Slavery in Early Christianity by Jennifer A. Glancy

Author:Jennifer A. Glancy [Glancy, Jennifer A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2008-11-11T19:24:00+00:00

Body Language: Metaphors of Enslavement, Sale, and

Liberation in Christian Theological Discourse

The Acts of Thomas, likely composed in the early third century, opens with a scene that spins a central Christian metaphor-enslavement to Christ into a narrative. All the apostles are together in Jerusalem. They are dividing the known world into missionary territories. To Judas Thomas comes the call to India, which he refuses. Jesus appears to him and implores him to embrace the challenge, but Judas Thomas is disobedient: "Send me where you will-but somewhere else!" Jesus, identified as the Lord/Master, spies in the marketplace an Indian merchant named Abban. Jesus asks Abban, who has come to Jerusalem to buy an enslaved carpenter, whether he wants to purchase a slave. Jesus declares, "I have a slave who is a carpenter, and wish to sell him." When Abban agrees, Jesus writes out a bill of sale: "I Jesus the son of Joseph the carpenter confirm that I have sold my slave, Judas by name, to you Abban, a merchant." Abban and Jesus approach Judas Thomas in the marketplace, and Abban asks the apostle whether Jesus is his master. Judas Thomas affirms that yes, Jesus is his master. Abban announces that he has purchased Judas Thomas from his master, Jesus. Judas Thomas is silent. His prayer changes, and he no longer rebels against Jesus' intentions. "Your will be done," Judas prays. As Judas prepares to leave with Abban, Jesus hands him the price of his redemption from slavery and instructs him to carry with him always the price of liberation, which Jesus has paid for him.116 Although the Acts of Thomas does not specify what price Jesus paid, the Christian reader recognizes that the price Jesus has paid is his own life-with his own death.

The figure of the Christian as a slave of Christ or of God is inchoate in a number of Jesus' parables and familiar from the writings of Paul. Christian discourse figuratively plays on moments of reduction to and release from bondage. The twenty-first-century reader can easily lose sight of the context in which these metaphors emerged. By expanding a metaphor into a narrative, the Acts of Thomas exposes the debt of Christian theological language to ancient social realities. When Christians living in the Roman Empire called Jesus of Nazareth kyrios, lord or master, and referred to themselves as slaves, they relied on imagery rooted in the social relations of their age. Even in antiquity, however, countless repetitions of "Lord Jesus" would have deadened those who employed such language to the metaphoric dimension of the title. The story that opens the Acts of Thomas both relies on and revivifies the metaphor. When Judas Thomas acknowledges Jesus as his Lord, he is not thinking of himself as a literal slave of Jesus. As Master Jesus writes out a bill of sale for his slave Judas Thomas, the reader recalls with a shock of recognition the material realities that shaped Christian theological discourse.

Embedded in the Acts of Thomas is a Gnostic hymn, which predates the narrative in which it is preserved.

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