Abstract
The Silencing of Slaves in Early Jewish and Christian Texts
by Ronald Charles
Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World. London: Routledge, 2019. 272 pp. $155.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-3672-0434-1.
This volume analyzes a large corpus of early Christian texts and pseudepigraphic materials to understand how the authors of these texts used, abused, and silenced enslaved characters to articulate their own social, political, and theological visions. The focus is on excavating the texts “from below” or “against the grain” in order to notice the slaves, and in so doing, to problematize and (re)imagine the narratives. Noticing the slaves as literary iterations means paying attention to broader theological, ideological, and rhetorical aims of the texts within which enslaved bodies are constructed. The analysis demonstrates that by silencing slaves and using a rhetoric of violence, the authors of these texts contributed to the construction of myths in which slaves functioned as a useful trope to support the combined power of religion and empire. Thus was created not only the perfect template for the rise and development of a Christian discourse of slavery, but also a rationale for subsequent violence exercised against slave bodies within the Christian empire.
Slavery, Gender, Truth, and Power in Luke-Acts and Other Ancient Narratives
by Christy Cobb
New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. 247 pp. $99.99 (cloth). ISBN 978-3-030-05688-9.
This book examines slavery and gender through a feminist reading of narratives, including female slaves in the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, and early Christian texts. Through the literary theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, the voices of three enslaved female characters—the female slave who questions Peter in Luke 22, Rhoda in Acts 12, and the prophesying slave of Acts 16—are placed into dialogue with female slaves found in the Apocryphal Acts, ancient novels, classical texts, and images of enslaved women on funerary monuments. Although ancients typically distrusted the words of slaves, Cobb argues that female slaves in Luke-Acts speak truth to power, even though their gender and status suggest that they cannot. In this Bakhtinian reading, female slaves become truth-tellers, and their words confirm aspects of Lukan theology. This exegetical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary book is a substantial contribution to conversations about women and slaves in Luke-Acts and early Christian literature.
Slavery’s Long Shadow: Race and Reconciliation in American Christianity
edited by James L. Gorman, Jeff W. Childers, and Mark W. Hamilton
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019. 256 pp. $32.00. ISBN 978-0-8028-7623-2.
In this collection of essays, fourteen historians and other scholars examine how the sobering historical realities of race relations and Christianity have created both unity and division within American churches from the 1790s into the twenty-first century. The book’s three sections offer readers three different entry points into the conversation: major historical periods, case studies, and ways forward. Historians as well as Christians interested in racial reconciliation will find in this book both help for understanding the problem and hope for building a better future.
The Unbound God: Slavery and the Formation of Early Christian Thought
by Chris L. de Wet
Routledge Studies in the Early Christian World. London: Routledge, 2018. 178 pp. $124.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-1382-0116-3.
This volume examines the prevalence, function, and socio-political effects of slavery discourse in the major theological formulations of the late third to early fifth centuries CE, arguably the most formative period of early Christian doctrine. The question the book poses is this: in what way did Christian theologians of the third, fourth, and early fifth centuries appropriate the discourse of slavery in their theological formulations, and what could the effect of this appropriation have been for actual physical slaves? This study is important reading for anyone with an interest in early Christianity or late antiquity, and slavery more generally.
The Slaves of the Churches: A History
by Mary E. Sommar
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. 296 pp. $34.95. ISBN 978-0-1900-7326-8.
In recent years, religious universities and institutions have begun grappling with their slave-owning past. Mary E. Sommar explores how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel, and for others’ behavior towards such slaves. She examines the origins of slavery in the church from the New Testament up to the thirteenth-century establishment of a body of canon law that persisted into the twentieth century. She draws on chronicles, letters, and other documents from various historical periods to provide insight into the situations of unfree ecclesiastical dependents, who had less chance of achieving freedom than did the slaves of other masters. The church authorities’ duty to preserve the church’s patrimony for the needs of future generations led them to hold on tightly to their unfree human resources. The book does not present an apology for the behavior of past Christian leaders, but attempts to learn what they did and to arrive at some understanding of why they made those choices.
Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World
by Katharine Gerbner
Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 296 pp. $24.95. ISBN 978-0-8122-2436-8.
Katharine Gerbner contends that religion was fundamental to the development of both slavery and race in the Protestant Atlantic world. Slave owners in the Caribbean and elsewhere established governments and legal codes based on an ideology of “Protestant Supremacy,” which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from Christian communities. Christianity was a sign of freedom, and most believed that slaves should not be eligible for conversion. When Protestant missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies intending to convert enslaved Africans to Christianity in the 1670s, they were appalled that most slave owners rejected the prospect of slave conversion and articulated a vision of “Christian Slavery,” arguing that Christianity would make slaves hardworking and loyal. Enslaved Christians developed an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked religious conversion to literacy and freedom. The volume shows how the contentions between slave owners, enslaved people, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in the early modern Atlantic world.
Midwifing—A Womanist Approach to Pastoral Counseling: Investigating the Fractured Self, Slavery, Violence, and the Black Woman
by Myrna Thurmond-Malone; foreword by Pamela Ayo Yetunde
Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2019. 182 pp. $23.00. ISBN 978-1-5326-4325-5.
This investigation of intergenerational trauma explores the impact of slavery, violence, racism, sexism, and classism on Black woman. The complexity of pain speaks to the multidimensional reality of some women’s experience and the necessity for a therapeutic technique that invites the fullness of the Black woman’s historical narrative. Thurmond-Malone’s work exposes hidden pain and invites readers to understand the necessity of rebirth. It also empowers women of African descent to name, claim, and re-author their stories, and empowers therapists to become midwives who are adept at empathizing with intense pain. For clinicians, the book illustrates the author’s approach, which utilizes a method of interdependence, communal, and cultural competency. An analytical look at a counselee’s past creates hope for her future as a whole and transformative self.
Prayers and the Construction of Israelite Identity
edited by Susanne Gillmayr-Bucher and Maria Häusl
Ancient Israel and Its Literature 35. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2019. 256 pp. $35.95. ISBN 978-1-62837-243-4.
This collection of essays from an international group of scholars focuses on how biblical prayers of the Persian and early Hellenistic periods shaped identity, evoked a sense of belonging to specific groups, and added emotional significance to this affiliation. Contributors draw examples from different biblical texts, including Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, Psalms, Jonah, and Daniel, to illustrate the transformation from short, individual prayers to longer theological and historical reflections, ritualized recitations, confirmations of hope, prophecy, and penitential prayers. Essays approach the texts from different perspectives, showing how prayers play a key role in the construction of biblical books, how biblical figures are characterized by prayers, and how these prayers shape and modify individual and collective identity discourses.
Theology of the Hebrew Bible, Volume 1: Methodological Studies
edited by Marvin A. Sweeney
Resources for Biblical Study 92. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2019. 270 pp. $35.95. ISBN 978-1-62837-214-4.
This volume presents a collection of studies on the methodology for conceiving the theological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible among Jews and Christians as well as the treatment of key issues such as creation, the land of Israel, and divine absence. Essays consider metaphor, repentance, and shame in the presence of God. Ten contributors address the nature of biblical theology from a Jewish, Christian, or critical perspective, providing a range of readings that represent changes in the field of biblical theology since World War II.
Scripture and Resistance
edited by Jione Havea; foreword by Collin Cowan
Theology in the Age of Empire. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019. 212 pp. $95.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-9787-0357-5.
Resistance against unjust cultures and imperial powers is at the heart of Scripture. In many cases, the resistance is waged against external systems or the misappropriation of scriptural texts and traditions. In some cases Scripture resists oppressive cultures and powers that it also requires, certifies, and protects. At other times, and in different settings, the minders of Scripture speak against the abusive cultures and power systems that they inherited and whose benefits they milk. Thirteen contributors from East, West, South, and North reflect on resistance and the Christian Scriptures with respect to a range of concerns (including the colonial legacies of the Bible; native and indigenous peoples; the courage for resistance among ordinary people; the imperializing tendencies of “traditional” biblical scholarship; strategies of post- and de-colonial criticisms; the Bible as a profitable product and a site of struggle; and the multiple views or perspectives in the Bible about empire and resistance).