The mistress-slave dialectic: Paradoxes of slavery in three LXX narratives

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Volumn 21, Issue 72, 1996, Pages 71-87

  Glancy, Jennifer A ^a  

^a LE MOYNE COLLEGE   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67651208170     PISSN: 03090892     EISSN: 14766728     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030908929602107205     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. Alexandre Kojève, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (ed. Alan Bloom; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969), pp. 20-21
2. Reliance on slaves in the domestic sphere was a persistent feature of social Organization in ancient Mediterranean societies, to the extent that slave labor continued to be the mainstay of domestic establishments even when the institution of slavery declined in late antiquity. Noted by Moses I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York: Viking Press, 1980), p. 149
3. Dale B. Martin, 'Slavery and the Ancient Jewish Family', in S.J.D. Cohen (ed.), The Jewish Family in Antiquity (BJS, 289; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), pp. 113-29
4. This view contradicts the notion that the laws of the Mishnah and Talmud could be used to reconstruct the social life of Jews in antiquity, which was argued by E.E. Urbach, 'The Laws Regarding Slavery as a Source for Social History of the Period of the Second Temple, the Mishnah, and Talmud', in J.G. Weiss (ed.), Papers of the Institute of Jewish Studies London, I (Brown Classics in Judaica; Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1989 [1964]), pp. 1-94
5. Urbach was decisively answered by Paul V.M. Flesher, Oxen, Women, or Citizens? Slaves in the System of the Mishnah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988): 'No direct link necessarily exists between the behavior envisioned by a law and the behavior practiced by members of the community... It is not even valid to assume, without further evidence, that the law was actually made known to the members of the community' (p. xii)
6. Brigitte Maria Egger, 'Women in the Greek Novel: Constructing the Feminine' (PhD Dissertation: University of California, Irvine, 1990). Noted also by Ross S. Kraemer, 'Jewish Mothers and Daughters in the Greco-Roman World', in Cohen (ed.), The Jewish Family in Antiquity, pp. 89-112
7. Yvon Garlan, Slavery in Ancient Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 18
8. See also K.R. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire: A Study in Social Control (Revue d'Etudes Latines, 185; Brussels: Latomus, 1984), p. 136: 'Unfortunately, the absence of a real slave literature makes it exceedingly hazardous to estimate the psychological impact (upon individual slaves) of the climate of fear in which they lived...' Finley, Ancient Slavery, p. 116, makes a similar point
9. Garlan, Slavery, p. 14
10. Finley, Ancient Slavery, p. 105
11. Sandra R. Joshel, 'Nurturing the Master's Child: Slavery and the Roman Child-Nurse', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12 (1986), pp. 3-22
12. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)
13. Jacobs, Incidents, p. 49
14. See the attention to visual tropes in the Susanna story in Mieke Bal, Reading Rembrandt: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 138-76
15. Jennifer A. Glancy, 'The Accused: Susanna and her Readers', JSOT 58 (1993), pp. 103-116
16. Amy-Jill Levine, '"Hemmed in on Every Side": Jews and Women in the Book of Susanna', in F. Segovia and M.A. Tolbert (eds.), Reading from this Place (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 175-90
17. Essays by Glancy and Levine are reprinted in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Esther, Judith and Susanna (FCB, 7; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995)
18. Keith Hopkins, 'Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery', Past and Present 138 (1993), pp. 3-27(22)
19. Cited by Hopkins, 'Novel Evidence', p. 9
20. See the discussion of this festival in Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 67
21. Beverly Bow and George W.E. Nickelsburg, 'Patriarchy with a Twist: Men and Women in Tobit', in Amy-Jill Levine (ed.), 'Women Like This': New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, 1; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 127-43
22. Bow and Nickelsburg, 'Patriarchy', p. 139
23. An article by Amy-Jill Levine, 'Diaspora as Metaphor: Bodies and Boundaries in the Book of Tobit', in J. Andrew Overman and Robert S. MacLennan (eds.), Diaspora Jews and Judaism: Essays in Honor of and in Dialogue with A. Thomas Kraabel (South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism, 41; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 105-17, stands out for its careful treatment of the relationship between Sarah and the household help: 'Sarah's relationship with her maids shows that her unmarried and childless states both injure her and cause her to injure others. Like her matriarchal namesake...Sarah's relationship to her maids is morally strained... Sarah's maids suffer because one higher on the social scale suffers' (p. 112)
24. Sidnie Ann White, 'In the Steps of Jael and Deborah: Judith as Heroine', in James C. VanderKam (ed.), 'No One Spoke Ill of Her': Essays on Judith (SBL Early Judaism and its Literature, 1; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), pp. 5-16 (7)
25. Keith Bradley, 'The Regular, Daily Traffic in Slaves', The Classical Journal 87 ( 1992), pp. 125-38, makes a similar point about the loss of human identity in the process of buying and selling slaves: To identity oneself by reference to one's father, grandfather, or even a more distant forebear was one of the staple features of social intercourse... Since slavery destroyed all kinship ties, there were no parents to be recognized in any formal manner. The contrast between free and slave was thus a contrast between person and non-person, and the contrast stands out starkly in documents like that recording Abaskantis' sale: the man who sold the girl was Artemidorus. son of Aristokles, the man who bought her was Pamphilos...son of Aegyptos. But she was merely 'the slave girl Abaskantis. or by whatever other name she may be known, a ten-year-old Galatian' (p. 137). In the case of Judith's slave, as we will see, even the marker of nationality is effaced
26. Pace Richard I. Pervo, 'Aseneth and her Sisters: Women in Jewish Narrative and in the Greek Novel', in VanderKam (ed.), 'No One Spoke Ill of Her', pp. 145-60 (158): 'Alone of her people, this wealthy and resourceful widow is prepared to resist.'
27. Thomas E.J. Wiedemann, 'The Regularity of Manumission at Rome', CIQ, 35 (1985), pp. 162-75, argues that the manumission of faithful slaves was a Roman ideal, but that practice did not necessarily conform to that ideal
28. Amy-Jill Levine, 'Sacrifice and Salvation: Otherness and Domestication in the Book of Judith', in VanderKam (ed.), No One Spoke Ill of Her', pp. 17-30 (25)
29. Flesher, Oxen, argues convincingly against assuming that Israel obeyed the laws regarding slavery during the period of the Second Temple. However, I am not concerned with the actual practice of Jews at this time, but with the world that the narrative creates for the reader