Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity

262 Pages·1990·15.41 MB·English

by  Dale B. Martin

SLAVERY
AS
SALVATION
THE METAPHOR OF
SLAVERY IN PAULINE
CHRISTIANITY
DALE B . MARTIN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
Published with assistance from
the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 1990 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in
whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that
copying permitted by Sections 107
and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press),
without written permission
from the publishers.
Designed by Sonia L. Scanlon.
Set in Janson with Optima display type by
The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America by
Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York.
Library of Congress Cataloging-
in-Publication Data
Martin, Dale B., 1954-
Slavery as salvation : the metaphor of
slavery in Pauline Christianity /
Dale B. Martin,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-300-04735-5 (alk. paper)
1. Slaves—Biblical teaching.
2. Salvation—Biblical teaching.
3. Sociology, Biblical. 4. Bible. N.T.
Epistles of Paul—Criticism,
interpretation, etc. I. Title.
BS2655.S55M37 1990
227'.06—dc20 90-12224
CIP
The paper in this book meets the guidelines
for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
To
Harold Kelly Martin, Jr.,
and
JoAn Watson Martin
CONTENTS
Preface / ix
Abbreviations / xi
Introduction / xiii
C H A P T ER O NE
Ancient Slavery and Status / 1
C H A P T ER T WO
Slave of Christ and 1 Corinthians 9/50
C H A P T ER T H R EE
The Enslaved Leader as a Rhetorical Topos / 86
C H A P T ER F O UR
Slave of All in 1 Corinthians 9/117
C H A P T ER F I VE
Theology and Ideology in Corinth / 136
Conclusion / 147
Appendix: Tables of Inscriptions / 151
Notes / 179
Bibliography / 215
Index of Scriptural References / 237
General Index / 241

PREFACE
For years I have been interested in why ordinary Greco-Roman urbanites
became Christians. What was it about early Christian language, symbols,
and promises that drew them to align themselves with that fledgling
religious movement? This study began by pursuing one small aspect of
that question: early Christian use of slavery as a metaphor for salvation
and leadership. How did Greek and Roman converts hear such language?
Why did it draw rather than repulse them? Why would anyone want to be
Christ's slave? As the resulting book indicates, I believe some interesting
answers to these and other questions can be had by placing Christian
language firmly in a sociohistorical context and by analyzing religious
language with a view to its ideological functions.
My study of slavery and slave language in early Christianity began as a
doctoral dissertation at Yale University under the direction of Wayne A.
Meeks, whose name does not often appear in the footnotes of this book but
whose influence is evident throughout. I gratefully acknowledge that
influence and thank him for his careful, considerate guidance and con­
sistently excellent advice. Many others, including teachers, colleagues,
and friends, have made invaluable contributions, reading the manuscript
(sometimes many times), saving me from errors, and offering suggestions.
Though I cannot name everyone who has given encouragement and sup­
port, the following deserve explicit thanks: Abraham J. Malherbe, Bent-
ley Layton, Susan R. Garrett, David Dawson, Elizabeth Meyer, Bruce
Lawrence, Elizabeth A. Clark, Wilhelm Wuellner, and Dan Via. Many
thanks are due as well to Charles Grench and Caroline Murphy of Yale
University Press, and to Meighan Pritchard, my manuscript editor, for
saving me from many errors. I would also like to thank Margaret Adam for
compiling the index. The book is dedicated to my parents, my first and
greatest teachers.
IX
ABBREVIATIONS
AD Archaiologikon Deltion. Athens.
AE LAnnée épigraphique.
Anderson Anderson, J. G. C. "An Imperial Estate in Galatia."
Journal of Roman Studies 27 (1937): 18-21.
ArchEph Ephemerides Archaiologikis. Athens.
BCH Bulletin de correspondance hellénique.
CIG Corpus inscriptionum graecarum. Edited by A. Boeckh.
1825-77.
CIL Corpus inscriptionum latinarum. 1863-.
Corinth Merkt, B. D., ed. Corinth: Results. Vol. 8, pt. 1 (1931).
J. H. Kent, ed. The Inscriptions, 1926-1950. Vol. 8,
pt. 3 (1966). Princeton: American School of
Classical Studies at Athens.
Demitsas Demitsas, Margarites, ed. Sylloge inscriptionum
graecarum et latinarum Macedoniae. Reprint of 1896
ed. 2 vols. Chicago: Ares, 1980.
Dessau Dessau, Hermann, ed. Inscriptiones latinae selectae. 3
vols. Berlin: Weidmann, 1954-55.
Ditt. (or SIG) Dittenberger, Wilhelm, ed. Sylloge inscriptionum
graecarum. 4 vols. Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1915-24.
IG Inscriptiones graecae. 1873-.
IGR Cagnat, R., et al., eds. Inscriptiones graecae ad res
romanaspertinentes. 4 vols. Chicago: Ares, 1975.
IK (or IGSK) Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien.
Kern Kern, Otto. Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander.
Berlin: W. Spemann, 1900.
Kos Sasel Kos, Marietta, ed. Inscriptiones latinae in Graecia
rerperta. Additamenta ad CIL III. Faenza: Frattelli
Lega, 1979.
L. Landvogt, Peter. Epigraphische Untersuchung über den
oikonomos: Ein Beitrag zum hellenistischen
xi
xii Abbreviations
Beamtenwesen. Strasbourg: M. Dumont Schauberg,
1908.
MAMA Calder, W., et al., eds. Monumenta Asiae Minoris
antiquae. Manchester: Manchester University Press;
London: Green, 1928.
MittAth Mittheilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts in
Athen. Athens: K. Wilberg.
Raffeiner Raffeiner, H. Sklaven und Freigelassene: Eine soziologische
Studie auf der Grundlage des griechischen Grabepigramms.
Innsbruck: Wagner, 1977.
Robert EA Robert, Louis. Etudes anatoliennes: Recherches sur les
inscriptionsgrecques de VAsie Mineure. Paris: E. de
Boccard, 1937.
Robert H Robert, Louis. Hellenica.
SEG Hondius, J. J. E., et al., eds. Supplementum
epigraphicum graecum. 192 3 -.
Smyrna Die Inschriften von Smyrna (vol. 23, pt. 1 of IK).
TAM Kaiinka, E., and R. Herberdey, eds. Tituli Asiae
Minoris. Vienna: A. Hoelderi, 1901—.
INTRODUCTION
Slavery in the Roman Empire was, as it always is from our modern
perspective, an oppressive and exploitative institution. During the early
empire, from the time of Augustus to the end of the second century,
millions of human beings must have lived in humiliation and destitution,
serving the needs and whims, the pleasures and tempers, of other human
beings. According to Roman law, a slave, though recognized in a sense as a
human being (persona), was a thing (res). Owners had the right to bind,
torture, or kill their slaves.1 In literature of the time, one continually
comes across the opinion that slave life is the worst imaginable. In short,
modern sensibilities justifiably take offense at the ancient institution of
slavery.
Many studies of Greco-Roman slavery written in the past few decades
have rightly emphasized how complex ancient slavery was and, to the
modern person, how confusing it can be. In addition to slaves' dual legal
status, other apparent contradictions existed: for example, although slaves
legally could own nothing, we know from legal as well as nonlegal sources
that certain slaves actually controlled quite a bit of property and even had
sometimes considerable sums at their apparently free disposal. Although
slaves could not formally marry, thousands of tombstones survive in
which slaves refer to their spouses using common marital terminology,
and a variety of evidence indicates that at least a significant minority of
slaves maintained family structures of their own (the percentage of all
slaves that did so is completely unknown). Bits of historical evidence such
as these have recently led many ancient historians to point out that,
though the institution of slavery was severely oppressive, some slaves
were able to manipulate it to become rather powerful persons with a
certain degree of informal status in the society, compared, at least, to the
majority of the people of the empire, who were, though free, poor and
powerless. For this small but significant minority of slaves, slavery repre­
sented an avenue to influence and was therefore, remarkable as it usually
sounds to modern ears, a means of social mobility.
xiii
xiv Introduction
As important as the subject of Roman slavery is, in this book I do not
attempt a broad study of the institution of slavery as such. I offer no
analysis of the overall significance of ancient slavery for economics or
society. Nor do I intend to shed any great light on the narrower subject of
the relation of early Christianity to slavery—to describe, for example,
early Christian attitudes toward slavery, Paul's stance on the institution of
slavery, or the position of slaves in the social structure of Christian house
churches. Rather, my subject is the narrowly defined area of one particu­
lar function of slavery as a metaphor in early Christianity: how do we
explain the positive, soteriological use of slavery as a symbol for the
Christian's relationship to God or Christ? If the institution of slavery was
as oppressive as it seems to have been, and if Greeks and Romans so feared
slavery and despised slaves, how could slavery portray salvation
positively for early Christians? Why, in other words, would any person of
that society want to be called a slave of Christ? To address these questions,
in this book I detail the complexity of slavery, and the ambiguity of slave
status in Greco-Roman society, in order to analyze the religious and so­
cial—indeed, ideological—function of slavery as metaphor in early Chris­
tianity, specifically in the Pauline church at Corinth.
I have hoped that the shortcomings of a book with such a narrow
focus—one function of one metaphor as seen primarily in one text—will
be compensated by the offering of a full social and rhetorical placement of
that metaphor. Religious language is inextricably intertwined with social
structures, ideological constructs, and rhetorical strategies of the society
at large. To analyze theological language from the point of view of the­
ology alone is to distort its significance for any real social group, the­
ologians included. The value of this book, therefore, will not be in its
presentation of Roman slavery or its treatment of actual slavery and early
Christianity, but in its microscopic analysis of the relationship of a piece of
religious language to other forms of human society and discourse.
At first glance, the self-symbolization of Christians as slaves of God
appears odd in a Greco-Roman context. Generally, biblical scholars have
insisted that Christians were, for the most part, alone in this metaphorical
use of slavery and that the normal inhabitant of Greco-Roman culture
would have been offended at the idea. Yet, as some other scholars have
pointed out, "slave of the god" is not such an impossible construction in
Greco-Roman society. Though the phrase rarely refers to the religious
participant, it is not by any means unknown. For example, characters in
literature sometimes refer to themselves as slaves of a god or goddess. In