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Pre and post christian slavery was different. Pre-christian slavery was
chattel slavery, like racial slavery here in the USA before 1865.
Converting the chattel slaves to serfs upon the establishment of
christianity as the Roman state religion was approximately the same as the
conversion of the chattel slaves of the American confederacy to public
property slaves after the civil war. This conversion to serfdom sucked in
all the remaining free commoners in the empire into serfdom, thus enslaving
the entire non-noble population, which lasted for 1500 years. The
conversion of the American racial slaves to public property sucked in all of
the free Negroes into this slavery expansion scam, no matter where they
resided, and they were frozen in this status until 1965. The "lords" were
christians in name only to facilitate the control system. They ignored all
of the rules of christianity which were designed to control their slaves.
Killing a slave was not murder for them. Raping a slave was not rape for
them. Stealing from a slave was not theft for them. "Adultery" was for the
purpose controlling the genetic character of the slaves. The ban on lying
was to keep them correctly informed as of the doings of their slaves. And
much more was simply peacekeeping among the slaves, keeping them in enforced
poverty and ignorance, keeping them meek and obedient and industrious for
the profits of the lords.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hank Roth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 3:27 PM
Subject: [pnews-news] Bodies and Souls - Slavery in Early Christianity
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> http://pnews.org/
> Progressive News & Views (since 1982)
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> --
>
> Bodies and Souls
> The Rhetoric of Slavery
>
> From Slavery in Early Christianity
> by Jennifer A. Glancy; Oxford University Press, 2002
>
> Sometime in the fourth or fifth century, a Christian man ordered a bronze
> collar to encircle the neck of one of his slaves. The inscription on the
> collar reads: I am the slave of the archdeacon Felix. Hold me so that I do
> not flee. 1 Although the collar purports to speak in the first person for
> a nameless slave, the voice we hear is not that of the slave but that of
> the slaveholder. Felix, enraged by a slave's previous attempts to escape,
> ordered the collar both to humiliate and to restrain another human being,
> whom the law classified as his property. The chance survival of this
> artifact of the early church recalls the overwhelming element of
> compulsion that operated within the system of slavery, with its use of
> brute paraphernalia for corporal control. Contemporary sensibilities
> recoil from such tangible evidence for the inherent violence of ancient
> slavery. We are likely to consider Christian slaveholders to be hypocrites
> and to find the notion of Christian slavery oxymoronic. Felix exhibited no
> awareness of such contradiction: the slave collar he ordered even bears an
> incised cross. Centuries after Paul wrote to another Christian
> slaveholder, Philemon, counseling him to act in love toward the runaway
> slave Onesimus, the otherwise unknown archdeacon, Felix, apparently saw no
> incongruity in proclaiming simultaneously his status as a leader in the
> church and his identity as a slaveholder.
>
> Slaves in the Roman Empire were vulnerable to physical control, coercion,
> and abuse in settings as public as the auction block and as private as the
> bedroom. Since slavery was identified with the body, it is not surprising
> that the experience of slavery was conditioned by gender and sexuality. At
> the same time, a person's experience of what it meant to be male or female
> was conditioned by the accident of slavery. A male slave, for example, had
> no legal connection to his own offspring, thus excluding him from the
> cultural status of fatherhood. Slaveholders had unrestricted sexual access
> to their slaves. This dimension of slave life was most likely to affect
> female slaves and young male slaves. Moreover, slaveholders valued female
> slaves for their biological capacities of reproduction and lactation.
> Problems emanating from the sexual and gender-specific use of slaves are
> central to the understanding of slavery in the early Christian era.
>
> [..]
>
>
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