ABSTRACT
In the first verse of Revelation, John characterizes both himself and his audience members as God’s slaves (doulois). This imagery serves as one of the main ways John will characterize his audience throughout the narrative. Despite this, scholarly treatments of the book give little attention to the practices of ancient enslavement, even though the Roman Empire was a thriving slave economy. In this essay, Huber addresses this lacuna and employs the tool of conceptual metaphor theory to uncover some of the ways the concept of enslavement appears within the text. She calls for further examination of this imagery, including the depiction of God and the Lamb as enslavers, in an effort to contend with biblical studies’ role in perpetuating inequity and racism.
