From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Apr 09 2000 - 17:56:01 EDT
At 1:05 PM -0500 4/9/00, Charles Skallerud wrote:
>I was reading the NET Bible version of Colossians this morning. I was
>generally impressed with the careful notes beloved of all bookworms. Still
>this confounded doulos got in the way. Why translate sundoulos as
>fellow-servant in chapter 1 and doulos as slave in chapters 3 and 4? This
>will not do. Most translations go this route, but I consider it a major,
>intolerable linguistic error. We miss the whole drift of Paul's thought if
>we pretty it up this way. To my mind it must be slave throughout. I know
>this is an old debate but it is still timely. It astounds me that new
>translations persist in this genteel double-talk. Paul was not afraid of
>his words. Why should we be afraid of translating them?
I'd have to disagree with this, at least to the extent that I think an OT
theme has come into play in NT usage: the exodus/covenant-making sequence
is understood as the passage of Israel from involuntary servitude (ABODAH)
to a human master--Pharaoh--to voluntary service to YHWH, and I think the
same play upon the double sense of EBHEDH is present in NT usage of DOULOS.
In liturgical language, the paradox is expressed in the clause descriptive
of the nature of one who is a DOULOS IHSOU CRISTOU: "whose service is
perfect freedom."
If we are going to be consistent and translate DOULOS always as "slave" in
the NT, then I suppose we ought to be consistent in translation of the OT
word as well and change our parlance about the figure described in those
traditionally-termed "Servant" poems of Deutero-Isaiah; we should speak
rather of the "Suffering Slave."
--Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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