WEEK TEN

CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY

Sources: Wiedemann ch. 12; Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery (1996) espec. chs. 10-14

Note: for Paul’s Epistle to Philemon (trans.: Wiedemann no. 213), see Wansink 2001

and for I Corinthians 7.21, see Thiselton 2000 pp. 553-9 or Barclay in The Oxford Bible Commentary (2001) 1118-20; also Kovacs (2005) 104-130

Legal sources for late antiquity in translation: Pharr, Theodosian Code (1952), Coleman-Norton, Roman State and Christian Church (1966); A. Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (1987) and The Jews in Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (1997)

Questions to consider: What attitude or attitudes do early Christian writers take towards slavery? To what extent do these derive from earlier thinkers? What uses are made of slavery as part of Christian thought; e.g. allegorical or metaphorical? Do you detect anything new in Christian thought in this area? Can any changes in Christian thought be detected across the first centuries of the era? Do Christian ideas have any impact on

1) actual treatment of slaves or patterns of slaveholding?

2) imperial legislation on slavery?

Bibliography:

Garnsey 1997 in Rawson/Weaver 1997 ch. 5

Combes 1998; Harrill 1998 and 2006; Horsley 1998b ; Byron 2003

Glancy 2002; Bartchy 1973

de Ste Croix 1981 ch. VII.iv, VIII

Klingshirn 1985

Evans-Grubbs 1993 and 1995 ch. 6; Arjava 1995 ch. 6

Clark 1998; Whittaker 1987 in Finley 1987

Serfass 2006

Morris in Bush 1996 (glance at Byzantium)