나아만 내러티브에 나타난 종 모티프 : 어휘적, 문학적, 신학적 해석

Abstract

This paper suggests that identifying the true servants could be a theme of Naaman narrative in chapter five of 2 Kings, and that servant motifs are included to support the new theme. The Hebraic terms for servant such as ‘ נערה קטנה’ (young girl, v. 2), ‘עבד’ (the servants of Naaman, v. 13), ‘נעד’ (servant, v. 20) and ‘טלאך’ (messenger, v. 10) show that each servant is of lower class. The roles of each character of the narrative are classified into four categories of leading, ancillary, archetype, and agent. Here we argue that roles of both the young girl of Naaman’s wife and his servants correspond to the archetype category, displaying the image of a typically faithful and wise servant. Thus we can conclude that servant motifs exist throughout various roles of the narrative characters. It can be said that the author of the book adds two more episodes to the first one (v. 1-14) with the intention to display various types of servants. Even though the first episode can complete the story, it is continually extended into the second one (v. 15-19) where Naaman shows humility by recognizing himself as “your servant” (v. 15), and into the third episode (v. 20-27) about Gehazi, the servant of deceiving character. Therefore we believe that the extended narrative has the servant motif. The rhetoric structure of the narrative could be chiastic around the servant motif. ‘Five types of servants’ retrieved from the above analyses focusing on servant motifs give us the insight to explore the hidden theme of the narrative, i.e. identifying the true servants. The true servant wishes and serves the best for his master without seeking any reward like the little girl (v. 2) and the servants of Naaman (v. 13). The contribution of this study lies both in the discovery of ‘servant’ motif and finding the most likely new theme ‘who is the true servant?’ with the help of abductive reasoning. This new theme is in contrast with preceding researches focusing on the healing of Naaman to the effect of demonstrating the power of God, or on the role of the little girl as a means of spreading the Gospel to the gentiles.