Women at Work in the Deuteronomistic History - International Voices ...

68 | WOMEN AT WORK IN THE DTRH
If slavery is a relative concept, then so is “freedom.” 35 Understanding
slavery to be relative—which to modern readers might be exasperating because
of its inherent ambiguity—has the advantage of preventing them from
approaching the text with a preconceived idea about the meaning of the term
“slave” in it. Sources are unclear on the connotations of the terms they contain.
Aside from this difficulty, there is a diversity of variables to consider in a
definition of slavery, including ownership of and right to sell a person, legal
status (which varied with circumstances), and ownership or use of the means of
production. Formulation of a comprehensive and consistent picture of slavery
has resulted in different solutions.
Soviet scholars have been prominent in the study of slavery, because of the
Marxist theory that slave societies represented one stage in the development
toward a free, classless society. Their interest is permeated by issues concerning
ownership of the means of production and economic coercion, which in turn
have proven to be a bone of contention among Soviets, because
an “unusual abundance and variety of forms of socio-economic relations” was
characteristic of antiquity and ... slavery was only one form of personal
dependence and extra-economic coercion [1969:6f.,23]. “In antiquity a slave
could in certain cases find himself [sic] in the same or even better
circumstances than a free man. And, on the contrary, a man could be legally
free and at the same time in a state of severe dependence, subject to coercion
and oppression” [1969: 23]. 36
Unlike a sociologist’s point of view, Muhammad Dandamaev looks at it
from his specialization as a Marxist orientalist; he defines slaves as a legal class
within society, as persons “recognized as such [slaves] by enforced law, the
property of other persons, of collectives, or even of a ‘deity,’ but not necessarily
an article of commerce, not necessarily deprived of the means of production or
even legal capacities, not necessarily persons oppressed in a cruel way.” 37 Note,
however, that the items included by him as “not necessarily so” point to the
35 Norbert Lohfink, “Hofšī” in TDOT, 5:117, quoted by Snell, Flight and Freedom, 29n.36.
36 Dandamaev, Slavery in Babylonia, 72–73. References to K. Zel’in, Formy zavisimosti v
vostochnom Sredizemnomor’e ellinisticheskogo perioda (Moscow, 1969, unavailable to me). From
Dandamaev’s analysis (p. 70–75) of the history of the disagreements between Soviet Orientalists,
there appears to have been two major understandings of ancient societies based on diverse
understandings of Marxist-Leninist social categories, namely, the “slaveholding” mode of
production and the “asiatic” mode of production. Unfortunately, Dandamaev does not explain in
detail these two modes or their difference, and consequently the interested reader would have to
search for them elsewhere.
37 Dandamaev, Slavery in Babylonia, 73–74. He further states, “However difficult the problem of
social classes in Babylonia may be to grasp, for us it is at least possible to distinguish in the second
and first millennia two estates in particular: persons enjoying full rights and slaves in the Classical
sense of the word, who are clearly contrasted with one another in the legal texts.” (75–76).