RE: doulos

From: stendahl (stendahl@bc.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 11 2000 - 12:38:46 EDT


<x-charset ISO-8859-1>>===== 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 contextóboth of text and audienceórather than assuming that a
single term will always do it best.

Carlís 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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