RT Review
T1 Slaves in the New Testament
JF Neotestamentica
VO 44
IS 2
SP 368
OP 370
A1 van Eck, Ernest
LA English
PB NTWSA
YR 2010
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1826574522
AB The main thesis of Harrill in this insightful book on slaves in the NT is that early Christians thought about slaves through the literary artifice of conventional figures and stereotypes (i.e. stock characters like the domestic enemy, the comic, the trickster, the elite and the faithful slave) familiar in ancient literature, handbooks and the theater. 'Christian writings reflect, participate in, and promote the literary imagination about slaves and the ideology of mastery widely diffuse in the ancient Mediterranean, which supported what the Romans called auctoritas' (p 2). In short, the early Christians saw slaves to be literary characters drawn from the ideologies that supported Roman slavery. Harrill advances this thesis primarily through a close reading of specific passages in the NT (e.g. Ac 12:13-16; Lk 16:1-8; Rm 7; 2 Cor 10:10; Eph 6:5-9) in their ancient context, integrating Greek, Roman and Jewish materials directly in his exegesis.
K1 Rezension
DO 10.10520/EJC83385