There have been many linguistic, cultural and anthropological studies about the origin of the Jesus narratives, but I am aware of none that explore how the teachings were shaped by the existence of the large populations of slaves in the ancient world other than to say that proportionally large numbers of slaves were certainly members of the early communities, and that the teachings were not abolitionist.
The Roman census system was reasonably accurate. Taxes were assessed by population, and the Empire’s finances depended on it. In the Augustan census of 28 BCE.. the number of Roman citizens-men, women, and children across the Empire was 4,063,000. To this number add about 2,000,000 slaves and some foreigners, making a total population of 5,500,000. Slaves were taxed so the numbers are almost certainly underreported, but still that calculates out to almost 30% of the population of the Empire were slaves at the time of Jesus. Other scholarly research puts the number of slaves lower, between 10 to 20% of the total population, but it is possible that as many as one in three persons were in bondage.
The Roman Empire at this period of expansion was continually at war, and slaves were booty of war. The soldiers of defeated armies became prisoners who became slaves if they were not executed. Most I presume became gladiators. The civilian populations of defeated kingdoms were also subject to slavery. People from all walks of life, teachers, doctors, artisans and accountants became slaves as well as hairdressers, drivers and concubines. And according to the amount of freedom that their masters or owners allowed, these men, women and children might have become members of the Jesus congregations. We have no way of knowing how many, but what is certain is that there were many slaves in the early Christian congregations outside Jerusalem, particularly in the Roman port cities that Paul evangelized, but also in Rome as well.
This word slave is found at least 127 times in 119 verses of the Greek versions of the New Testament. Doulos in Greek has only one accurate translation into English which is slave. It is often rendered "servant" by many translators, but it literally means to be owned by someone for a lifetime. Unsurprisingly Paul has the most to say about slavery. In Ephesians 6:5–8, Paul states "Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ". Similar statements regarding obedient slaves can be found in Colossians 3:22–24, 1 Timothy 6:1–2, and Titus 2:9–10. In Romans 1:1, Paul calls himself "a slave of Christ Jesus."
In the Pauline texts, a constant ethical teaching comes through: be a good slave if you are a slave and treat your slaves well if you are the master. Rise up and throw off your master’s oppression was left for the Exodus or it died in the Sinai desert. There are many echoes of the prophets in the sayings and stories about Jesus, but any prophetic condemnation of slavery is muted if it exists at all. This is the reason why Martin Luther King reached back into the Hebrew Bible to find a rallying point for the anti-segregation movement which he then coupled with the egalitarian teachings of the gospels.
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The devil is in the details. My investigation of church teachings regarding slavery after Paul reveals a mixed record at best. Here is a summary of what I learned from articles on Wikipedia. I have only included information that could be found on at least two independent searches.
In the early years of Christianity, freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity, but the actual institution of slavery was rarely if ever criticized. In 340, the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manicheans for urging that slaves liberate themselves; the canons of the Synod instead declared that anyone preaching abolitionism should be anathematised, and that slaves had a Christian obligation to submit to their masters. Augustine of Hippo renounced his early Manichean views. He argued that slavery did not belong to the natural state that Adam and Eve were born into, but that the institution of slavery was caused by human sin but allowed by God as a form of judgment. John Chrysostom argued that slaves should be resigned to their fate, that by obeying his or her master, a slave is obeying god. He also stated that slavery itself was the fruit of covetousness, of extravagance, of insatiable greediness.
In the 15th century, most Popes continued to legitimize slavery, at least as a result of war. In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which granted Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery. In 1488 Pope Innocent VIII accepted the gift of 100 slaves from Ferdinand II of Aragon and distributed them to the cardinals and Roman nobility. The Pope gave human beings, slaves, as gifts or Christmas presents! In 1639 Pope Urban VIII purchased slaves for himself from the Knights of Malta. On the other hand, a few Popes beginning in the 15th and 16th century denounced slavery as a crime, including Pius II, Paul III, and Eugene IV, but those voices were a minority.
After the Council of Trent when Thomas Aquinas became the gold standard of Catholic moral teaching, the question about the legitimacy of holding slaves might have been settled. Look no further for its justification according to his Natural Law Theory in the Summa. He comments on this proposition from Aristotle: "It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right" (1255a2-3), and that men "should seek to be masters only over those who deserve to be slaves" (1334a3). This is Aquinas’s comment: “Therefore, all human beings who differ from others as much as the soul does from the body, and as human beings do from irrational animals, are, because of the eminence of reason in them and the deficiency in others, by nature masters of the others. In this regard, Solomon also says in Proverbs 11:29: ‘The stupid will serve the wise.’” (Commentary 1.3.10).
Thomas, who is not feminist by any stretch of the imagination, uses slavery to justify the subjection of women, and asserts that it is without sin: “Subjection is twofold. One is servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit, and this kind of subjection began after sin. There is another kind of subjection, which is called economic or civil, whereby the superior makes use of his subjects for their own benefit and good; and this kind of subjection existed even before sin.” (I, q.92, a.1, arg.2).
If you are an abolitionist, there is little evidence of opposition to the institution of slavery in church history or the councils. You’ll have to look elsewhere for an argument to support your case. Slavery in different forms was allowed to exist within Christian moral teaching and practice for over 18 centuries, and with few exceptions, it was simply treated as part of the organization of human society. Something radically changed however with the massive and brutal exploitation of African populations to provide laborers for sugar and cotton plantations at the beginning of the industrial age.
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