Download or read book The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity written by James Albert Harrill and published by J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck). This book was released on 1995 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Slavery in Early Christianity written by Jennifer A. Glancy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slavery was widespread throughout the Mediterranean lands where Christianity was born and developed. Though Christians were both slaves and slaveholders, there has been surprisingly little study of what early Christians thought about the realities of slavery. How did they reconcile slavery with the Gospel teachings of brotherhood and charity? Slaves were considered the sexual property of their owners: what was the status within the Church of enslaved women and young male slaves who were their owners' sexual playthings? Is there any reason to believe that Christians shied away from the use of corporal punishments so common among ancient slave owners? Jennifer A. Glancy brings a multilayered approach to these and many other issues, offering a comprehensive re-examination of the evidence pertaining to slavery in early Christianity. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Glancy situates early Christian slavery in its broader cultural setting. She argues that scholars have consistently underestimated the pervasive impact of slavery on the institutional structures, ideologies, and practices of the early churches and of individual Christians. The churches, she shows, grew to maturity with the assumption that slaveholding was the norm, and welcomed both slaves and slaveholders as members. Glancy draws attention to the importance of the body in the thought and practice of ancient slavery. To be a slave was to be a body subject to coercion and violation, with no rights to corporeal integrity or privacy. Even early Christians who held that true slavery was spiritual in nature relied, ultimately, on bodily metaphors to express this. Slavery, Glancy demonstrates, was an essential feature of both the physical and metaphysical worlds of early Christianity. The first book devoted to the early Christian ideology and practice of slavery, this work sheds new light on the world of the ancient Mediterranean and on the development of the early Church.
Download or read book Slavery in Early Christianity written by Jennifer A Glancy and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work that exposed the centrality of enslaved people and slaveholders in early Christian circles. In this expanded edition, the distinguished scholar Jennifer A. Glancy reflects upon recent discoveries and future trajectories related to the study of ancient slavery's impact on Christianity's development. What if the stories traditionally told about slavery, as something peripheral or contradictory to Christianity's emergence, are wrong? This book contends that some of the most cherished Christian texts from Jesus and the apostle Paul prioritized the perspectives of slaveholders. Jennifer A. Glancy highlights how the strong metaphorical uses of slavery in early Christian discourse can't be disconnected from the reality of enslaved people and their bodies. Deftly maneuvering among biblical texts, material evidence, and the literary and philosophical currents of the Greco-Roman world, she situates early Christian slavery in its broader cultural setting. Glancy's penetrating study into slavery's impact on early Christianity, from the pages of the New Testament to the branded collars used by Christians who held people in bondage, will be of interest to those asking questions about slavery, power, and freedom in the long arc of history.
Download or read book Slavery as Moral Problem written by Jennifer A. Glancy and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fact that some early Christians were slaves does not present a moral problem for Christians today. The fact that some early Christians were slaveholders does. Jennifer Glancy tackles questions that continue to haunt contemporary men and women, inside and outside of the churches: Why didn't Jesus speak out forcefully against slavery? Why didn't the early church see slavery as fundamentally incompatible with the gospel? Were there any bright moments when some Christians in fact drew that conclusion, and why don't we know more about them? Why didn't Christianity have more of an impact on slaveholding in the Roman Empire? And what lessons can we learn as we face moral catastrophes in our own day?
Download or read book Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity written by Katherine Ann Shaner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Slaves were ubiquitous in the first- and second-century CE Roman Empire, and early Christian texts reflect this fact. This book argues that enslaved persons engaged in leadership roles in civic and religious activities. Such roles created tension within religious groups, including second-century communities connected with Paul's legacy. -
Download or read book Christian Slavery written by Katharine Gerbner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-02-07 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, then how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In Christian Slavery, Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Slave owners in the Caribbean and elsewhere established governments and legal codes based on an ideology of "Protestant Supremacy," which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from Christian communities. For slaveholders, Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies intending to convert enslaved Africans to Christianity in the 1670s, they were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion. Slaveholders regularly attacked missionaries, both verbally and physically, and blamed the evangelizing newcomers for slave rebellions. In response, Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries articulated a vision of "Christian Slavery," arguing that Christianity would make slaves hardworking and loyal. Over time, missionaries increasingly used the language of race to support their arguments for slave conversion. Enslaved Christians, meanwhile, developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom. Christian Slavery shows how the contentions between slave owners, enslaved people, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world.
Download or read book The Jewish Manumission Inscriptions of the Bosporus Kingdom written by Elizabeth Leigh Gibson and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 1999 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: E. Leigh Gibson analyses a little-known group of Greek inscriptions that record the manumission of slaves in synagogues located on the hellenized north shore of the Black Sea in the first three centuries of the common era. Through a comparison of this corpus with manumission inscriptions from elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world and an analysis of Greco-Roman Judaism's own interaction with slavery, she assesses the degree to which the Black Sea Jewish community adopted classical traditions of manumissions. In so doing, she tests the often-repeated assumption that these Jewish communities developed idiosyncratic slave practices under the influence of biblical injunctions regarding Israelite ownership of slaves. More generally, she reconsiders the extent of Jewish isolation from or interaction with Greco-Roman culture.Against the backdrop of Greek manumission inscriptions, the Jewish manumissions of the Bosporan Kingdom are unremarkable; they follow the basic outlines of Greek manumission formulae. A review of Greco-Roman Jewish sources demonstrates that biblical precepts on slaveholding were not implemented, even if they were still admired. One element of the manumissions, the ongoing obligation required of the slaves, is somewhat enigmatic and possibly indicates that the Bosporan Jewish community indeed had distinctive manumission practices. These obligations have been commonly interpreted as requiring the slave to participate in the religious life of the community as a condition of his manumission and possibly his concurrent conversion. A close analysis of the clause reveals a more straightforward interpretation: the obligation was a kind of paramone clause, a common feature of Greek manumission inscriptions.E. Leigh Gibson demonstrates that the Jews of this region incorporated Greek manumission practices into their communal life. The execution of private legal contract with the community of Jews as witness in turn suggests that the wider Bosporan community extended respect and recognition to its local Jewish community.
Download or read book Slavery in Early Christianity written by Jennifer A. Glancy and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2024-03-12 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work that exposed the centrality of enslaved people and slaveholders in early Christian circles. In this expanded edition, the distinguished scholar Jennifer A. Glancy reflects upon recent discoveries and future trajectories related to the study of ancient slavery's impact on Christianity's development. What if the stories traditionally told about slavery, as something peripheral or contradictory to Christianity's emergence, are wrong? This book contends that some of the most cherished Christian texts from Jesus and the apostle Paul prioritized the perspectives of slaveholders. Jennifer A. Glancy highlights how the strong metaphorical uses of slavery in early Christian discourse can't be disconnected from the reality of enslaved people and their bodies. Deftly maneuvering among biblical texts, material evidence, and the literary and philosophical currents of the Greco-Roman world, she situates early Christian slavery in its broader cultural setting. Glancy's penetrating study into slavery's impact on early Christianity, from the pages of the New Testament to the branded collars used by Christians who held people in bondage, will be of interest to those asking questions about slavery, power, and freedom in the long arc of history.
Download or read book Preaching Bondage written by Chris L. de Wet and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preaching Bondage introduces and investigates the novel concept of doulology, the discourse of slavery, in the homilies of John Chrysostom, the late fourth-century priest and bishop. Chris L. de Wet examines the dynamics of enslavement in ChrysostomÕs theology, virtue ethics, and biblical interpretation and shows that human bondage as a metaphorical and theological construct had a profound effect on the lives of institutional slaves. The highly corporeal and gendered discourse associated with slavery was necessarily central in ChrysostomÕs discussions of the household, property, education, discipline, and sexuality. De Wet explores the impact of doulology in these contexts and disseminates the results in a new and highly anticipated language, bringing to light the more pervasive fissures between ancient Roman slaveholding and early Christianity. The corpus of ChrysostomÕs public addresses provides much of the literary evidence for slavery in the fourth century, and De WetÕs convincing analysis is a groundbreaking contribution to studies of the social world in late antiquity.
Download or read book Paul s Declaration of Freedom from a Freed Slave s Perspective written by Robin G. Thompson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-03-27 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This project attempts to listen to voices that have seldom been heard. While others have explored Paul’s theology of Christian freedom, they have not considered how Paul’s declaration of freedom would have been received by those who most desired and valued freedom: the slaves and freedpersons in the Galatian churches. In this study, Robin Thompson explores both Greek and Roman manumission, considers how the ancient Mediterranean world conceived of freedom, and then examines the freedom declared in Galatians from a freed slaves’s perspective. She proposes that these freedpersons would likely have perceived this freedom to be not only spiritual freedom, but—at least in the Christian communities—individual freedom as well.
Download or read book The Slaves of the Churches written by Mary E. Sommar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-26 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, stories of religious universities and institutions grappling with their slave-owning past have made headlines in the news. People find it shocking that the Church itself could have been involved in such a sordid business. This timely book, the result of many years of research, is a study of the origins of this problem. Mary E. Sommar examines how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel, and for others' behavior towards such slaves. The story begins in the New Testament era, when the earliest Christian norms were established, and continues up to thirteenth-century establishment of a body of canon law that would persist into the twentieth century. Along with her analysis of the various policies and statutes, Sommar draws on chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods to provide insight into the situations of unfree ecclesiastical dependents. She finds that unfree dependents of the Church actually had less chance of achieving freedom than did the slaves of other masters. The church authorities' duty to preserve the Church's patrimony for the needs of future generations led them to hold on tightly to their unfree human resources. This accessibly written book does not present an apology for the behavior of past Christian leaders, but attempts to learn what they did and to arrive at some understanding of why they made those choices.
Download or read book Recent Research on Paul and Slavery written by John Byron and published by Sheffield Phoenix Press Limited. This book was released on 2008 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Testament scholarship and Paul have had a complicated relationship over the question of slavery. For many decades there has been a struggle to reconcile the abolitionist cause with a biblical text that seemingly supports the institution of slavery. Then the more recent discovery of inscriptions and documents referring to slaves in antiquity has added new dimensions to the debate. Furthermore, new interpretative approaches to the New Testament, including social-scientifi c criticism, rhetorical criticism and postcolonial criticism, have challenged earlier interpretations of Paul's statements about slavery. The issue has even more recently taken on a new shape as descendants of former North American slaves have engaged with the way Paul has been interpreted and used to justify the enslavement of their ancestors. In this volume, John Byron provides a survey of 200 years of scholarly interpretation of Paul and slavery with a focus on the last 35 years. After a general overview of the history of research, Byron focusses in turn on four specific areas: African-American responses to Paul, Paul's slavery metaphors, the elliptical phrase in 1 Corinthians 7.21, and the letter to Philemon. An epilogue highlights four areas in which scholarship is continuing to change its understanding of ancient slavery and, in consequence, its interpretation of Paul. New Testament students and scholars will fi nd the volume a valuable specialist resource that collects and analyses the most important developments on Paul and slavery.
Download or read book Slaves in the New Testament written by James Albert Harrill and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this exciting new analysis of slaves and slavery in the New Testament, Harrill breaks new ground with his extensive use of Greco-Roman evidence, discussion of hermeneutics, and treatment of the use of the New Testament in antebellum U.S. slavery debates. He examines in detail Philemon, 1 Corinthians, Romans, Luke-Acts, and the household codes.
Download or read book First Century Slavery and the Interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7 21 written by S. Scott Bartchy and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2003-03-20 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Bartchy's Harvard dissertation, a thorough investigation into the character of slavery in first-century Greece serves as the basis for a rethinking of Paul's advice to slaves in 1 Corinthians 7:21. Such a rethinking also sheds light on Paul's more general concern that the Corinthian Christians find their identity in their calling as followers of Jesus rather than in their circumstances of race, gender, or socio-political status.
Download or read book The Metaphor of Slavery in the Writings of the Early Church written by I. A. H. Combes and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1998 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The First Christian Slave written by Mary Ann Beavis and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-01-06 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The slave Onesimus is the central figure in the letter to Philemon, but he remains silent throughout the discourse. Studies of the letter focus on whether or not Onesimus was a fugitive slave, and on the question of Paul's intentions for him: did he want Philemon to accept him back as a brother in faith; did he expect Philemon to return Onesimus to him for his own use; or was Paul hinting that Philemon should manumit Onesimus? This study centers on Onesimus as an intentional convert; the first Christian slave whose name we know. Using research about early Christian slavery, slavery in the Roman world, and comparative evidence from African-American slave narratives, this study starts from the assumption that Onesimus had his own motives and aspirations in pursuing his association with Paul, and reconstructs his voice using hints within and outside the text that suggest his agency and subjectivity.
Download or read book Paths to Freedom written by Rosemary Brana-Shute and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributors investigate the cultural consequences of manumission as well as the changing economic conditions that limited the practice by the eighteenth century to understand better the social implications of this multifaceted aspect of the system of slavery.
