Book Reviews

This new treatise offers a detailed examination of the terms for slavery in the Greek biblical text.

Brown’s study centers on disentangling and clarifying the meanings and interpretations of the terms slave and servant in the Koine Greek of the Septuagint and the New Testament. The two terms have two different words in the Greek language—doūlos for slave and diakonos for servant—and Brown notes that in most of the English-language translations he has read, that distinction is not preserved; instead, he says, most translators preferred to use servant unilaterally. Since doūlos occurs 175 times in the New Testament, including in the parables and sayings of Jesus, Brown feels that greater contextualization is needed to preserve what he views as the original divine intent of the passages in question. Brown asserts that the terms are not  synonymous in the biblical texts, and so the Bible does call upon Christians “to be loving, faithful, obedient, humble, loyal slaves of Christ Jesus,” which he allows is a controversial position among scholars. He confidently writes that he is “fully persuaded that the biblical reader’s understanding of doūlos…will yield an abundantly deeper understanding of what it is to live in the image and likeness of God as the slave of God the Father and Jesus his Son.” Brown brings formidable historical and linguistic expertise to these pages and to his argument, and his certainty on his crucial point is bracing. If one attempts to water down the differences between doūlos and diakonos, the power of their meanings is lost. Indeed, he goes so far as to assert that “Those who attempt to do so are tampering with the Word of God”. It is a fascinatingly granular work that may be eye-opening to readers who have not thought about the long translation history of the Bible in depth.

A great trove of specialized study skillfully presented for a general readership.

 - KIRKUS Review