slaves

• sacrificed by owners to show disdain for wealth

69:5.14But it is only fair to re­cord that many an an­cient rich man dis­tributed much of his for­tune be­cause of the fear of be­ing killed by those who cov­eted his trea­sures. Wealthy men com­monly sac­ri­ficed scores of slaves to show dis­dain for wealth.

• women were the first

69:8.1Prim­i­tive man never hes­i­tated to en­slave his fel­lows. Woman was the first slave, a fam­ily slave. Pas­toral man en­slaved woman as his in­fe­rior sex part­ner. This sort of sex slav­ery grew di­rectly out of man’s de­creased de­pen­dence upon woman.

• Africans were great slave race

69:8.5The herders were the first cap­i­tal­ists; their herds rep­re­sented cap­i­tal, and they lived on the in­ter­est—the nat­u­ral in­crease. And they were dis­in­clined to trust this wealth to the keep­ing of ei­ther slaves or women. But later on they took male pris­on­ers and forced them to cul­ti­vate the soil. This is the early ori­gin of serf­dom—man at­tached to the land. The Africans could eas­ily be taught to till the soil; hence they be­came the great slave race.

• some early war caused by need for

70:1.114. Slaves—need of re­cruits for the la­bor ranks.

• killed to serve their masters in ghostland

87:2.8It was cus­tom­ary to dis­patch a large num­ber of sub­jects to ac­com­pany a dead chief; slaves were killed when their mas­ter died that they might serve him in ghost­land. The Borneans still pro­vide a courier com­pan­ion; a slave is speared to death to make the ghost jour­ney with his de­ceased mas­ter. Ghosts of mur­dered per­sons were be­lieved to be de­lighted to have the ghosts of their mur­der­ers as slaves; this no­tion mo­ti­vated men to head hunt­ing.

• difficult for s. to transfer master-fear into God-love

92:7.11Re­li­gious mean­ings pro­gress in self-con­scious­ness when the child trans­fers his ideas of om­nipo­tence from his par­ents to God. And the en­tire re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of such a child is largely de­pen­dent on whether fear or love has dom­i­nated the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship. Slaves have al­ways ex­pe­ri­enced great dif­fi­culty in trans­fer­ring their mas­ter-fear into con­cepts of God-love. Civ­i­liza­tion, sci­ence, and ad­vanced re­li­gions must de­liver man­kind from those fears born of the dread of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena. And so should greater en­light­en­ment de­liver ed­u­cated mor­tals from all de­pen­dence on in­ter­me­di­aries in com­mu­nion with De­ity.

• half Roman population were s.; majority inferiors

121:3.65. The slaves. Half the pop­u­la­tion of the Ro­man state were slaves; many were su­pe­rior in­di­vid­u­als and quickly made their way up among the free pro­le­tariat and even among the trades­men. The ma­jor­ity were ei­ther mediocre or very in­fe­rior.

• master’s power over s. unqualified under Roman law

121:3.7Slav­ery, even of su­pe­rior peo­ples, was a fea­ture of Ro­man mil­i­tary con­quest. The power of the mas­ter over his slave was un­qual­i­fied. The early Chris­tian church was largely com­posed of the lower classes and these slaves.

• often received wages; could purchase freedom

121:3.8Su­pe­rior slaves of­ten re­ceived wages and by sav­ing their earn­ings were able to pur­chase their free­dom. Many such eman­ci­pated slaves rose to high po­si­tions in state, church, and the busi­ness world. And it was just such pos­si­bil­i­ties that made the early Chris­tian church so tol­er­ant of this mod­i­fied form of slav­ery.

121:3.9There was no wide­spread so­cial prob­lem in the Ro­man Em­pire in the first cen­tury af­ter Christ. The ma­jor por­tion of the pop­u­lace re­garded them­selves as be­long­ing in that group into which they chanced to be born. There was al­ways the open door through which tal­ented and able in­di­vid­u­als could as­cend from the lower to the higher strata of Ro­man so­ci­ety, but the peo­ple were gen­er­ally con­tent with their so­cial rank. They were not class con­scious, nei­ther did they look upon these class dis­tinc­tions as be­ing un­just or wrong. Chris­tian­ity was in no sense an eco­nomic move­ment hav­ing for its pur­pose the ame­lio­ra­tion of the mis­eries of the de­pressed classes.

• girl in Fair Havens

130:5.4One thing hap­pened on a visit to Fair Havens which Ga­nid never for­got; the mem­ory of this episode al­ways caused him to wish he might do some­thing to change the caste sys­tem of his na­tive In­dia. A drunken de­gen­er­ate was at­tack­ing a slave girl on the pub­lic high­way. When Je­sus saw the plight of the girl, he rushed for­ward and drew the maiden away from the as­sault of the mad­man. While the fright­ened child clung to him, he held the in­fu­ri­ated man at a safe dis­tance by his pow­er­ful ex­tended right arm un­til the poor fel­low had ex­hausted him­self beat­ing the air with his an­gry blows. Ga­nid felt a strong im­pulse to help Je­sus han­dle the af­fair, but his fa­ther for­bade him. Though they could not speak the girl’s lan­guage, she could un­der­stand their act of mercy and gave to­ken of her heart­felt ap­pre­ci­a­tion as they all three es­corted her home. This was prob­a­bly as near a per­sonal en­counter with his fel­lows as Je­sus ever had through­out his en­tire life in the flesh. But he had a dif­fi­cult task that evening try­ing to ex­plain to Ga­nid why he did not smite the drunken man. Ga­nid thought this man should have been struck at least as many times as he had struck the girl.

• Claudius was wealthy Roman slaveholder

132:4.5He talked with a Ro­man sen­a­tor on pol­i­tics and states­man­ship, and this one con­tact with Je­sus made such an im­pres­sion on this leg­is­la­tor that he spent the rest of his life vainly try­ing to in­duce his col­leagues to change the course of the rul­ing pol­icy from the idea of the gov­ern­ment sup­port­ing and feed­ing the peo­ple to that of the peo­ple sup­port­ing the gov­ern­ment. Je­sus spent one evening with a wealthy slave­holder, talked about man as a son of God, and the next day this man, Claudius, gave free­dom to one hun­dred and sev­en­teen slaves. He vis­ited at din­ner with a Greek physi­cian, telling him that his pa­tients had minds and souls as well as bod­ies, and thus led this able doc­tor to at­tempt a more far-reach­ing min­istry to his fel­low men. He talked with all sorts of peo­ple in ev­ery walk of life. The only place in Rome he did not visit was the pub­lic baths. He re­fused to ac­com­pany his friends to the baths be­cause of the sex promis­cu­ity which there pre­vailed.

• half Roman population were s.; majority inferiors

133:0.2Gonod and Ga­nid had pur­chased so many things in Alexan­dria and Rome that they sent all their be­long­ings on ahead by pack train to Tar­en­tum, while the three trav­el­ers walked leisurely across Italy over the great Ap­pian Way. On this jour­ney they en­coun­tered all sorts of hu­man be­ings. Many no­ble Ro­man cit­i­zens and Greek colonists lived along this road, but al­ready the progeny of great num­bers of in­fe­rior slaves were be­gin­ning to make their ap­pear­ance.

• exempt from temple head tax

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

• in Judea, s. cost 30 pieces of silver

186:1.2All of these Jews loathed Ju­das; they looked upon the be­trayer with only feel­ings of ut­ter con­tempt. Through­out the trial of Je­sus be­fore Cai­a­phas and dur­ing his ap­pear­ance be­fore Pi­late, Ju­das was pricked in his con­science about his traitorous con­duct. And he was also be­gin­ning to be­come some­what dis­il­lu­sioned re­gard­ing the re­ward he was to re­ceive as pay­ment for his ser­vices as Je­sus’ be­trayer. He did not like the cool­ness and aloof­ness of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties; nev­er­the­less, he ex­pected to be lib­er­ally re­warded for his cow­ardly con­duct. He an­tic­i­pated be­ing called be­fore the full meet­ing of the San­hedrin and there hear­ing him­self eu­lo­gized while they con­ferred upon him suit­able hon­ors in to­ken of the great ser­vice which he flat­tered him­self he had ren­dered his na­tion. Imag­ine, there­fore, the great sur­prise of this ego­tis­tic traitor when a ser­vant of the high priest, tap­ping him on the shoul­der, called him just out­side the hall and said: “Ju­das, I have been ap­pointed to pay you for the be­trayal of Je­sus. Here is your re­ward.” And thus speak­ing, the ser­vant of Cai­a­phas handed Ju­das a bag con­tain­ing thirty pieces of sil­ver—the cur­rent price of a good, healthy slave.