Paul Among the People

by Sarah Ruden

  Another important word here is opheilai (“debts,” translated as “what is due”). It is used only once, but it covers a range of things: taxes (ordinary tribute), revenue (excise taxes), respect, and honor. Near the center of polytheistic public ethics (such as they were) was monetary debt, which the debtor swore on oath to pay, so that he feared divine vengeance as well as the loss of his property and reputation (even freedom, in earlier times) should he default. To keep your self-respect, and to do anything else worth doing, you had to pay your debts. A freedman in Petronius, in furious and comic slang, rants at people making fun of him:

  “I hope I live a life that don’t make me nobody’s joke. I’m a man good as any other, walk with my head high and don’t hide from nobody. I don’t owe a red cent. Nobody hauls me into court, nobody stops me in the forum and says, ‘Pay up!’ ”

  Christianity deepened and expanded the concept of debt. I mentioned in chapter 4 (this page–this page) that Paul elevates the marriage relationship (and the status of wives) by applying the word to sex. In parables and in the Lord’s Prayer (how many readers know the older—literal—translation, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”?), it is a metaphor for sin. The word moves from commerce to personal life and the life of the Spirit, since Christians must have a fuller sense of obligation.

  But Paul wants even more for leaders: “respect” and “honor” (a synonym for “elective or appointed office”). And he’s not done. There’s even more in Romans 13:

  8 Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

  Public duty is about love.

  Oops. Through a contextual reading, I come not to an out, not to an endorsement of my own civic values by Paul. I find instead a challenge to complete them or move beyond them. I have to adopt an even harder standard of love than in the familiar Old Testament and gospel commands to care for the weak. What a charming thing to be able to do once in a while. What a firm proof of both my power and my goodness. But to show sympathy and sincere deference to those with power over me, to trust them with my life as if on a battlefield and forgive the very costly mistakes they make, is harder. It’s like managing to love my damn parents.

  Don’t let me start in about them—not that I need to. I know the sterility of not seeing state authorities as human beings or appreciating their goodwill. I’ve ripped into Nelson Mandela.

  There the article is for eternity, that stain on my Google, the fruit of a brand-new Harvard Ph.D. plopped down in Africa to teach Latin and Greek right after apartheid ended. I wouldn’t back down from the article even when a Quaker elder e-mailed me, appalled and asking whether my tone was helpful, regardless of what the facts were. Instead of repenting, I busied myself with showing how enlightened and compassionate I was. And I was! One of the students I taught as a volunteer told a career counselor that she wanted to be Sarah Ruden. I figured out a way to keep a family of eight from starving while their breadwinner was in the hospital with a knife wound. I was right, I was good, while these Africans who had barged into the government, even the so-called best of them—

  If God managed to love me enough to sacrifice his Son, I have to manage with political leaders: nude in public except for signs that say, “Imagine how much better you would look,” wide open to self-righteous hatred, wanting more power but needing love from those they can kill with the flick of a gold pen. It’s just hopeless.

  Or maybe not. God came through for Paul sometimes. One of the times is on record in Acts 17:

  16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) 19 So they took him and brought him to the Areopaguse and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.”…

  22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through your city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.”

  But it takes faith to come up with something as insouciantly ingenious as that. I could start to love my parents, and to deal with them, when I wasn’t afraid of them anymore, when I knew they didn’t have any power over me that mattered. I can love authority and reach out to it when I’ve put it in the right place, as in Romans 8, where all of the things that work on the universe, or seem to work on it, slide into the one word “Lord”—kyrios, “the one in charge”:

  37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, 39 nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

  * Some historical biblical commentaries mention the tax rioting in Puteoli and the persecution of Jews in Rome that might have been going on among Christians themselves at the very time Paul wrote the letter to the Romans.

  † Caligula, his predecessor.

  ‡ A judge of the dead in the underworld.

  § At the time, Jews were exempt from military service.

  ‖ The Bible itself is an excellent basis for establishing the meaning of tass-. In 1 Corinthians 15:23–28, for example, about the return of Christ, Paul uses words from tass- for God deploying the forces of good, including Christ, and other words for God’s army putting down the forces of evil.

  a No one could even opt out because of a disability, unless he mutilated himself or a boulder fell on him at the age of twelve or something: all imperfect babies were supposed to be exposed, eliminating any who would grow up unfit for service.

  b The soldier is an important piece of the puzzle of pederasty in the ancient world (see chapter 3). A brave, strong, assertive man, a man who took what he wanted, could also take things for the benefit of the community. This was one reason that his “manliness” (andreia [Greek] or virtus [Latin]) got more or less a free pass, even when it led to his sodomizing little boys.

  c Normal in an attack.

  d Xenophon tells of a Greek mercenary army getting away with stoning an allied general for punishing one man unfairly.

  e This was the government council that dealt with religious crimes.

  CHAPTER 6: NOBODY HERE BUT US BONDSMEN: PAUL ON SLAVERY

  Paul’s pronouncements on slavery are in a class by themselves, among all of his writings that have caused controversy in the modern world. On other matters, he gives straightforward advice and orders, and only a perverse reading can muddle the substance of his program. What this program meant to his readers and what it should mean to us are the only crucial questions remaining. Not s
o with slavery, and this is disturbing. The institution is sparse today, at least in the industrialized world, but it used to be mankind’s great crime, as genocide is now. We really want Paul to have been against slavery, but the evidence is galling. It’s not that he was for slavery; it’s quite unlikely that he wrote Ephesians 6:5–8, for example, which exhorts slaves to submit and serve wholeheartedly. It’s that he doesn’t seem to have cared one way or another. Key verses are 1 Corinthians 7:21–23, in which he states that slavery is nothing, that slaves should just get on with their religious lives.

  I spent a day at the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C., looking through the writings of people trying to make Paul care. I was most interested in nineteenth-century American works on Christianity and slavery, displayed in the catalog as a scrum of titles: Slavery condemned by Christianity, Slavery consistent with Christianity, Slavery and the slaveholders’ religion; as opposed to Christianity, and so on. But I already knew some recent studies that dealt with the same topic, including John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed’s In Search of Paul.

  Packing up my notes in the evening, I realized that clarity was not going to come from either direction. The newer authors are curiously like the older ones in their attitude, which is that, in the cosmic talk show, Jesus and the apostles are respectfully interviewing them, not the other way around. Time, tragic historical experiences, and loads of fresh empirical data have not made even the academic view of the New Testament more objective. In their own way, present-day biblical scholars are as stubbornly themselves, and as closed to the reality of original Christianity, as both the abolitionists and the plantation owners were.

  My frustration settled on interpretations of Paul’s letter to Philemon, written on behalf of a runaway slave, which is the main witness to his attitude toward slavery. Here is the entire letter, comprising the shortest book of the Bible:

  1 Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother,

  To Philemon our dear friend and co-worker, 2 to Apphia our sister, to Archippus our fellow-soldier, and to the church in your house:

  3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

  4 When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God 5 because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith towards the Lord Jesus. 6 I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ. 7 I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother.

  8 For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, 9 yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus. 10 I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment. 11 Formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful both to you and to me. 12 I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. 13 I wanted to keep him with me, so that he might be of service to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel; 14 but I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. 15 Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, 16 no longer as a slave but as more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

  17 So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. 18 If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account. 19 I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. 20 Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. 21 Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

  22 One thing more—prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you.

  23 Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus, sends greetings to you, 24 and so do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow-workers.

  25 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

  On the basis of these same words, the interpretations diverge as widely, and as wrongheadedly on either side, as in the following passages. The first is from the Reverend Theodore Clapp’s “Slavery: A Sermon, Delivered in the First Congregational Church in New Orleans, April 15, 1838”:

  The epistle to Philemon was written by Paul, while a prisoner at Rome. Philemon was a slave-holder, residing at Colosse. Onesimus, a fugitive slave belonging to Philemon, was converted to the Christian religion at Rome, under the ministry of Paul. The epistle sends him back to Colosse, with a letter to his owner; in which he entreats Philemon not to punish Onesimus with severity, but to treat him in future as a reformed and faithful slave.…

  Paul did not suggest to Philemon the duty of emancipating Onesimus, but encouraged him to restore the slave to his former condition, with the hope that, acting under the influence of the holy principles of Christianity, he would in future serve his master, “not with eye service,” as formerly, “but in singleness of heart, fearing God.”

  Crossan gets an opposite message out of the same text:

  Delicately and carefully, but relentlessly and implacably Paul presses home his point. Philemon should free Onesimus.… Paul sees an impossible or intolerable opposition between a Christian master owning a Christian slave. How can they be equal in Christ, but unequal in society? How can they be equal and unequal at the same time? He does not and would never accept the idea that they could be equal spiritually, internally, in the assembly, but unequal physically, externally, in the world. Both are Christians, and they must be equal “both in the flesh and in the Lord” (16).

  Crossan at least quotes from the text in question, whereas Clapp seems to call on Colossians 3:22 or Ephesians 6:6, on words that are probably not from Paul and are not at all like the letter to Philemon. But both writers are equally deadpan in asserting something the letter, as it urges Philemon to take the runaway back, absolutely doesn’t specify: what this person’s legal status should be. In this instance, you just cannot assign a definite meaning to the Greek word hōs (in verse 16): “like, as, as if, in the character of, in the capacity of.” Should Onesimus be a free man, not continuing “as” a slave—or should Philemon merely not treat him “like” a slave?

  Early Christian theology helps no more than the Greek does to decide this question. Even by the high standards of the gospels, Philemon could have been treating Onesimus “not hōs a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother,” if he merely forgave him. Jesus had commanded his followers to forgive their metaphoric “brothers” no matter what, but had not said that they must go beyond forgiveness and upgrade the relationship, whatever it officially was.*

  But bare forgiveness was radical enough, especially in the main territory of Paul’s mission. There, forgiving a runaway slave (particularly a runaway who had taken goods with him, as Onesimus may have done), instead of sending him to hard labor, branding him, crucifying him, or whipping him to death, was no small matter, when he had so shockingly betrayed his household (familia in Latin, from which we have the obvious derivative). Running away and its punishments are the stuff of black comedy. The ancients treated such episodes almost the way we treat sex acts: the details are too shameful for mainstream literature or polite conversation. For the Romans as for us, a single-word insult—for them “runaway”—could invoke adequate disgust on its own.

  To show the extremity of what Paul faced in having a runaway slave land in his lap, I will start with a scene in Petronius. Imagine what the apostle got used to in the established Greco-Roman society he experienced, as when he was staying with a man wealthy enough to have a guest room, as Philemon did. Petronius’s story of Trimalchio’s dinner party is exaggerated and absurd, but the narrator Encolpius provides the voice of cultured common sense among all of
the pretentious uproar. From him we know that it was good form for the master to order severe punishment for slaves even in the case of carelessness and accidents that in any way marred hospitality. It was also apparently polite for the guests to intervene, in the spirit of “Oh, no, not on my behalf, please!” But both the master and the guests were entitled to be quite annoyed at anything a slave did to draw attention to himself, and the host Trimalchio’s outrageous gaucheness is at its worst when he actually connives for his slaves to play pranks. Here is one incident:

  Before all of the intellectual world had succumbed to the disease of his conversation, a platter with an immense pig on it took over the table. We were struck by the speed of the cooking, and we swore that even a chicken couldn’t be done in so short a time. We were even more suspicious in that the pig looked bigger than before. Trimalchio inspected it more and more closely, and burst out, “What the—? This pig isn’t gutted! By Hercules, it really isn’t!”

  The cook stood in front of the table and cringed and said he’d forgotten to gut the pig. “What?! You forgot?! He says it like he just forgot to put in pepper and cumin. Strip him.”

  In a moment, the cook was stripped and standing between two of the punishment crew. We started to beg him off. “It happens. Please, let him go. If he does it again, none of us will say a word for him.” But I, as usual, was feeling intolerant and punitive. I couldn’t hold myself back from leaning over and whispering in Agamemnon’s ear, “I’ve never seen such a worthless slave in my life. How could somebody forget to gut a pig? By Hercules, I wouldn’t pardon him if it had been a fish he’d forgotten to gut.” But Trimalchio’s face had relaxed into a grin.