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Introduction: (Re)Turning to Truth

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Slavery, Gender, Truth, and Power in Luke-Acts and Other Ancient Narratives

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Abstract

This book examines three Lukan narratives including an enslaved female character: Luke 22, Acts 12, and Acts 16. Utilizing the literary theory of Mikhael Bakhtin, narratology, and feminist hermeneutics, the voices of the enslaved women of Luke-Acts are brought to the surface of the narrative. Using Julia Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality, these passages in Luke-Acts are placed in dialogue with other ancient narratives, including Greek novels, the Apocryphal Acts of Apostles, and evidence from material culture as exhibited by ancient funerary monuments. This first chapter provides a broad overview of the methodological framework for this project, as well as the basic assumptions concerning the date, authorship, setting, and genre for the bodies of literature addressed and evidence from material culture.

And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could…. It pains me to tell you of it; but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost me what it may.

—Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Greek word paidiskē is a diminutive of the word pais meaning “child” and can also mean “slave.” It is commonly used in early Christian literature, and in ancient Greek literature in general, to mean a female slave, usually a domestic slave. For this book, I translate paidiskē primarily as “slave-girl” and occasionally as “female slave” or “enslaved female character.” My translation of “slave-girl” is intentional in order to preserve the ancient meaning, especially since many English translations use “maid” or “servant” when referencing a paidiskē . When pais is used in antiquity to refer to an enslaved person, it does not specifically imply the person was of young age. The connection between children and slaves is a result of the pervasive belief in antiquity that slaves were viewed as property and were unable to reason; enslaved persons were often referred to in a similar way as children. While I fully recognize the humanity of enslaved persons in antiquity, ancient writers did not. For more on the methodology of writing about slavery, see: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Slave Wo/Men and Freedom: Some Methodological Reflections,” in Empowering Memory and Movement: Thinking and Working across Borders (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), 447–70; Bernadette J Brooten and Jacqueline L Hazelton, eds., Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). For more on the Greek word pais, see: Mark Golden, “Pais, ‘Child’ and ‘Slave,’” L’Antiquite Classique 54 (1985): 91–104.

  2. 2.

    All translations of Greek New Testament passages in this book are my own, unless otherwise noted.

  3. 3.

    Ewoald, Bjoern, “Funerary Monuments,” in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, ed. Elise A Friedland, Melanie Grunow Sobocinski, and Elaine K Gazda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  4. 4.

    Nadella, Raj. Dialogue Not Dogma: Many Voices in the Gospel of Luke. Library of New Testament Studies 431. London; New York: T & T Clark, 2011, 48.

  5. 5.

    Nadella, 5.

  6. 6.

    Bakhtin’s understanding of “truth” is as a broad philosophical concept, one that has been discussed by scholars from Plato to John Caputo, who writes: “Truth is not confined to scholarly treatises or scientific research, but crosses over every category of life from science to art, from ethics to politics, and bleeds into the crevices of everyday life.” John D. Caputo, Truth: Philosophy in Transit (London: Penguin UK, 2013), 112.

  7. 7.

    Nadella, Dialogue Not Dogma, 13.

  8. 8.

    Mark Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory, 2nd Edition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 7.

  9. 9.

    Scott S. Elliott, Reconfiguring Mark’s Jesus: Narrative Criticism after Poststructuralism, The Bible in the Modern World 41 (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011), 5.

  10. 10.

    Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 110.

  11. 11.

    It is difficult to determine the numbers of enslaved persons in the Greco-Roman world. While statistics are admittedly slippery, historians such as Walter Scheidel propose that slaves made up between 15 and 25 percent of the population in Italy, which is contrasted with approximately 5–10 percent of the population in Egypt. Throughout the empire, it is suggested that between 10 and 20 percent of the population were enslaved. Walter Scheidel, “The Roman Slave Supply,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. David Eltis et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 287–310.

  12. 12.

    Page duBois, Slaves and Other Objects (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 220.

  13. 13.

    One example of a Jewish woman who was captured and enslaved is found on an epitaph from the first century CE. It reads: “Claudia Aster, prisoner from Jerusalem. Tiberius Claudius Proculus (?), imperial freedman, took care [of the epitaph]. I ask you to make sure that no one casts down my inscription contrary to the law. She lived 25 years.” Catherine Hezser, Jewish Slavery in Antiquity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 51.

  14. 14.

    Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 44.

  15. 15.

    Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3.

  16. 16.

    Glancy, 10.

  17. 17.

    Glancy also notes the intricate connection between truth and torture in this essay: Jennifer A. Glancy, “Torture: Flesh, Truth, and the Fourth Gospel,” Biblical Interpretation 13, no. 2 (2005): 107–36.

  18. 18.

    See Dale B. Martin, “Slave Families and Slaves in Families,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003).

  19. 19.

    Katherine Ann Shaner, Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), xiv.

  20. 20.

    See Linda Maria Gigante, “Funerary Art,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Gagarin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 244–51.

  21. 21.

    There is archaeological evidence that enslaved persons, specifically in Italy, worked in cornmills and bakeries. According to F. H. Thompson, in some of the large-scale mills excavated in Orvieto and Pompeii, machines were used that perhaps were turned by donkeys. However, at least one mill found in Pompeii is quite narrow, which has led archaeologists to assume that humans might have turned the mill, instead of animals. F. H. Thompson, The Archaeology of Greek and Roman Slavery, Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 66 (London: Duckworth, 2003), 189. Additionally, the novelist Apuleius paints a very clear, perhaps even grotesque, picture of slaves working in a cornmill in his novel Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) 9.11–13.

  22. 22.

    While enslaved men usually had a variety of jobs, including both in the urban and in the rural spheres, enslaved women were typically given domestic jobs and worked on farms or in the rural household. Richard Saller, “Women, Slaves, and the Economy of the Roman Household,” in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003), 197.

  23. 23.

    Keith Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 64.

  24. 24.

    Bradley, 65.

  25. 25.

    duBois, Slaves and Other Objects, 103.

  26. 26.

    For a discussion on the Greek words for slave see M.I. Finley, “Was Greek Civilization Based on Slave Labour?,” in Slavery in Classical Antiquity: Views and Controversies, ed. M. I. Finley (Cambridge: Heffer, 1968), 54; See also: Golden, “Pais, ‘Child’ and ‘Slave.’”

  27. 27.

    Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Viking Press, 1980), 95–96. Among those who have heeded Finley’s implicit call to attend to the sexual use of slaves in antiquity are Jennifer Glancy, Bernadette Brooten, Joseph Marchal, and Kyle Harper. Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Jennifer A. Glancy, Corporal Knowledge: Early Christian Bodies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Bernadette J Brooten and Jacqueline L Hazelton, eds., Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Joseph A. Marchal, “The Usefulness of an Onesimus: The Sexual Use of Slaves and Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (December 2011): 749–70; Kyle Harper, “Porneia: The Making of a Christian Sexual Norm,” no. 2 (2012): 363; Jennifer A. Glancy, “The Sexual Use of Slaves: A Response to Kyle Harper on Jewish and Christian Porneia,” no. 1 (2015): 215.

  28. 28.

    Sheila Briggs, “Slavery and Gender,” in On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds: Essays in Honor of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ed. Jane Schaberg, Alice Bach, and Esther Fuchs, 2004, 171.

  29. 29.

    The hierarchal construction Jew/Greek also functions in similar ways. See, for example: Cynthia Baker, “When Jews Were Women,” History of Religions 45, no. 2 (November 2005): 114–34; Brigitte Kahl, “Reading Galatians and Empire at the Great Altar of Pergamon,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 59, no. 3–4 (January 1, 2005): 21–43.

  30. 30.

    Briggs, “Slavery and Gender,” 174.

  31. 31.

    See also Virginia Burrus, “Torture and Travail: Producing the Christian Martyr,” in A Feminist Companion to Patristic Literature, ed. Amy-Jill Levine, vol. 12, Feminist Companion to the New Testament and Early Christian Writings (New York: T&T Clark International, 2008), 56–71.

  32. 32.

    Page duBois, Torture and Truth (New York; London: Routledge, 1991), 36.

  33. 33.

    DuBois, 33. Jeffrey Henderson, trans., “Frogs,” in Aristophanes IV: Frogs. Assemblywomen. Wealth., Annotated Edition, vol. 180, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 618–22; 633–34; 718–30.

  34. 34.

    DuBois, Torture and Truth, 105–6.

  35. 35.

    Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999); Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001); Schüssler Fiorenza, “Slave Wo/Men and Freedom: Some Methodological Reflections.”

  36. 36.

    Schüssler Fiorenza notes, “Feminism is a theory and practice of justice that seeks not just to understand but to change relations of marginalization and domination.” Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic, 7.

  37. 37.

    Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, “Texts and Readers, Rhetorics and Ethics,” in Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century: Scholarship and Movement, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 217–31.

  38. 38.

    Early feminist projects in biblical studies focused on highlighting oppression and reading against the grain to recover the stories of women out of the patriarchal language. See: Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978); Schüssler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her; Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). For an outline and overview of current feminist reading strategies, see: Schüssler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways; Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, ed., “Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century: Scholarship and Movement” (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 217–31.

  39. 39.

    Schüssler Fiorenza, “Slave Wo/Men and Freedom: Some Methodological Reflections,” 461–62.

  40. 40.

    Schüssler Fiorenza, 462.

  41. 41.

    Chapter 2 includes this argument as well as several feminist Bakhtinian scholars who use these two methodological strategies side by side.

  42. 42.

    Dale M. Bauer, Feminist Dialogics: A Theory of Failed Community (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), xii.

  43. 43.

    Sandra Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan illustrate this: “The analogy of slavery was used to define the position of the free woman in her presumed inferiority and subordination to the free man.” Sandra R. Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan, “Introduction: Differential Equations,” in Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations, ed. Sandra R. Joshel and Sheila Murnaghan (London & New York: Routledge, 1998), 4.

  44. 44.

    Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Bread Not Stone: The Challenge of Feminist Biblical Interpretation: With a New Afterword, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 114–15.

  45. 45.

    Briggs, “Slavery and Gender,” 188.

  46. 46.

    Elizabeth Dowling, Taking Away the Pound: Women, Theology and the Parable of the Pounds in the Gospel of Luke, Library of New Testament Studies 3 (London: T&T Clark, 2007).

  47. 47.

    Dowling, 2.

  48. 48.

    Dowling, 206.

  49. 49.

    Dowling, 208.

  50. 50.

    The narrative unity of Luke-Acts has been demonstrated by a number of scholars. See: Robert C. Tannehill, The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts: A Literary Interpretation, Foundations and Facets (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986).

  51. 51.

    Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 1.

  52. 52.

    Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel: Literary Convention and Social Context in Luke 1:1–4 and Acts 1:1.

  53. 53.

    See, for example: Loveday Alexander, “Fact, Fiction and the Genre of Acts,” New Testament Studies 44, no. 3 (July 1998): 380–99; Loveday Alexander, Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context: A Classicist Looks at the Acts of the Apostles, Early Christianity in Context 298 (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005); Richard I. Pervo, The Gospel of Luke, The Scholars Bib (Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 2014); Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts, vol. 1, The New Testament and Greek Literature; v.1; Variation: The New Testament and Greek Literature. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2014).

  54. 54.

    This dating of Luke is the scholarly consensus today. See various introductions to the gospel: Johnson, The Gospel of Luke; Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997); François Bovon, Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1–9:50, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002); Pervo, The Gospel of Luke. Concerning Acts, this new date is a result of the research concluded by the Acts Seminar. See Dennis E. Smith and Joseph B. Tyson, eds., Acts and Christian Beginnings: The Acts Seminar Report (Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 2013), 6.

  55. 55.

    Robert M. Price, “Implied Reader Response and the Evolution of Genres: Transitional Stages Between the Ancient Novels and the Apocryphal Acts,” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 53 (November 1997): 909–38.

  56. 56.

    The Acts Seminar included between 25 and 35 New Testament scholars who met from 2000 to 2011 in order to address new scholarship that has changed the way many scholars view Acts. During the meetings, the fellows in attendance would hear a paper and then deliberate on the content of the paper including the conclusions the argument raises about Acts. After these conversations, the seminar voted on the issues at hand. The participants of these seminars made a total of ten “accomplishments” related to the study of Acts. The ten accomplishments listed reflect a general agreement from the fellows of the Acts Seminar.

  57. 57.

    Charles H. Talbert, What Is a Gospel?: The Genre of the Canonical Gospels (Mercer University Press, 1977); Adela Yarbro Collins, Is Mark’s Gospel a Life of Jesus?: The Question of Genre (Marquette University Press, 1990); Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel: Mark’s World in Literary-Historical Perspective (Fortress Press, 1996); Justin Marc Smith, Why Bíos? On the Relationship Between Gospel Genre and Implied Audience (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).

  58. 58.

    Richard I. Pervo, Profit with Delight: The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987); Alexander, “Fact, Fiction and the Genre of Acts”; Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Dennis Ronald MacDonald, Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003); Alexander, Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context; Scott S. Elliott, Reconfiguring Mark’s Jesus: Narrative Criticism after Poststructuralism, The Bible in the Modern World 41 (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2011); MacDonald, The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts; Pervo, The Gospel of Luke.

  59. 59.

    The “we” passages are sections of Acts where the narration changes abruptly to the first person plural from the third person, which is used to narrate the majority of Acts.

  60. 60.

    Bakhtin suggests that the genre of menippea actively incorporated a variety of genres within it and was being developed during the first century. He mentions the gospels and Acts as fitting within this body of literature. Nadella includes Luke as menippea, and Acts fits the description of this genre even more fully.

  61. 61.

    Concerning the gospel, see: Ronald F. Hock, “Why New Testament Scholars Should Read Ancient Novels,” in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 121–38; Concerning Acts, see: Pervo, Profit with Delight; MacDonald, Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?; Alexander, Acts in Its Ancient Literary Context.

  62. 62.

    Perkins notes that the onset and ceasing of these novels was rather short lived, as there are no novels written after the fourth century. She then connects this to the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire and argues that the shift occurred as a result of Christianization. Judith Perkins, Roman Imperial Identities in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 2009), 11.

  63. 63.

    Tim Whitmarsh, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, ed. Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 2–3.

  64. 64.

    Tim Whitmarsh, “Class,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Greek and Roman Novel, ed. Tim Whitmarsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 84.

  65. 65.

    Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel,” in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982), 145.

  66. 66.

    Whitmarsh, “Class,” 85.

  67. 67.

    See, Lawrence M. Wills, “The Depiction of Slavery in the Ancient Novel,” in Slavery in Text and Interpretation, ed. Allen Dwight Callahan, Richard A. Horsely, and Abraham Smith, Semeia, 84/85, 1998, 113–32. Additionally, Keith Hopkins explores this “seamier” side of slavery, especially in the representations of clever, educated slaves, who were able to trick their masters and climb the social ladder. He argues that the novel Life of Aesop reflects reality especially in the relationships between slaves and their masters. In this way he also argues that novels in general provide beneficial information concerning slavery, even though the accounts are fiction. Keith Hopkins, “Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery,” Past and Present 138 (1993): 3–27.

  68. 68.

    Jennifer A. Glancy, “Slavery and the Rise of Christianity,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery, ed. Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge, vol. 1: The Ancient Mediterranean World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 461.

  69. 69.

    Jennifer A. Glancy, “Slavery in the Acts of Thomas,” Journal of Early Christian History 2, no. 2 (2012): 12.

  70. 70.

    Linda Maria Gigante, “Funerary Art,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Michael Gagarin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 244.

  71. 71.

    Ann Marie Yasin, “Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From Roman Family to Christian Community,” The Art Bulletin 87, no. 3 (September 2005): 433–57.

  72. 72.

    Janet Burnett Grossman and American School of Classical Studies at Athens, The Athenian Agora: Results of Excavations Conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens., vol. 35 (Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2013), 10.

  73. 73.

    Grossman and American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 35:10.

  74. 74.

    Ewoald, Bjoern, “Funerary Monuments,” in The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, ed. Elise A Friedland, Melanie Grunow Sobocinski, and Elaine K Gazda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  75. 75.

    Janet Burnett Grossman, Greek Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections at the Getty Villa (Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001), 39.

  76. 76.

    Grossman and American School of Classical Studies at Athens, The Athenian Agora, 35:31.

  77. 77.

    Janet Huskinson, “Constructing Childhood on Roman Funerary Memorials,” in Constructions of Childhood in Ancient Greece and Italy, ed. Ada Cohen and Jeremy B. Rutter (Athens: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2007), 323.

  78. 78.

    Beth Cohen, Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 258.

  79. 79.

    Gigante, “Funerary Art,” 2010, 246.

  80. 80.

    For a helpful description and analysis of the “mistress and maid” motif as found on Greek funerary artifacts, see: Joan Reilly, “Many Brides: ‘Mistress and Maid’ on Athenian Lekythoi,” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 58, no. 4 (1989): 411–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/148340

  81. 81.

    For an example of the way that archaeological evidence can be used in a feminist reading project, see: Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre, “‘Gazing Upon the Invisible’: Archaeology, Historiography, and the Elusive Women of 1 Thessalonians,” in From Roman to Early Christian Thessalonike: Studies in Religion and Archaeology, ed. Laura Nasrallah, Charalambos Bakirtzis, and Steven J. Friesen, Harvard Theological Studies 64 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 73–108.

  82. 82.

    The title “A gospel for women” is attributed to Alfred Plummer, The Gospel According to Saint Luke, 5th ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981), xlii–xliii; Barclay also notes that Luke prioritizes women. William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke (Westminster: John Knox Press, 1956); Schaberg notably dubbed Luke a “dangerous” text for women. See: Jane Schaberg, “Luke,” in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol Ann Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, Expanded Edition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 363. This commentary was first published in 1992.

  83. 83.

    Shelly Matthews, The Acts of the Apostles: Taming the Tongues of Fire, Phoenix Guides to the New Testament 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), 76.

  84. 84.

    Shelly Matthews, “Women in Acts,” in Acts and Christian Beginnings: The Acts Seminar Report, ed. Dennis E. Smith and Joseph B. Tyson (Salem, Oregon: Polebridge Press, 2013), 193.

  85. 85.

    Gold’s words are helpful as well: “We can see a ‘space’ in the fabric, where there is an uneasiness in the representation of gender for both the author and reader, where the language seems to have more potentiality to be interpreted from many different perspectives, where the marginalized characters seem to be trying to ‘speak,’ and where there are border challengings (voices speaking against the text)…all of these have been seen, or could be seen, as places where the mute are pushing through the fabric of the text.” Barbara Gold, “‘But Ariadne Was Never There in the First Place’: Finding the Female in Roman Poetry,” in Feminist Theory and the Classics, ed. Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz and Amy Richlin, Thinking Gender (New York: Routledge, 1993), 84.

  86. 86.

    Shelly Matthews, First Converts: Rich Pagan Women and the Rhetoric of Mission in Early Judaism and Christianity, Contraversions (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 8.

  87. 87.

    Matthews describes her rhetorical feminist reading in this way: “As a feminist historical reading, it has an eye to questions of gender domination, along with other forms of domination, in the ancient past. It presumes that women and other marginalized persons were actors and agents in the time of emerging Christianity, but that their presence has been diminished, their roles have been distorted, and their voices have been muted in the kyriarchal, androcentric master narrative of the early Christian movement that was eventually accepted as orthodoxy. Thus, it works to recapture those voices and make present their agency in the form of a historical narrative.” Matthews, The Acts of the Apostles, 74.

  88. 88.

    Matthews, 77.

  89. 89.

    Matthews, 80.

  90. 90.

    Matthews, 81. Matthews notes the slave in Acts 16 but argues that her prophecy is through Apollo, not the God of Israel. This suggestion and others like it will be addressed thoroughly in Chap. 5.

  91. 91.

    Matthews, 84.

  92. 92.

    Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, 353; R. Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible: Luke—John, vol. 9 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 436; Green, The Gospel of Luke, 784.

  93. 93.

    Justo Gonzålez, Luke, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 252; John T. Carroll, Luke: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 447–48; François Bovon, Luke 3: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 19:28–24:53, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2011), 217. In contrast to this, Stephanie Crowder reads Jesus’ instruction to the disciples to buy swords not as metaphorical (22:36) but as a means to protect themselves. She notes, “Until now, Luke does not portray Jesus as a violent person.” Stephanie Buckhanon Crowder, “The Gospel of Luke,” in True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, ed. Brian K. Blount (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 182.

  94. 94.

    Luke incorporates a variety of Greek words that refer to slaves including doulos, pais, oiketēs, oikonomos, and diakonos. Passages that mention slaves/slavery in Luke include: 1:38, 48, 54, 69; 7:2, 7; 12:35–38; 12:42–48; 14:12–24; 15:11–32; 16:1–12; 16:13; 17:7–10; 19:11–28; 20:9–19; 22:26–27; 22:50; and 22:56.

  95. 95.

    A number of scholars have studied the servant parables within Luke. See, for example: John Dominic Crossan, “Servant Parables of Jesus,” Semeia 1 (1974): 17–62; John Dominic Crossan, In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1992); Mary Ann Beavis, “Ancient Slavery as an Interpretive Context for the New Testament Servant Parables with Special Reference to the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–8),” Journal of Biblical Literature 111, no. 1 (1992): 37–54; Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, 102–29; Dowling, Taking Away the Pound; Elizabeth Dowling, “Slave Parables in the Gospel of Luke: Gospel ‘Texts of Terror’?,” Australian Biblical Review 56 (2008): 61–68; Fabian E Udoh, “The Tale of an Unrighteous Slave (Luke 16:1–18[13]),” Journal of Biblical Literature 128, no. 2 (2009): 311–35; J. Albert Harrill, “The Psychology of Slaves in the Gospel Parables: A Case Study in Social History,” Biblische Zeitschrift 55, no. 1 (2011): 63–74.

  96. 96.

    This parable is the only other place in Luke-Acts (besides the three slave-girls that are the focus of this project) where the word paidiskē ̄ is used. Most interpreters translate this as female slaves in order to show that the Overseer beat both male and female slaves while the owner was away.

  97. 97.

    Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, 111.

  98. 98.

    Sandra R. Joshel, “Slavery and Roman Literary Culture,” in The Cambridge World History of Slavery: The Ancient Mediterranean World, ed. Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 223.

  99. 99.

    Kyoung-Jin Kim, Stewardship and Almsgiving in Luke’s Theology (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 128.

  100. 100.

    Mary F Foskett, A Virgin Conceived: Mary and Classical Representations of Virginity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 13.

  101. 101.

    Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy Narratives, Biblical Seminar (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 123.

  102. 102.

    Schaberg, 125.

  103. 103.

    James N. Hoke, “‘Behold, the Lord’s Whore’? Slavery, Prostitution, and Luke 1:38,” Biblical Interpretation 26, no. 1 (January 2018): 43–67.

  104. 104.

    Slavery is used as a metaphor in 4:29–30 and 16:16–24, in the words of the divining slave-girl, to be addressed in Chap. 5.

  105. 105.

    Harrill includes this group in his discussion of slaves who have been manumitted. See: J. Albert Harrill, The Manumission of Slaves in Early Christianity (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1995), 61.

  106. 106.

    Sean Burke argues persuasively that the representation of his body as castrated indicates that the Ethiopian eunuch is a slave, or was enslaved at some point and is now free. Sean D. Burke, Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 129.

  107. 107.

    Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, 47.

  108. 108.

    Matthews provides helpful descriptions and examples of this reading strategy. See: Shelly Matthews, “Thinking of Thecla: Issues in Feminist Historiography,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 17, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 39–55. Shelly Matthews, “Feminist Biblical Historiography,” in Feminist Biblical Studies in the Twentieth Century: Scholarship and Movement, ed. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 233–48.

  109. 109.

    J. Albert Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 1.

  110. 110.

    Harrill, 66.

  111. 111.

    Harrill utilizes the Bakhtinian concept of dialogism by suggesting that the parable of the dishonest manager is juxtaposed with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (16:19–31). The two parables appear to oppose one another, yet function simultaneously in the polyphonic narrative of Luke. Harrill, 82.

  112. 112.

    Harrill, 66.

  113. 113.

    Harrill, 196.

  114. 114.

    Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, 8.

  115. 115.

    Glancy, 111.

  116. 116.

    Glancy, 39–40.

  117. 117.

    Glancy, 156.

  118. 118.

    Jennifer A. Glancy, “Slavery, Historiography, and Theology,” Biblical Interpretation 15, no. 2 (January 2007): 200.

  119. 119.

    Glancy, 201.

  120. 120.

    J. Albert Harrill, “The Slave Still Appears: A Historiographical Response to Jennifer Glancy,” Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007): 215.

  121. 121.

    Harrill, 214.

  122. 122.

    The two essays mentioned above center upon the character of Rhoda, as Harrill and Glancy disagree upon the interpretation of her characterization.

  123. 123.

    The following chapter includes a section that covers the many interpretations of Rhoda and the ways in which these are in dialogue with my own reading of Acts 12.

  124. 124.

    John Nolland, Luke 18:35–24:53, Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 35C (Dallas: Thomas Nelson, 1993), 1093–97; Walter L. Liefeld, Luke, The Expositor’s Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), 1035; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke X-XXIV, vol. 28b, Anchor Bible (New York: Anchor Bible, 2000), 1460. Fitzmyer even notes that the slaves “have played the role of Satan.”; Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2009), 265.

  125. 125.

    For example, see: Beverly Roberts Gaventa, The Acts of the Apostles, Abingdon New Testament Commentaries (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 238.

  126. 126.

    The earliest scholar to connect the three slave-girls is Scott Spencer, and this will be addressed subsequently. F. Scott Spencer, “Out of Mind, Out of Voice: Slave-Girls and Prophetic Daughters in Luke-Acts,” Biblical Interpretation 7, no. 2 (April 1999): 133–55. Additionally, Richard Pervo addresses the connections between the three. In particular, he notes the irony and humor of the narratives of the slave-girls in Acts 12 and 16. He connects the divining slave-girl to the paidiskē ̄ in Luke 22, but determines that both slaves were “the involuntary cause of much evil.” Richard I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, ed. Harold W Attridge, Hermeneia—A Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 404.

  127. 127.

    The only other times this word is used in the New Testament are in the other three canonical gospels story of Peter’s denial (all three Gospels name the slave as a paidiskē ̄ ) and in Galatians 4 in reference to Hagar.

  128. 128.

    Spencer, “Out of Mind, Out of Voice,” 145.

  129. 129.

    Spencer, 136–137, author’s emphasis; this article is also included in Spencer’s book: F. Scott Spencer, Dancing Girls, Loose Ladies, and Women of the Cloth: The Women in Jesus’ Life (New York: Continuum, 2004), 147.

  130. 130.

    DuBois, Torture and Truth, 105.

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    Christy Cobb

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Cobb, C. (2019). Introduction: (Re)Turning to Truth. In: Slavery, Gender, Truth, and Power in Luke-Acts and Other Ancient Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05689-6_1

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