Slavery
© ITCHS 2024
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DRAFT
[Ed: This essay is a draft third chapter for a book-length consideration of the character of the Silent Years, the years between the last canonical prophet of the Old Testament and the prophetic works of the New Testament. The first chapter considers The Seven Day Week as a Jewish conception progressively imported into the Roman Empire. The second considers the development of Monotheism.]
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There is a fundamental distinction between “history” as central, documented, societally important events and “history” as how everybody lives and struggles to survive. The seven-day week is an example of history in the second sense. The conquests whether of Caesar, Alexander, Nebuchadnezzar, or Ashurbanipal are examples of the former. The idea that Jewish concepts were strongly adjusting how people thought and worked around the Mediterranean throughout the Silent Years is almost entirely an idea of history as how everybody lives and struggles to survive.
This difference is illustrated in a delightful scene in the film adaptation of Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince that can lead out of the normal sense of historical discussion and into an also-important or even-more-central discussion of how people live. Karl Franz, the student prince from Karlsberg, has gone off to Heidelberg and its university to develop “warmth and charm.” He enters his first classroom as a freshman and is immediately called upon by Professor Klauber, the Nobel Laureate in History, to answer the first question of the term. Can Karl name one milestone event that altered the history of mankind in the 500 years before Christ?
Karl hesitates, and Klauber chides him that there are many answers and that one will be sufficient. Karl, annoyed, answers that he can think of many, but that he has to choose the conquests of Alexander over other candidates. Klauber responds that Alexander is “accurate” but not as important as Aristotle, because Aristotle taught man to think.
Karl, even more annoyed, asks if Klauber can name anyone stronger than Alexander. Klauber replies, “The gorilla.”
A slow start on gaining warmth and charm.
The scene documents a long Western tradition that the Greeks are the great actors of the half millennium before Christ, acting sui generis and additionally that there is a fundamental divide between great public affairs, represented by Alexander, and the world of the mind, represented by Aristotle. Both worlds, however, are dominated by Greeks acting as prime movers in the earthly sphere.
But what if some intrepid student, not Karl who is there only for the warmth and charm, had challenged Klauber with something like the following:
Student: “Professor Klauber, with all due respect, Alexander did mighty deeds, but his doings were immediately altered upon his death. Aristotle, as Alexander’s teacher, evidently gave Alexander key ideas toward his great success and has been universally acknowledge by academics in all subsequent ages as altering how philosophers think. Granted all this, Professor Klauber, 90% of the people in every generation have lived without much reference to the works of Alexander or to the thought of Aristotle. Life for them is mainly a struggle to work and survive and to leave a generation after them to do the same. Could we talk a little about what affects this great majority?”
Klauber: “Young man, you are obviously unfit for the study of higher things. Perhaps you should go back to gymnasium, or if nothing better, go to a beer garden and sing, “Drink, Drink, Drink.” Now there’s ordinary life for you. Is that what you propose we study here?”
Student: “Actually, most of us students are already majoring in drinking—and in singing solid Latin like ‘Gaudeamus Igitur, Juvenis dum Summus.’–Let us rejoice while we are young—which is great advice for the 90% that doesn’t think about Alexander much or Aristotle at all.
“But, moving toward higher learning, could we perhaps consider slavery, for example. Slavery engulfed ancient society, and sadly has even thrown dark shadows over European civilization in recent centuries. Wouldn’t some discussion of slavery be a strong candidate instead of Herr Franz’s Alexander or even your Aristotle? After all, higher education should finally be relevant to life.”
It wouldn’t be surprising if such a student didn’t become good friends with Karl Franz as fellow members of the Westphalian Korps.
Klauber as a Nobel Laureate no doubt would have had his way, and the class would have continued with its study of Aristotle. For our purposes here, however, let us take the Westphalian’s suggestion about relevance and consider slavery in the 500 years before Christ. (Not surprisingly, we will soon be studying Aristotle as well.) Specifically, can we find in the question of slavery any possible suggestion that Jewish thought outside Israel, rather than Greek thought, was pressing its agenda?
G.B.Grundy in his admirably comprehensive survey of ancient Greece for the 1953 Encyclopaedia Britannica does not fail to give attention to daily realities like slavery and recognizes the non-documentary matter-of-fact, routine character of the subject:
“The moral attitude of the Greek world towards slavery until the middle of the fourth century was quite simple—that slavery having existed from time immemorial, was a natural institution, and therefore morally justifiable in the case of inferior races.” [Since inferior races did not speak Greek as a native language but were rather “barbarians,” those who spoke as if they were jabbering barbar to each other, the qualification of inferior race is, in fact, quite substantial.]
“In any case the Greek had always shown to the servile class a consideration which was not general in the ancient world” (“Greece,” v.10, p.777, Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.).
Well, that sums up a millennium in two sentences, and Klauber is free to get back to higher studies. However, since the discussion has left off in the mid 300’s B.C. it can also continue directly into Aristotle himself:
“In Aristotle’s day, certain philosophers raised the question of its [slavery’s] justifiability, taking up a position which Aristotle himself refused to accept. Later still the Stoics raised the question in a more emphatic form; and though theorizing could not kill so old an institution, yet it did undoubtedly lead men in general to deal more humanely with the slave” (Ibid).
Thus in a few sentences, Aristotle has become entangled in controversy and a salutary philosophic effect, entirely Greek in origin, has become relevant in ordinary daily affairs, hopefully much ameliorating the lot of a very large segment of the population of the Mediterranean.
The Encyclopaedia entry entirely exemplifies an orthodox understanding that the Greeks and the Romans were the movers and shakers of the five hundred years preceding Christ and entirely responsible for the shaping of routine-life history.
If, however, one were to assume that, like the seven-day week, slavery was a topic which the Hebrews had dealt with for over a millennium and that the Jews of the Diaspora were exemplifying a religious stance in both their synagogue worship and in their daily lives, is there any documentary evidence for such prosaic influence?
Following chapters will discuss the general religious character of the Mediterranean world, the demographics of Diaspora Judaism, the Synagogue and worship structure accompanying it, and other realities that help us understand the Mediterranean world before the Christian Era and help us to estimate what Jewish influence might exist in the Mediterranean world outside Israel.
In the first chapter of this study, a consideration of the facts of the seven-day week and its general institution throughout the Mediterranean strongly suggests Jewish influence. For the present chapter, the question is whether the Jews could look back on documented attitudes toward slavery and whether those attitudes might have had progressive effects around the Mediterranean during the Silent Year period.
The question will perhaps seem either penetrating or oxymoronic depending on one’s previous education.
For those who have read the Jewish Scriptures, particularly the Torah, the five Books of Moses, the answer is absurdly obvious. From the time of Moses on, Hebrews, later Jews, lived not only with slavery but with extensive obligations with respect to any owning of slaves. At the end of the Silent Years themselves we have outstanding evidence from silence: the four Gospels, comprising the most extensive sense of daily-life Judaism of the early Principate years, do not find Jesus of Nazareth, who demonstrated a willingness to interact with people from all stations of life, ever interacting with someone who is clearly a slave. Diaspora Judaism in the same period seems from silence to have virtually abolished the personal use of slaves.
The fundamental difference between Jew and Greek is not how they treated slaves—they were both known for humane treatment compared to other nations. Instead, the difference is that Hebrew documents made the treatment of slaves a pressing issue for God Himself to legislate and to require of His people. For Jews, treatment of slaves and slavery were not matters of philosophic speculation. They were important daily obligations of a people living under God’s expressed commands.
The full range of God’s laws respecting slavery deserves more concentrated and lengthy study than is here possible. Some main lines, however, include:
Hebrews could not be enslaved except by order of a court or by someone giving himself voluntarily into bondage—an act of extremity. To take such a pauper as a slave was to attempt to save his life and to give him a new start. In the original Mosaic law, slaves were to be emancipated at the end of every seven-year period.
Hebrews could buy non-Hebrews as a separate class of slave, but conduct toward these was highly regulated as well. For example, slaves could be disciplined, but bodily injury, at least disfiguring injury, allowed the master to be punished and the slave to be set free (Ex. 21:26-27).
Non-Hebrew slaves became members of the master’s household. They were expected to keep the Sabbath (Ex. 20:10; Deut. 5:14-15). They were required to be part of the Passover celebration and must previously have been circumcised (Ex. 12:44). And notably, killing a slave was like killing a freeman, subject to punishment for the murderer even if the murderer was also the slave’s master (Ex. 21-20). Just before the Babylonian Exile, the Prophet Jeremiah indicated that the failure of the Jews to enfranchise slaves as required by the Law resulted in God’s solemn curse: “I will make you a horror unto all the kingdoms of the earth” (Jer.34:17).
Nehemiah records that 7,337 slaves accompanied 42,360 Jewish remnant returnees to Israel (7:67). Thereafter, the Talmud has many references to slavery and to righteousness with respect to slaves. The spirit of these guidelines may perhaps be summarized by Maimonides, (b. 1138, d. 1204): “You are in duty bound to see that your slave makes progress; you must benefit him and must not hurt him with words. He ought to rise and advance with you, be with you in the place you chose for yourself, and when fortune is good to you, do not grudge him his portion (Guide 3:39) (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/slavery. Last accessed 1/6/2024).
As progressive as Maimonides may appear, it should be remembered that the Torah itself had announced in Deut. 15:15, “And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you. . ..” and in Lev 25:55, “For to me the people of Israel are servants, they are My servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (RSV).
At the end of the Silent Years, Saul of Tarsus, an eminently learned Pharisee and student of the Law, now known as Paul, would reframe all human history so that slavery became an ontological reality central to all human life: “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slave for obedience, you are slave of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience, resulting in righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). In Paul’s letters, redemption, being bought out of slavery to an old master and into slavery to a new Lord, is at the heart of the Good News. At least in Pauline terms, our Westphalian has perhaps hit on something stronger than Alexander or the gorilla!
From all this, it seems entirely reasonable that if Mediterranean people got to know Diaspora Jews, starting with the Assyrian Captivity as early as the 720’s B.C., certainly after the Babylonian Captivity 240 years later, those people had plenty of time before Aristotle’s contemporaries to be influenced by humane thoughts about slaves. By the time of the Silent Years, approximately the last four hundred years before the Principate in Rome and Jesus of Nazareth in Israel, Jews were generally doing without slaves or using slavery as an agency of social welfare. Presumably, their neighbors noticed. As the years went by, they probably noticed more.
The Greeks, as has already been noted, had been quite similar to the Jews in their restrained idea of slave ownership. But when the Greeks receded and the Romans advanced, it was Roman law rather than Greek that ruled the Mediterranean world and that dealt quite harshly with all slaves. Slaves were chattel property for the Romans, the master’s will was virtually unrestrained, and the life of the slave was in the master’s hand. Household slaves could have a better life, and it was something of a Roman tradition to grant freedom to household slaves as a reward for loyal service. Such freedmen typically remained closely associated with the master and the master’s interests. But field slaves on the latifundia and industrial slaves in the mines and factories were simply tools, easily dispensed with or discarded when age or infirmity made them no longer useful investments.
So attitudes toward slavery divided Romans from Greeks. For once, the Greeks could look to Jewish standards for support of their own, and Romans found themselves under societal pressure from both the Greek and Hebrew sub-cultures.
No doubt, philosophy played its own intellectual part in pressuring Rome to more moderation in the treatment of slaves. But It should probably be noticed that the reference to progressive thinkers like the Stoics in the Encyclopaedia leaves the particular philosophers unnamed—and probably unnoted by most Romans.
It bears repeating that for once—and this was not all that common—the Romans found themselves on the short end of the stick with both Greeks and Jews committed to much more humane standards with respect to slaves. By the end of the Silent Years, slavery had been seriously augmented by Rome’s victories in the Punic Wars and then across the whole eastern Mediterranean.
Corinth in the heart of Greece can be taken as an important example. Corinth had been rebuilt by Rome and sat astride the narrow isthmus allowing trade from the eastern Mediterranean to go directly into the Adriatic, and thus to all of Western Europe. At the end of the Silent Years, better than 60% of Corinth’s population were slaves (Introduction to First Corinthians, The Open Bible: Expanded Edition, New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983, p. 1156).
While the Romans held out for their rugged form of slavery, throughout the Silent Years, they were obviously outclassed intellectually by Greek philosophy and by Jewish religion. It is beyond the immediate subject of this study, but under Antoninus Pius, Hadrian, and finally under Constantine, major legislative reforms consistently improved the lot of slaves, eliminating whole categories of inhumane treatment. (Such information is not a recent revelation of slavery-sensitive academic research. Prof. Klauber would have had access to such realities if he had been willing to consider them alongside Aristotle. (Cf. “Slaves,” A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities: Mythology, Religion, Literature and Art, London: Swan Sonnesnschein and Company, 1891, p. 590 ff.))
Throughout the Silent Years, the Jewish Scriptures were becoming increasingly well-known with specific references to God as authority and didn’t cease being strongly influential thereafter. Even later in history than the imperial reforms, these Scriptures are indubitably known to Englishmen abolishing serfdom in the later Middle Ages, to indentured servants coming to New England in the Great Migration, to American Abolitionists from the 1820’s on and to Russians emancipating serfs as late as the 1860’s. The same Scriptures were universally known to all signers of the Declaration of Independence with its assertion “that All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
So our Westphalian student had a point, if not about the “higher” aspects of history, at least amidst the lower aspects of history where we all live and where most human happiness and accomplishment is blighted or nurtured.
Professor Klauber was, of course, still correct that Aristotle holds a preeminent rank in teaching academics how to think academic thoughts and scientists how to think scientific thoughts and educated people how to talk intelligently.
And Karl Franz had a point as well. Not only did Alexander conquer the known world, he also established Hellenism, which before was something of a mythic commodity. And where the Greek peoples had had a very low opinion of kings dating back to the Homeric Age, he established the idea for the Greek world of a sacred king.
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