Jewish Slavery in Antiquity

Abstract

This book is an historical-critical study of Jewish slavery in antiquity, comparing the Jewish discourse on slavery with Graeco-Roman and Christian attitudes, and the first comprehensive analysis of Jewish attitudes towards slavery in Hellenistic and Roman times. It subverts many traditional views of Jews and slavery in antiquity; for example, showing against the traditional opinion that after the Babylonian Exile Jews refrained from employing slaves, that slavery remained a significant phenomenon of ancient Jewish everyday life, and generated a discourse which resembled Graeco-Roman and early Christian views while at the same time preserving specifically Jewish nuances. It examines the impact of domestic slavery on the ancient Jewish household and on family relationships, discusses the perceived advantages of slaves over other types of labor, and evaluates their role within the ancient Jewish economy. The ancient Jewish experience of slavery seems to have been so pervasive that slave images also entered theological discourse. Like their Graeco-Roman and Christian counterparts, ancient Jewish intellectuals did not advocate the abolition of slavery, but they used the biblical tradition and their own judgements to ameliorate the status quo.

Ritual Studies and the Study of Rabbinic Literature

“…While this question is rarely ever addressed in scholarship on rabbinic literature, there seems to be an unspoken convention for approaching the matter: the normative dimension of the rabbinic literature, commonly known as halakhah, is usually presented as 'law' while certain aspects of the law are subclassified as 'ritual law ' (e.g., Berger 1998;Hezser 2003;Halberstam 2010;Wimpfheimer 2011;Cohn 2012;Simon-Shoshan 2012;Kanarek 2015). What distinguishes regular law from 'ritual law' seems to be, at the end of the day, that the former is conceived as rational and the latter as irrational (see the discussion in Hayes 2015: 246-85).…”

Recent Study of Greek Religion in the Archaic through Hellenistic Periods

“…Like other Greek laws, the laws regulating slavery were enforceable in court. Recent scholarship such as Hezser (2005) has held that Hebrew laws regulating slavery were probably not enforceable. In Westbrook’s view (2009), these and other Hebrew and Near Eastern laws were scholarly texts intended to be casuistical.…”

Preparing and sharing the table: The invisibility of women and enslaved domestic workers in Luke’s Last Supper

“…Jews enslaved others just as the Greeks and Romans did, and the perpetuation of slavery supported and sustained Jewish society. 7 This reality is clearly evident within the New Testament, written in an ancient Jewish context, including references to enslaved individuals and employing slavery as a metaphor. 8 Second, the indication that this house has a large room upstairs with plenty of open room reveals that this is a wealthy and elite household.…”