[B-Greek] PAIS v DOULOS

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Jan 27 20:58:01 EST 2009


On Jan 26, 2009, at 9:25 PM, Stephen Baldwin wrote:

>
> Ladies and Gentlemen:
> I am curious, reading in the LXX (Ex21:2) about Hebrew slaves to see  
> the noun PAIS where, being a rookie, I was fully expecting to see a  
> DOULOS. I was wondering whether anyone might be able to help my word  
> study.
> In my library [such as it is], there seems to be very little on the  
> meaning of PAIS as servant/slave. Lots about it being a young man  
> etc. Louw&Nida imply (87.77) that a PAIS [=slave/servant] might have  
> had a better status "implication of kind regard". Kittel goes on at  
> very great length about the PAIS QEOU etc. but not a great deal else.
>
> But I would be interested to know the differences [if any] between  
> these words, and any other tidbits anyone might want to offer. I've  
> just noticed in Ex21:7 the mention of female hAI DOULAI which causes  
> the plot to thicken a bit more...
>
> As an off-topic aside, I'd be interested in anyone's recommendations  
> [off-list please] for further reading on the issue of slavery in the  
> OT and the other codes of that era. The work most mentioned is Isaac  
> Mendelsohn's book from 1949 I believe. Being a book of high-regard  
> and oft-quoted, it is of course out of stock or out of print and  
> very hard to obtain at a price commensurate with a recession :-)

PAIS for slave goes way back in Classical Greek. I still remember the  
first time I saw PAIS used thus, right at the beginning of Plato's  
Republic (1.327a) Πολέμαρχος ὁ Κεφάλου  
ἐκέλευσε δραμόντα τὸν παῖδα  
περιμεῖναί ἑ κελεῦσαι. [POLEMARCOS hO KEFALOU  
EKELEUSE DRAMONTA TON PAIDA PERIMEINAI hE KELEUSAI] "Polemarchus son  
of Cephalus had told his slave to run and bid us wait up for him."

I won't cite the entire lengthy entry in BDAG, but the relevant part  
is 3. one who is committed in total obedience to another, slave, servant
	a. of slaves and personal attendants slave, servant
	b. of special relationships
	α. humans as God’s servants, slaves
	β. angels as servants of God
	γ. of Christ in his relation to God. In this connection it has the  
mng. servant because of the identification of the ‘servant of God’  
of certain OT pass. w. the Messiah

You might compare the usage of "garçon" in French and the archaic  
taboo usage of "boy" in English to refer to a servant or slave. I'm  
just speculating here, but what I suspect is that DOULOS is the socio- 
economic term for a servant in relationship to a KURIOS in an OIKOS as  
a socio-economic unit, while PAIS is what that servant is referred to  
as by those whom he (or she -- PAIS is used even of a woman servant)  
works for/serves. I think that PAIS may function like diminutives and  
second-person singulars as terms that may function at either of two  
extremes: (1) a term of endearment ("my child"), and (2) a term of  
distancing, used for one whom one views as an inferior. At any rate,  
it certainly the case that Heb. EBD is represented in the LXX at least  
as frequently by PAIS as by DOULOS, very notably in the "Servant"  
poems of Second Isaiah.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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