feeling the love, joy, anger, and the rest; and through all he has that in his mind which saves.—Whom does it save? Not him only, but, as we should say, the whole situation. It saves the imminent evil from coming to be.";