I’ll never forget my journeys to see the grand ancient ruins of Ephesus. A port-city with a heaving population of 250,000 in its day, it was home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Temple of Artemis, featuring 127 columns towering 60 feet high.1 My university students always enjoy seeing the picture slide of Audrey and me posing with Nikê, the Greek goddess of victory, which oddly enough resembles the Nike swoosh.
The city of Ephesus looms large in the book of Acts and was a prominent destination on Paul’s second and third missionary journeys. In fact, so important was this location that Paul not only spent over three years preaching in Ephesus, but Luke records in Acts 19:10 that “All who lived in Asia heard the world of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks” (NASB). For all of its splendor and ancient glory, there is a detestable side to the city of Ephesus: the slave market. For two hundred years (100 BC–AD 100), Ephesus was the headquarters of the Roman slave trade and as such, was the largest slave market in the empire. A modern individual would find the market horrifying. Would-be buyers were able to inspect the “stock” (individuals). Often they were nude. Slaves were valued by appearance, age, physique, education, skill-set and, yes, the condition of their teeth. The price of a slave could be bullish or bearish depending on the market, which was dictated by supply and demand. The pricing not only fluctuated, but much like purchasing a vehicle today, the prices varied. Attractive girls were sold for 2,000 to 6,000 denarii in the Republic, and later on in the empire, 25,000 to 50,000 denarii were paid for boys.2 These are massive sums of money when one considers that a year’s wages for a skilled worker was around 360 denarii.
This evil practice was and is astonishing. Audrey and I knelt and prayed in the Great Theater in Ephesus, and the Lord brought to my mind the statement of Paul the apostle. In one of the boldest, most revolutionary utterances in the first-century Roman Empire, Saul of Tarsus, better known as the apostle Paul, declared: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”3 From Roman and Jewish perspectives, every part of this astonishing declaration is problematic.
In Paul’s time, people were divided by race, by free or slave status, and by gender. What Paul says in his letter that circulated among the churches he founded in the region of Galatia in Asia Minor (today’s Turkey) would have been flatly rejected by the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire, including the Jewish people. Many would have thought Paul’s ideas laughable.
Slave or Free?
In ancient Greece, wealthy and powerful people owned slaves. Even the not-so-wealthy owned slaves (and sometimes complained it was difficult to feed them).4 Slaves could be beaten, humiliated in public, sexually exploited, and sold or traded.5 Aristotle, the great philosopher, regarded a slave as “living property.”6 Elsewhere he wrote: “The slave is a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave.”7 Of course, the main function of the slave was to work the farm and assist with the chores around the house or shop.8
The Roman world, much more than its older Greek counterpart to the east, came to depend heavily on slave labor. Slaves were used in every part of the empire, including Italy, and outside the boundaries of the empire. Slaves were homegrown and imported. Some children were sold into slavery by impoverished, desperate parents. Many were taken captive in war, as part of the spoils. Julius Caesar’s seven-year campaign in Gaul alone created over one million slaves for the empire.9
Although the demographics of antiquity are hard to estimate, some think that in the first century BC, as much as 40 percent of the population in the Roman Empire was slaves or servants. By the second and third centuries AD, the percentage may have decreased to as low as 15 percent. Even so, if the population of the empire in the second century AD was about 50 million, there may well have been as many as 7.5 million slaves.10
The garments of slaves were distinctive so that in public their status was instantly recognized. Slaves often ran businesses for their masters, including tanneries, shops, bakeries, and brothels, where managers, pimps, and prostitutes alike were slaves.11 Sexual exploitation of slaves—both male and female—was both legal and commonplace.12 No owner could legally be charged with the rape of his or her slave.13 The law required runaway slaves to be pursued, captured, and returned to their owners.14
There is no question that the sexual exploitation, including forced prostitution, was one of the most appalling aspects of slavery in the Roman Empire. For this very reason, no Jewish priest, no matter how eminent, could serve as high priest if one of his female ancestors had ever been a slave. The implication is that if the priest’s female ancestor had been a slave, it would be assumed that she had been raped and that the priest’s line of descent might not be purely Jewish and Levitical, thus disqualifying service as high priest.15
At its worst, the Roman Empire was not only a slave economy—it was a slave machine that ground up its human labor. Roman historian Diodorus (first century BC) wrote that slaves who worked in mines were “all in chains, all kept at work continuously day and night . . . there is no indulgence, no respite . . . [they are] kept at their labor by the lash, until overcome by hardships, they die in torment.”16
The reality of slavery in the world of late antiquity is reflected in some of Jesus’ parables. Slaves labored in the fields, served their masters, and could be punished. The apostle Paul’s assertion that in Christ Jesus there is “neither slave nor free” would have struck Romans of his time as both foolish and dangerously subversive. The vast inequalities involved in slavery were right and natural, they believed, and nothing would ever change them.
Wealthy or Poor?
The gulf between rich and poor in the Greco-Roman world was very wide. Very few were wealthy. There was a middle class of sorts, but it was small. Most people scraped by in agriculture, and many congregated in cities looking for daywork or charity. Poor women, especially women who had been abandoned as infants or young girls, often supported themselves as prostitutes.
In the Greek world, wealth was celebrated and there was little sympathy for the poor. Even the poets, surprisingly, gave expression to these values.17 “‘Money’s the man.’ It’s true. There’s no poor man who’s known as good or valued much,” declared Alcaeus of Mytilene.18 In step with this philosophy, Theognis of Megara wrote, “For the multitude of humankind there is only one virtue: money.”19
A few poets and playwrights, however, were willing to concede that money corrupts. In his play entitled Wealth, Aristophanes has a character confess: “There is nothing sound or honest in the world, the love of money overcomes us all.”20 Readers of the Bible will immediately recall the warning: “For the love of money is the root of all evils.”21 The verse is often misquoted as “money is the root of all evils,” but even misquoted, the verse has clear, timeless application.
Romans sometimes made no distinction between the poor and slaves, regarding both with contempt. Cicero (first century BC) gives eloquent expression to this thinking: “Unbecoming to a gentleman, too, and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labor, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery.”22
In a world of rampant poverty, it is not surprising that beggars were everywhere. But beggars found little sympathy from the wealthy and powerful. Seneca (c. 4 BC–AD 65) declared in reference to beggars: “[T]o some I shall not give although they are in need, because, even if I should give, they would still be in need.”23 Accordingly, Greek historian Polybius (c. 200–118 BC), who greatly admired Rome, bluntly stated: “No Roman will give anything to anyone.”24 There was no such thing as charity or social justice among the Greeks and Romans. Some pagans did humanitarian acts, but this was an exception, certainly not the rule.
Jesus encountered beggars in his public activities. Some of them were impoverished, ill, or disabled. In his parables, Jesus spoke of a dishonest manager who had lost his position and was “ashamed to beg.”25 Jesus’ parable of the rich and poor man provides a graphic picture of the extreme contrast between wealth and poverty. Whereas the rich man wears finery and feasts daily, his poor neighbor is covered with ulcers and shares with dogs the food cast out.26 Juvenal (second century AD) expresses horror at begging, describing a hungry beggar as “munching dirty scraps of dog’s bread.”27
The prevalence of poverty and its attendant ills, such as prostitution, was almost beyond imagination in the world of late antiquity. Yet the affluent Greeks and Romans did not seem too bothered by it. Most believed poverty was the fault of the poor.
Male or Female?
In a play Sophocles published sometime in the fifth century BC, a character affirms: “O woman, woman’s best jewel is silence! For as leaves decorate trees, wool is the beauty of the sheep, the mane the glory of horses, and the beard the pride of man, so silence is the jewel of women!”28 To be sure, it is a fictional character who utters this cluster of similes, but we have every reason to assume that he was expressing a widely held view that women were not equal to men. A similar sentiment, in harsher tones, is found in a fragment of a lost work by fifth-century BC contemporary Democritus: “A woman must not practice argument; this is dreadful. To be ruled by a woman is the ultimate outrage for a man.”29 Few, perhaps none, would have disagreed at the time.
And what of the Jewish world? The second-century BC sage Yeshua ben Sira seems to be largely in agreement with the sentiments of the Greco-Roman world. He wrote that a “silent wife is a gift of the Lord.”30 Although he acknowledged that a faithful and industrious wife is a blessing, the sage missed no opportunity to describe and decry the cranky, evil, and drunken wives of his imagination.31
Some of the later Jewish sages, known as the Rabbis, also reveal their chauvinism. In an early commentary on the book of Deuteronomy, an authority is remembered to have said, “A woman may not speak in a man’s stead.”32 Rabbi Judah, under whose authority the Mishnah was compiled in the early third century AD, was remembered to have said, “There are three Benedictions which one must say every day: ‘Blessed be He who did not make me a Gentile; blessed be He who did not make me an uneducated man; blessed be He who did not make me a woman.’”33 Perhaps even more egregiously, a later rabbi opined, “Better to burn the Torah than to teach it to a woman!”34
Nowhere did the gender gap express itself in late antiquity more starkly than in what might be called “family planning.” Early in this book, I presented a letter from migrant worker Hilarion, telling his pregnant wife that if she has a girl, the baby should be abandoned, or exposed, to likely die. In a legal document that dates to 8 BC, a recently widowed but pregnant woman asserts that she “retains the right to expose the infant [that she is carrying] and to unite herself to another man.”35 The implication is that the infant, whether male or female, may be a hindrance to her remarriage. If it is, she will expose the baby, regardless of gender. In cases such as this, even male infants were in danger. But most of the time it was the female infant who was cast out to die.
For Aristotle, exposing deformed children was not an option but a requirement. He was not alone in his opinion. The Roman Law of the Twelve Tables (Leges Duodecim Tabularum), which may date in its earliest form to the fifth century BC, required fathers to put to death any child who was deformed. One of these laws reads: “A notably deformed child shall be killed immediately.”36
The widespread practice of infant exposure is also attested by explicit condemnation of the practice in early Christian texts. According to the Didache (early second century): “Do not murder a child by abortion, nor kill it at birth.”37 The same proscription is found in the Epistle of Barnabas (mid-second century): “Do not murder a child by abortion, nor, again, destroy that which is born.”38 The Didache also speaks of those “who persecute the good, who hate truth, who love falsehood . . . who do not show mercy to a poor person, who are not distressed by [the plight of] the oppressed, who do not know him who made them, [who are] child murderers, who destroy what God has formed.”39 The clear implication is that because the wicked do not know God, who created humanity in his own image, they think nothing of murdering children and destroying what God forms in the womb.
These harsh criticisms may reflect the older expression found in the Wisdom of Solomon, which condemns the “ruthless slayers of their own children.”40 In the ostensible literary setting of this apocryphal work, it is King Solomon who speaks, and so perhaps would be understood as referring to the pagan practice of child-sacrifice that took place in the ancient Near East. But in the time of the writing of the Wisdom of Solomon (first century BC), child sacrifice was rare.41 It may be that the author was alluding to abortion and infant exposure as practiced by contemporary Greeks and Romans.
We find that in the Greco-Roman world of late antiquity women were at a great disadvantage. As infants they were far more likely to be cast out as unwanted. As young girls or teenagers they faced the risk of sexual abuse, if not outright prostitution; as grown women they were under the control of their husbands, who might abuse them, neglect them, or even abandon them; and in their older years, especially if widowed, they faced the prospects of poverty.
Theist or Atheist?
Was there religious freedom in the Greco-Roman world? Yes and no. There were indeed a number of gods to choose from and a number of cults as well. With the exception of the Jewish people who enjoyed exemption thanks to alliance with Rome dating back to the second century BC, all people in the Roman Empire were expected to worship at least some of the gods, and some of these gods had to be worshiped, at least now and then. In short, atheism was not an option—at least not a safe one.
A few philosophers and writers in the Greco-Roman world questioned the existence of the traditional gods, that is, the gods of Olympus (Zeus, Hera, et al.). It was rumored that Epicurus (fourth century BC), who publicly taught that the gods existed but took no notice of human affairs, was really an atheist but kept this opinion private out of fear of the public.42 His caution was well placed. After all, Socrates (fifth century BC) was forced to drink hemlock, having been convicted of teaching atheism to the youth of Athens.43 A colleague of Socrates, Theodorus, acquired the sobriquet “the Atheist” after his banishment from Athens, “for atheism and for corrupting the youth.”44 Not surprisingly, Plato, the famous pupil of Socrates, discussed the question of the existence of the gods in an academic setting.45 It was alleged that Critias was the author of a play in which a character asserts that the gods are an invention designed to deter crime that otherwise would go undetected and therefore unpunished.46 Whether or not Critias wrote this play, he got himself into a lot of trouble.
By the turn of the era, little had changed. Judging from the comments of Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC–AD 50), there must have been a few atheists in his time.47 But whoever they were, they were discreet and for the most part apparently tried to remain anonymous.48 Their caution is not surprising, considering the persecution Christians endured for their refusal to acknowledge the existence of the Greco-Roman gods.
In the first three centuries of the Christian church, Christians were routinely accused of atheism, for they did not acknowledge the existence of the Greco-Roman gods and refused to worship the emperor as “son of god.”49 Early Christian martyrs included Ignatius (died c. 110), Polycarp (died c. 155), and Justin Martyr (died c. 165).
In Polycarp’s case, the mid-second-century bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor (Izmir in modern Turkey) was charged with “atheism” for refusing to confess the divinity of the emperor or worship the gods of the Greeks and Romans. According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, written not long after his death, the pagan multitude shouted against the Christians, “Away with the atheists! Find Polycarp!”50 When Polycarp is brought before the Roman proconsul, the latter demands, “Swear by the divinity of Caesar.”51 Polycarp of course refuses. The proconsul demands that Polycarp swear the oath to Caesar and revile Christ. His refusal to swear by the divinity of Caesar would have been interpreted as proof of the charge of atheism. In the trial that follows, the crowds shout, “This is the teacher of Asia, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods, who teaches many not to sacrifice or worship.”52 The bishop continues to refuse and so is executed.
During the administration of Pliny the Younger (c. 110–112) over Bithynia and Pontus in Asia Minor, Christians were arrested, interrogated, tortured, and in some cases executed.53 From the mid-second-century on, pagans regularly accused Christians of atheism. In his First Apology (c. 155), Justin Martyr replies to this charge: “[W]e are called atheists,” though at the same time conceding and explaining, that “we are atheists, so far as gods of [the pagans] are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God.”54 “What sober-minded man,” Justin further argues, “will not acknowledge that we are not atheists, worshiping as we do the Maker of this universe . . .”55 He adds further that “those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists.”56 In his Second Apology (c. 161), Justin complains that Crescens, the pagan philosopher, unfairly describes Christians as “atheistic and impious.”57 Tatian complains too that the Greeks exclude Christians “from civic rights as if we were the most godless of men.”58 Athenagoras devotes several chapters of his apology to counter the charge that Christians are atheists.59
The charge that Christians were atheists reaches back to the first century and is even attested in the book of Acts. One will recall the accusation that Demetrius the silversmith, who specialized in figurines of the goddess Artemis, made against Paul: “[No]t only at Ephesus but almost throughout all Asia this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable company of people, saying that gods made with hands are not gods.” Demetrius goes on to warn that Paul’s preaching could bring their trade to an end and bring the temple of Artemis into disrepute.60 A riot ensues and Christians are arrested.
What we find is that for all the claims of religious tolerance and inclusivity, it turns out that the Greco-Roman world was not so tolerant after all. In effect, the policy was something like this: “You may worship any gods you wish, but you must revere and support our gods as well.” Religious rights and equality were extended to those who followed the party line. Christians, along with atheists, did not and so were persecuted.
A New Understanding of God
The Greco-Roman world of late antiquity was a world of inequality. It was a world of oppressive slavery, grinding poverty and economic exploitation, callous mistreatment of females, and superstitious, intolerant zealots. Navigating such a world was not easy. Most faced lives of hardship—and rather brief lives at that. It was a world desperate for change, a world that needed a new message and a new vision.
One of Polycarp’s curious declarations in the face of his martyrdom is that Christ has done him “no harm” and in fact has saved him.61 At first blush the statement seems strange, at least to us moderns. But when it is remembered that in late antiquity the Greco-Roman gods were widely regarded as capricious, unloving, and at times jealous and vindictive, Polycarp’s confession would have struck his accusers as startling and even suggestive. Underlying his confession was a whole new understanding of divinity: God loves and cares for all people.