Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

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Journal of Biblical Literature
tians as well. Submission may thus indicate speaking with the respect due to
those socially in authority during conflicts over Christian activities.
Third, Jesus did not retaliate. This is the key to the interpretation of all of
the author’s exhortations regarding behavior: the critical choice between doing
evil and doing good always centers on the believer’s moral stance during and
after the experience of suffering. The author is encouraging the slaves not to
seek abuse but to continue to behave in a nonretaliatory way regardless of the
consequences. He emphasizes Jesus’ experience as one of a slave, in that he was
“despised and rejected by others,” characteristics that fit well with the kind of
social degradation inherent in slavery, with which no free woman or man would
identify. 72 The Haustafel exalts these slaves by making a direct identification
between them and Christ; the female slaves are Christomorphic. 73 Glancy
remarks:
1 Peter does not identify servile subordination with the will of God nor of
Christ. Rather, 1 Peter links the bodily violations to which the slaves were
subject with the bodily violations of Jesus in his passion and death. The
author of 1 Peter invites slaves to contemplate the wounds of Jesus in order
to give them strength to endure their own wounds. 74
Like slaves, wives were a focal point of the Petrine Haustafel because they
were an exaggerated example of every Christian’s life in the non-Christian
world: they were subject to misunderstanding, abuse, and injustice—problems
that were heightened because of their lesser legal status. The author connects
their experience with that of the slaves with his use of oJmoivw" before his
remarks to the wives in 3:1–6. He says to them:
Wives, in the same way, accept the authority of your husbands, so that, even
if some of them do not obey the word, they may be won over without a word
by their wives’ conduct, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives.
. . . Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham and called him lord. You have become her
daughters as long as you do what is good and never let fears alarm you.
(3:1–2, 6)
72 In submitting to crucifixion, Jesus died a slave’s death, rejecting society’s ideas of shame.
The implications for the perception of slavery are weighty. The lowest in the hierarchy are, by identification
with Jesus, the most worthy. See David A. DeSilva, Despising Shame: Honor Discourse
and Community Maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews (SBLDS 152; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1995). 73 Elliott comments on this passage: “Singling out slaves as examples for all the believers
demonstrates the new status and respect which such lowly persons might anticipate in the new
Christian community. . . . [T]heir vulnerability is a sign of the social vulnerability of all suffering
Christians and of the solidarity of the suffering brotherhood [sic] with its suffering Lord” (Home for
the Homeless, 207).
74 Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 149.