Re: meirakion, pais, ephebos

From: Steven Craig Miller (scmiller@www.plantnet.com)
Date: Sat Dec 04 1999 - 09:30:12 EST


<x-flowed>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@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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