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Ancient Slavery and Its New Testament Contexts
An essential resource for understanding slavery in the New Testament and early Christianity
Slavery permeated society in the ancient world. Slavery and its shadows pervade the New Testament and other early Christian texts. Yet enslavement remains an under-taught aspect of the context of the New Testament and early Christianity. Because of this, readers are left with numerous questions about ancient slavery. How did people become enslaved? What kinds of work did enslaved people do? Who enslaved people? How did ancient slavery compare with more contemporary enslavement eras? Did anyone in the ancient world criticize slavery? Was ancient slavery racialized? Did Christians have a different understanding of slavery than others? These are just some of the questions students ask in higher education and in Bible study classrooms alike.
This volume takes on these questions, introducing students to the textures, complexities, and material realities of ancient slavery. Ancient Slavery and Its New Testament Contexts draws on the expertise of scholars around the world with a focus on introductory information, accessibility, and readability. It does not attempt to dismiss or downplay the role of New Testament texts in the perpetuation of either ancient slavery or slavery in the North American context. Rather, the volume helps students and teachers alike wrestle with the ongoing historical, theological, and ethical legacies of slavery in their own faith formation and engagement with the biblical text.
Slavery permeated society in the ancient world. Slavery and its shadows pervade the New Testament and other early Christian texts. Yet enslavement remains an under-taught aspect of the context of the New Testament and early Christianity. Because of this, readers are left with numerous questions about ancient slavery. How did people become enslaved? What kinds of work did enslaved people do? Who enslaved people? How did ancient slavery compare with more contemporary enslavement eras? Did anyone in the ancient world criticize slavery? Was ancient slavery racialized? Did Christians have a different understanding of slavery than others? These are just some of the questions students ask in higher education and in Bible study classrooms alike.
This volume takes on these questions, introducing students to the textures, complexities, and material realities of ancient slavery. Ancient Slavery and Its New Testament Contexts draws on the expertise of scholars around the world with a focus on introductory information, accessibility, and readability. It does not attempt to dismiss or downplay the role of New Testament texts in the perpetuation of either ancient slavery or slavery in the North American context. Rather, the volume helps students and teachers alike wrestle with the ongoing historical, theological, and ethical legacies of slavery in their own faith formation and engagement with the biblical text.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published April 10, 2025
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October 28, 2025
I found this book equal parts helpful and frustrating.
The book is helpful in the way that it covers a lot of ground regarding slavery in the ancient Roman and Jewish worlds. It hits all the major sub-themes, and while it does so with little sophistication, it serves as a good introduction, and the bibliographies point the reader to the appropriate literature that expands on these themes. In a reader needs a well written introduction to the major issues, including both the embodied realities of slavery and the language of slavery, metaphorical and otherwise, this is an excellent place to start.
The thing that frustrated me was that some of the authors here engaged in the exercise of pendulum swinging. It has often been noted that New Testament translations often "soften" the language of slavery, translating terms for "slave" as "servant" when "slave" would be more appropriate to the context. This is a fair enough critique. However, although words like "doulos" can mean "slave," and should often be translated that way, it is not at all wise to swing the pendulum so far in the other direction that "doulos" is then always translated that way. Sometimes "servant," without the connotations of slavery, is the right translation, but some of the articles in this book forcefully import the connotations of slavery into NT passages where it probably does not belong. This is a reverse form of the illegitimate totality transfer fallacy - instead of importing ALL of the meanings of "doulos" into each occurrence of the term, many of the authors here limit the meaning of the term to "slave" and read those implications into texts in a way that imports foreign concepts into the context.
Some of the authors here also take the stance of the slave to such a degree that it becomes its own form of bias and leads to questionable readings. For example, F. Mira Green discusses the story in Acts 16, where Paul casts out a spirit of divination from a slave woman. Green argues that Paul "stole" this woman's "gift," painting Paul as a perpetrator and the woman as Paul's victim. A far more charitable reading, and a wholly reasonable one, paints the woman as a victim of her enslavers, not of Paul. Rather than "stealing" this woman's gift, it's just as likely that the spirit of divination was an oppressive one, and that Paul liberated her. Such a reading is not entertained despite the fact that it far better fits the aims and themes of Luke's two-fold work.
Overall, this is a helpful book, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of slavery in the ancient world. It does, however, have some shortcomings. While it's true that NT translation and interpretation has often "softened" slave terminology in NT texts in such a way that it minimizes the slave experience, it's also unhelpful to enter into a bias in the opposite direction where one recontextualizes the meaning of stories or ideas in NT texts for the sole purpose of elevating the voices and experiences of enslaved people. The goal is not to "soften" or "harden" the language, the goal is to understand each passage appropriately within its context. I do not think some of the essays here always accomplish that task adequately.
The book is helpful in the way that it covers a lot of ground regarding slavery in the ancient Roman and Jewish worlds. It hits all the major sub-themes, and while it does so with little sophistication, it serves as a good introduction, and the bibliographies point the reader to the appropriate literature that expands on these themes. In a reader needs a well written introduction to the major issues, including both the embodied realities of slavery and the language of slavery, metaphorical and otherwise, this is an excellent place to start.
The thing that frustrated me was that some of the authors here engaged in the exercise of pendulum swinging. It has often been noted that New Testament translations often "soften" the language of slavery, translating terms for "slave" as "servant" when "slave" would be more appropriate to the context. This is a fair enough critique. However, although words like "doulos" can mean "slave," and should often be translated that way, it is not at all wise to swing the pendulum so far in the other direction that "doulos" is then always translated that way. Sometimes "servant," without the connotations of slavery, is the right translation, but some of the articles in this book forcefully import the connotations of slavery into NT passages where it probably does not belong. This is a reverse form of the illegitimate totality transfer fallacy - instead of importing ALL of the meanings of "doulos" into each occurrence of the term, many of the authors here limit the meaning of the term to "slave" and read those implications into texts in a way that imports foreign concepts into the context.
Some of the authors here also take the stance of the slave to such a degree that it becomes its own form of bias and leads to questionable readings. For example, F. Mira Green discusses the story in Acts 16, where Paul casts out a spirit of divination from a slave woman. Green argues that Paul "stole" this woman's "gift," painting Paul as a perpetrator and the woman as Paul's victim. A far more charitable reading, and a wholly reasonable one, paints the woman as a victim of her enslavers, not of Paul. Rather than "stealing" this woman's gift, it's just as likely that the spirit of divination was an oppressive one, and that Paul liberated her. Such a reading is not entertained despite the fact that it far better fits the aims and themes of Luke's two-fold work.
Overall, this is a helpful book, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the topic of slavery in the ancient world. It does, however, have some shortcomings. While it's true that NT translation and interpretation has often "softened" slave terminology in NT texts in such a way that it minimizes the slave experience, it's also unhelpful to enter into a bias in the opposite direction where one recontextualizes the meaning of stories or ideas in NT texts for the sole purpose of elevating the voices and experiences of enslaved people. The goal is not to "soften" or "harden" the language, the goal is to understand each passage appropriately within its context. I do not think some of the essays here always accomplish that task adequately.
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