meirakion, pais, ephebos
Steven Craig Miller
scmiller at www.plantnet.com
Sat Dec 4 09:30:12 EST 1999
To: Christopher Hutson,
CH: << I don't follow you. The narrator is certainly speaking about the
same boy, isn't he? Why would it make any different that it is not his own
son? >>
Sorry, I mistakenly took your reply (<< Well, the PAIS in Matt 17:18
happens to be a hUIOS (17:15). >>) to be a reply against the assertion by
Davies and Allison: << ... only once in the NT does PAIS clearly mean 'son'
(Jn 4.51). >>
CH: << The point is that PAIS in Mt 17:15 does not mean DOULOS. Matthew
can use PAIS as a synonym of DOULOS, but he does not always, and here he
clearly does not. >>
That is true, but the assertion W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison was:
<< ... only once in the NT does PAIS clearly mean 'son' (Jn 4.51). For the
rest it seems to mean 'servant' (cf. Mt 14.2; 12.18) or 'youngster' (cf.
17.18). And in the LXX PAIS rarely translates ben: it is most commonly the
equivalent of `ebed. So we prefer to translate 'servant.' One should think
of a house slave >> (2:21).
Thus at Mt 17:18, the term PAIS is being used (according to Davies &
Allison) to mean "youngster." For the term PAIS to mean "son" here, it
would have to have something like the possessive pronoun "his" added. And I
would add that it is probably more common for a parent to refer to his or
her child by the terms "son" or "daughter," than it would be for a parent
to refer to their child by the term "child." For example, at Mt 17:15 the
father refers to his son as hUIOS and not PAIS. And so, at Mt 8:8, if the
centurion was wanting to refer to his own son one might have expected hO
UIOS MOU rather than hO PAIS MOU.
What do you think?
-Steven Craig Miller
Alton, Illinois (USA)
scmiller at www.plantnet.com
"Words are like people. To know them well one must meet them on their own
level, in their own environment. In different circumstances they react
differently. Like a face they take on varying expressions. Some of them
move from place to place; some never return to their earlier familiar
surroundings. But to know their past is to know a little better what makes
them act as they do in the present" (Frederick W. Danker, "Multipurpose
Tools for Bible Study," 1993:135).
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