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