παρεπίδημος

From the study of 1 Peter 1:1

Range of meaning

Built from para ("beside, alongside") + epidēmos ("staying in a town"). It means a person staying in a place that is not their own: a visiting foreigner or temporary resident, someone who is "in town" but not "of the town". It is a legal and social category before it is a spiritual one. Such a person lacked citizen rights, local roots, and the protection that came from belonging. A near-synonym, paroikos ("resident alien"), stands beside it in 1 Pet 2:11.

Against the English

KJV "strangers" now suggests "people we don't know", which is not the point. NIV/ESV "exiles" suggests people forcibly banished from home, which the word does not require. It describes where you live and your standing there, not how you got there. "Sojourners" (YLT, and the source gloss) or "resident foreigners" (cf. WEB "living as foreigners") come closest.

How it drifted

"Stranger" has narrowed in English to "unfamiliar person". "Exile" has come to mean political banishment. Devotional use has also turned the idea into a purely inward feeling that "this world is not my home", which leaves out the social exclusion the first readers actually lived through.

Used elsewhere in the period

Greek papyri and Polybius use parepidēmoi for foreigners temporarily present in a city (Moulton–Milligan; BDAG). In the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint, or LXX), Abraham tells the Hittites, "I am a resident alien and a sojourner (paroikos kai parepidēmos) among you" (Gen 23:4). The Psalmist prays, "I am a sojourner with you, a stranger, like all my fathers" (Ps 38:13 LXX = 39:12). Hebrews 11:13 uses the word of the patriarchs.

From the study of 1 Peter 2:11

Range of meaning

'One staying alongside the local people (dēmos)': a visitor, a temporary resident, someone away from home for a period. Where paroikos stresses lack of belonging and rights, parepidēmos stresses being temporary and coming from elsewhere. In the New Testament it occurs only in 1 Pet 1:1, 2:11 and Heb 11:13.

Against the English

KJV and WEB 'pilgrims' brings in the later idea of a religious journey to a holy place. NIV, ESV and BSB 'exiles' suggests forced banishment, which the word does not itself say. However, Peter's frame of 'dispersion' (1:1) and 'Babylon' (5:13) does evoke Israel's exile. YLT 'sojourners' and NASB 'strangers' are closer to the plain sense.

How it drifted

In English 'pilgrim' came to mean a traveler to a shrine (medieval pilgrimage) and later, through works like Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the Christian life as a journey toward heaven. The Greek word means a temporary foreign resident. It does not describe travel toward a destination.

Used elsewhere in the period

Genesis 23:4 LXX and Psalm 38:13 LXX, both paired with paroikos. Polybius and papyri use it for foreigners temporarily staying in a city. Hebrews 11:13 applies it to the patriarchs, who 'confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth'.