I. Name
Anankē, ‘necessity, constraint’, presented as the personification of the inevitable and inescapable, hence of the inexorable Fate, plays an important role in Greek religious and philosophical literature (Schreckenberg 1964). The word occurs 43 times in the LXX and 18 times in the NT with the meanings ‘necessity, compulsion, obligation; distress, suffering, calamity; inevitability’ (Strobel 1980) but never as a personification of Fate.
II. Identity
Anankē is mentioned by Plato in the my…