πινακίδιον

From the study of Luke 1:63

Range of meaning

A small form of pinax (“board, plank, plate, tablet”). It means a small writing tablet, usually wooden, often hollowed out and filled with wax and written on with a pointed stylus. Several could be hinged together like a little notebook (Latin pugillares, “fist-sized tablets”).

Against the English

BSB, WEB, NIV, ESV: “(writing) tablet”, which is accurate. KJV: “writing table”, which in 1611 meant a flat writing surface or slab (as in “tables of stone”), not furniture.

How it drifted

In English, “table” for a writing surface died out, and the furniture sense took over. So KJV readers can picture someone asking for a desk.

Used elsewhere in the period

Writing tablets show up across the Greco-Roman world. Wax and wooden tablets survive from Egypt, and the Vindolanda tablets from Roman Britain are wooden leaf tablets. Ancient writers mention wax tablets as the ordinary notepad for drafts, school exercises and quick messages. The Greek Old Testament uses pinax for writing surfaces (e.g., Isaiah 30:8 in some forms of the tradition).