Semia 83/84: Slavery in Text and Interpretation

by Allen Dwight Callahan (Guest Editor), Richard A. Horsley (Guest Editor), Abraham Smith (Guest Editor)

This is a collection of journal articles brought together by the editors in an attempt to "broaden the discussion on slavery and the New Testament." The editors' stated aim is to help correct New Testament scholars' habit of relying on "older classical scholarship that, in its touting of classical humanism, downplayed the severity of ancient Greek and Roman slavery." The essays of this journal issue have been grouped into two parts with Part I "[treating] the evidence for slavery in antiquity and the attitudes toward it," and Part II "[treating] specific receptions of Paul and slavery by persons of African decent in North America."

The articles appearing in this collection are as follows:

1. The Slave Systems of Classical Antiquity and Their Reluctant Recognition by Modern Scholars (by Richard A. Horsley)

2. Servants of God(s) and Servants of Kings in Israel and the Ancient Near East (by Dexter E. Callender, Jr.)

3. 'Ebd/doulous: Terms and Social Status in the Meeting of Hebrew Biblical and Hellenistic Roman Culture (by Benjamin G. Wright, III)

4. The Depiction of Slavery in the Ancient Novel (by Lawrence M. Wills)

5. Slave Resistance in Classical Antiquity (by Allen Dwight Callahan and Richard A. Horsley)

6. Paul and Slavery: A Critical Alternative to Recent Readings by Richard A. Horsley

7."Somebody Done Hoodoo'd the Hoodoo Man": Language, Power, Resistance, and the Effective History of Pauline Texts in American Slavery (by Clarice J. Martin)

8. "Brother Saul": An Ambivalent Witness to Freedom (by Allen Dwight Callahan)

9. Putting "Paul" Back Together Again: William Wells Brown's Clotel and Black Abolitionist Approaches to Paul (by Abraham Smith)

10. Paul, Slavery, and Freedom: Personal and Socio-Historical Reflections (by Orlando Patterson)

11. Reading and Heritage: A Response (by Antoinette Clarke Wire)

12. Paul and Slavery: A Response (by Stanley K. Stowers)

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998