ABSTRACT
The slavery metaphor seems to have been a core metaphor in early Christian discourse, in a social context in which slaves and slave owners lived together. Since slave is a common metaphor for the believers and the slave master is compared with God, the relationship between slave and master is sometimes used to describe the relationship between God and his believers. For a higher cause helping the poor or spreading the word, real slavery was one option for the slaves of the Lord. The pain and suffering of real slavery are legitimized with God's glory. Since this is said both to male and female slaves, it might be relevant to ask whether they had to endure different kinds of punishments or treatments, for example, related to sexual availability and reproduction. The paradox that real slaves also were slaves of God is hard to conceptualize indeed.
