Slavery in Early Christianity jennifer a. glancy 1 2002 3 Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 2002 by Jennifer A. Glancy Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Chapter two incorporates a revised version of “Obstacles to Slaves’ Participation in the Corinthian Church,” which first appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 3 (1998). Chapter two also includes revised material from “Family Plots: Burying Slaves Deep in Historical Ground,” which first appeared in Biblical Interpretation 10, no. 1 (2002). Chapter four incorporates a revised version of “Slave and Slavery in the Matthean Parables,” which first appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature 119, no. 1 (2000). I am grateful to the editors of those journals for granting permission to reprint this material. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Glancy, Jennifer A. Slavery in early Christianity / Jennifer A. Glancy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-19-513609-8 1. Slavery and the church—History. 2. Church and social problems—History. I. Title. HT913.G53 2002 261.8'34567'093—dc21 2001036368 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Shining above his head with a thousand rays brighter than those of the sun and moon put together is a placard in Roman letters proclaiming him king of the Jews, surrounded by a wounding crown of thorns like that worn, without their even knowing and with no visible sign of blood, by all who are not allowed to be sovereigns of their own bodies. —José Saramago, The Gospel according to Jesus Christ Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can they call her if they don’t know her name? —Toni Morrison, Beloved Contents Abbreviations, xiii Introduction, 3 1. Bodies and Souls: The Rhetoric of Slavery, 9 2. Body Work: Slavery and the Pauline Churches, 39 3. Body Language: Corporal Anxiety and Christian Theology, 71 4. Parabolic Bodies: The Figure of the Slave in the Sayings of Jesus, 102 5. Moral Bodies: Ecclesiastical Development and Slaveholding Culture, 130 Notes, 157 Bibliography, 181 Index, 193 Abbreviations Dates: B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) is the equivalent of B.C., and C.E. (Common Era) is the equivalent of A.D. Abbreviations for papyrological sources appear in J. F. Oates et al., Checklist of Editions of Greek and Latin Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets, 4th ed. (Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Supplement 7, 1992). Where abbreviations are listed for both the name of an author and the title of his work, the abbreviation for the title appears immediately after the abbreviation for the author’s name. Please note one exception: the abbreviation Ep. (for Epistulae) appears only once, although the letters of various authors are cited. 1 Clem. 1 Clement App. Appian BCiv. Bella Civilia Apul. Apuleius Met. Metamorphoses (=The Golden Ass) Arch. Class. Archeologia Classica Ath. Athenaeus Aug. Augustine CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Did. Didache Dig. Digest of Justinian Dio. Chrys. Dio Chrysostom Or. Orationes Ep. Epistulae (=Letters) Ep. Barn. Epistle of Barnabas Epic. Epictetus IG Inscriptiones Graecae Ign. Ignatius Pol. Epistle to Polycarp Inst. Institutiones xiii xiv Abbreviations Joseph. Josephus BJ Bellum Judaicum Lucr. Lucretius Mart. Martial NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers NRSV New Revised Standard Version Petr. Petronius Sat. Satyricon Plaut. Plautus Curc. Curculio Plut. Plutarch Mor. Quaest. Rom. Moralia Quaestiones Romanae Sen. Seneca (The Elder) Controv. Controversiae Sen. Seneca (The Younger) Ben. De beneficiis Clem. De clementia Suet. Suetonius Aug. Divus Augustus Tac. Tacitus Ann. Annales Germ. Germania Quint. Quintilian Inst. Institutio oratoria Val. Max. Valerius Maximus Slavery in Early Christianity This page intentionally left blank Introduction This study focuses on the impact of the ubiquitous ancient institution of slavery on the emergence and development of Christianity. I work from the understanding that both slaves and slaveholders were more pivotal in early Christian circles than has been gen- erally acknowledged. The centrality of slavery affects not only the reconstruction of the social histories of the emerging churches but also theological and ideological analyses of Christian rhetoric. I stress the corporeality of ancient slavery. Christians who argued that true slavery was spiritual in nature often depended on somatic metaphors. Thus, even as we turn to metaphoric uses of slavery in Christian discourse, the corporeality of slavery retains priority. Early Christian slavery emerges as a significant chapter in the history of the body. Although the earliest Christian writings are laced with images and metaphors bor- rowed from the rhetorical domain of chattel slavery, evidence concerning Christian slaves and Christian slaveholders is typically fragmentary. An understanding of the institution of slavery during the period in which Christianity emerged and defined itself is neces- sary for comprehending both the rhetoric of slavery in Christian writings and the reali- ties of slavery in Christian communities. I have defined the relevant period quite broadly, from the early years of the Roman Empire to late antiquity, when slavery continued to be quite common.1 Within this time frame Christianity first emerged and was eventu- ally recognized as the official religion of the Empire.2 Keith Bradley, who has written extensively about slavery in Roman history, refers to the “‘steady state’ mentality” of slaveholders throughout antiquity. Since the attitudes of slaveholders remained constant, the conditions in which slaves lived and worked also persisted from generation to gen- eration.3 Slaveholders in the first century characterized their slaves as bodies, and their treatment of their slaves was commensurate with that characterization. This was equally the case in the fourth century, when Constantine came to power, and a century after that.4 A wide variety of sources attests to the contours of slavery in the Roman Empire, from bills of sale to legal codes to literary works. However, we have to remember that the picture of slavery we derive from these sources is pieced together rather than given. Any description of slavery in antiquity is the product of multiple scholarly decisions: whether we can discern links among miscellaneous sources to tell a connected story, for example, or how much we can assume about the context of an important but obscure piece of evidence. Hayden White has argued that literary scholars often seek to “ex- plain” texts with reference to a historical background. In doing so, they assume that this background context; “‘the historical milieu’—has a concreteness and an accessibility that the work can never have, as if it were easier to perceive the reality of a past world put together from a thousand historical documents than it is to probe the depths of a 3 4 Introduction single literary work that is present to the critic studying it. But the presumed concrete- ness and accessibility of historical milieux, these contexts of the texts that literary schol- ars study, are themselves the products of the fictive capability of the historians who have studied those contexts.”5 Scholars of early Christianity often rely on a seamless picture of ancient life, which disguises the jagged edges of the documentation, as though there could exist a concrete, accessible, and coherent background picture on which we could piece together the puzzle of early Christian life. Throughout this study I have deliberately tried to expose the jagged edges of the primary sources I use. I want readers to be able to discern the weak- nesses as well as the strengths of the evidence and thus to come to their own conclu- sions. I will be happy if the presentation of my arguments leads some readers to conclu- sions other than the ones I draw. We encounter several kinds of problems as we try to draw on the disparate sources pertaining to Roman slavery throughout the Empire. An examination of a single docu- ment grants insights into both the possibilities and pitfalls of research into ancient slav- ery. I treat one specific document at length to demonstrate the inherent complexity of our sources for slavery. In correspondence dated 199 C.E., an Egyptian man writes to his daughter and his wife to inform them that he is manumitting a number of slaves. The author of the correspondence identifies himself as Marsisuchus, a former high priest of the temple of Hadrian in the Arsinoite nome. His wife’s name is Bernice; deteriora- tion in the papyrus has destroyed traces of the daughter’s name. Among the slaves to be manumitted are two women, Sarapias and Soteria, and their offspring. Marsisuchus threatens his wife and his daughter that if they should try to block the manumissions he will take back property he has previously settled on them and instead donate the property to the temple of Serapis in Alexandria. The notices to Bernice and the daugh- ter list different slaves, hinting that the wife and the daughter have separate claims on the slaves whom Marsisuchus wants to manumit.6 The correspondence offers tantalizing possibilities for insight into the emotional entanglements of family members around their slaves, yet it leaves us with few solid conclusions about that situation.