Abstract
In a new edited volume designed for teaching the New Testament in a university or seminary setting, editors Christy Cobb and Katherine A. Shaner collate contributions from leading scholars working on ancient slavery practices. Each chapter addresses the formidably complex subject of ancient slavery from a different critical perspective, and concludes with discussion questions designed for an undergraduate classroom. A carefully curated list of further reading makes it an excellent resource for postgraduate teaching and research also.
The volume opens with a reflection on our terminology for describing ancient enslaved people, striving to find language that honours their humanity and dignity while acknowledging the degrading effects of slavery practices (pp. xv, 1-10). This awareness is sustained throughout each contribution, without any one solution presented as paradigmatic.
Engagement with material and visual culture is likewise sustained throughout this richly-illustrated volume. The benefits of this approach are encapsulated by F. Mira Green’s study of domestic kitchens in the Pompeiian material record and in visual culture, which reveals that enslaved people were typically obliged to undertake their cookery labour from a bowed or stooped posture owing to the height of their workbenches (pp. 44-47). Other particularly strong sections include the discussions of manumission (pp. 66-82), ancient critiques of slavery (pp. 172-173, 181-183), and slavery metaphors such as ‘slave of Christ’ – language which meant ‘double trouble’ for those individuals enslaved both to other humans and (now) to Christ (p. 138).
The subject of race and racialising discourse in ancient slavery is discussed with nuance and acuity in Jeremy L. Williams’ chapter ‘Race and Ethnicity’ (pp. 101-118), and is also helpfully brought to bear on many of the other chapters’ major themes. Above all, a critical awareness of the ways in which biblical discussions of slavery interact with the history of the Atlantic slave trade and its far-reaching legacy permeates the volume. Ancient slavery is presented in all its devastating and dehumanising magnitude without minimising, or being minimised by comparison with, the more recent atrocities of the Atlantic slave trade – and the hermeneutical links between these contexts of enslavement are thoughtfully unpacked (pp. 1, 15-17, 116-117).
Practices of enslavement, of course, are confined neither to the ancient world nor to the antebellum Americas, but pervade our world today: a fact acknowledged by the book’s final chapter, ‘Modern Slavery, the Bible, and Slow-Down Ethics’ by Yvonne C. Zimmerman (pp. 209-224). This chapter discusses, if somewhat briefly, the ways in which the global economy of our own world relies on forms of enslaved, exploited and forced labour to provide goods and services we take for granted (pp. 213-214, 218, 223) – something we have in common with the world of the New Testament. This important resemblance between antiquity and today’s world was left somewhat implicit, however. Nevertheless, this volume is a wonderfully rich resource which deserves to be widely used by students, educators, and researchers wherever the New Testament and its contexts are taught.