doulos

stendahl stendahl at bc.edu
Tue Apr 11 12:38:46 EDT 2000


>===== Original Message (in part) From "Charles Skallerud"  =====
> ...  To my mind 'servant' has an air of Victorian
>domesticity which is a million miles from Paul. ...
>

Dear Charles,

Your point is valid concern, but the problem with "servant" to which you point 
seems to me not altogether solved by our use of slavery language in 
translation of DOULOS and related terms.  Especially in the American setting, 
the latter language evokes the institution of chattel slavery as practiced 
here in modern times.  It is a raw and charged association that seems 
sometimes to enhance but othertimes to deflect the understanding of the text.  
As I reflect on why it sometimes seems to work and other times seems to miss 
the mark, I wonder if part of the difficulty is that our present rightful 
repugnance at the institution leads us naturally to hear such language almost 
exclusively in terms of the themes of bondage and subjugation and virtually 
without any quality of servanthood or service. That gives our reading a 
valuable edge, but an edge which may sometimes be a thinning, an attenuation, 
of the text.  (It may also say something about the bourgeois assumptions of 
our culture that we are not more conscious of the bondage and subjugation also 
of Victorian domestic servants.)

As I have struggled with the inadequacy of both English terms I have come to 
prefer a less consistent practice that seeks to adapt the translation to the 
variabilities of context—both of text and audience—rather than assuming that a 
single term will always do it best.

Carl’s note on ABODAH is a helpful contribution to our thinking this through.  
So, it occurs to me now, might be reflection on the way the same thematic 
issue arises in contemporary discourse in connection with the term Arabic term 
MUSLIM, another word that has to do with submission and service.

John Stendahl
Lutheran Church of the Newtons
Newton Centre, MA





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