Slavery in New Testament times

 

[I am currently going through a textbook/workbook on hermeneutics, and one of the exercises I had to do was to type up a summary of slavery as found in the New Testament era. So I figured I might as well post it here - hope ya like it!]

Ok, this is supposed to be a 1 – 2 page summary on the practice of slavery in New Testament times. As my library is currently on the small side – the direct historical information I could find was rather limited, so I don't know that it will actually reach 2 pages in length. I will do my best to be straight forward and honest.

It is often mentioned that the Bible condones slavery – but this is not accurate. Old Testament slavery has no modern parallel, there has simply never been anything like that before or since. It bore several similarities to our modern day employee – employer relationship, but even that comparison limps. The Mosaic Law jealously guarded the human rights of slaves. They were to be treated with dignity, respect, love and kindness. One extremely important distinction of OT slavery was that slaves were to be freed every seven years. Another, possibly equally significant fact, was that the slaves were to be treated so well that God put provisions in the law allowing for the slave to basically become part of his masters family if he so desired – which happened very frequently.

But that was Israel's law in the OT times. What we encounter in the New Testament era is completely different. In the NT, we find Israel under the occupation of Rome – and as such, they were subject to Roman law. Roman law had no provisions for the human rights of the slaves. Put bluntly – the Roman practice of slavery was just as evil as the American version was. Rome saw slaves as property, as tools. Aristotle, one of the most enlightened of the Greeks, held that the Creator had made the majority of the human race for slavery – he was quoted as saying "The slave is a living tool, and the tool is a lifeless slave." This mindset survived into the NT times. Slaves in the NT era had no rights what so ever – they were not seen as human, and there was absolutely no law governing how a master could treat his slaves. It was this system that the first Christians had to live with.

Approximately half of the population of the city of Rome – and a large part of the Roman empire as a whole, were slaves. A very large number of the early Christians were slaves. Domestic slavery was the most common form, where slaves were owned by private citizens to work at their masters homes or businesses – but there were a significant number of state and city slaves as well – these slaves were owned by the state itself and they performed an increasing amount of tasks.

While the system of slavery in Rome was cruel and brutal – it was not without pragmatism. A dumb slave was a worthless slave (for the most part). Roman citizens wanted to have their slaves run their households and businesses while they pursued their various amusements – but in order to do that, the slaves needed to be well educated and trained to handle the tasks they were assigned, and to handle them well. For this reason, the Roman army, on it's campaigns, often took the brightest and best young men and women from the conquered peoples and brought them home to be sold into slavery. Slaves often ended up being better educated then their masters, and were frequently used as secretaries and teachers. Slaves commonly ended up acting as the official representative of their masters in professional capacities. To help understand the issue of wanting a smart person to run your business while at the same time viewing them as less then human, it may be helpful to keep a modern concept in mind: robots. Rome would have loved the idea of robots! But, they were centuries away from even the vaguest concept of a robot, so they made due with human slaves (they just chose to try and forget about the "human" part!)

The governmental slaves are a particularly interesting aspect of the Roman system of slavery, in that a state or city slave could hold virtually any occupation – even the highest administrative positions. State slaves constituted the work force that kept the bureaucracy functioning in the Roman empire (particularly in Rome itself). To a large degree, the Roman empire (on a practical level), was run by slaves.

Slaves had significant incentive to provide good service to their masters – slaves were paid "wages". Wages, in that context, meant that the slave earned money, that the master kept for them – but was available to the slave to use – one of the possible uses of the money was for the slave to buy their freedom. Beyond that, the slave (once freed) could purchase an actual Roman Citizenship – the sale of citizenship was not officially condoned, but it was done none the less. Masters could also simply give their slaves freedom – either conditionally or unconditionally. If the freedom was conditional, then the slave usually continued in his obligations to his former master – but he now performed them as a free man. Masters could also transfer ownership of a slave to a god – which usually resulted in conditional freedom.

The New Testament itself neither condemns or endorses slavery. It simply treats it as a fact of life that must be dealt with. It gives guidelines for behavior within the existing social order of the day (Col 3:22 – 4:1; 1 Timothy 6:1-2; Phil 5-9; 1 Pet 2:16-21; but see 1 Cor 7:21-24). The problem was, the Gospel put slaves and masters on an equal level within the church. It was not uncommon for a slave to end up being a deacon or elder in a church where his master was a "member" - which resulted in the slave having a certain amount of authority over his master. While this was no trouble for the slaves and masters who actually found themselves in this situation (they were all slaves to Christ), non-believing Romans perceived this situation as dangerous to the social and economic stability of Rome. The fear was unfounded. In the NT, Paul did counsel believing slaves to seek freedom if possible ( 1 Cor 7:21), but he also told slaves to obey their masters (Eph 6:5; Col 3:22; Titus 2:9).

In conclusion, it is unfair to claim that the Bible supports slavery. The OT system of slavery is unlike anything else in history – we have no frame of reference to compare it to, and it bore no similarity to the system of slavery we commonly think of (other then, perhaps, the word "slavery"). The NT slavery was never endorsed by the writers of the Bible. It was an entirely Roman system, set up and enforced by an occupying force in Israel -and the NT writers simply gave instructions on how Christians were to function within a preexisting system.

The NT never specifically addresses the issue of slavery because compared to the problem of sin, slavery is of very little importance (this is true of many, many issues that one could bring up). That being said, the spread of the Gospel can be directly linked to the demise of slavery. Put simply, where the gospel goes, slavery ends. Maybe not immediately, and there may be the odd hold out here and there, but in general, it is an undeniable fact.