by Matthew Gaetano
TRF has discussed Philo (here, here, here) and slavery (here, here) before. Here are two passages that combine these themes. Even though scholars debate whether Philo accurately presents these two first-century Jewish communities, we can see here the possibility of opposition to slavery in theory and practice in this context.
In Every Good Man Is Free, Philo, an Alexandrian Jewish writer engaging Hellenistic thought, treats the Essenes (XII-XIII.75-91):
Palestine and Syria too are not barren of exemplary wisdom and virtue, which countries no slight portion of that most populous nation of the Jews inhabits. There is a portion of those people called Essenes , in number something more than four thousand in my opinion, who derive their name from their piety, thought not according to any accurate form of the Grecian dialect, because they are above all men devoted to the service of God, not sacrificing living animals, but studying rather to preserve their own minds in a state of holiness and purity. … Of these men, some cultivating the earth, and others devoting themselves to those arts which are the result of peace, benefit both themselves and all those who come in contact with them, not storing up treasure of silver and of gold, nor acquiring vast sections of the earth out of a desire for ample revenues, but providing all things which are requisite for the natural purposes of life. […]
Among those men you will find no makers or arrows, or javelins, or swords, or helmets, or breastplates, or shields; no makers of arms or of military engines; no one, in short attending to any employment whatever connected with war, or even to any of those occupations even in peace which are easily perverted to wicked purposes; for they are utterly ignorant of all traffic, and of all commercial dealings, and of all navigation, but they repudiate and keep aloof from everything which can possibly afford any inducement to covetousness; and there is not a single slave among them, but they are all free, aiding one another with a reciprocal interchange of good offices; and they condemn masters, not only as unjust, inasmuch as they corrupt the very principle of equality, but likewise as impious, because they destroy the ordinances of nature, which generated them all equally, and brought them up like a mother, as if they were all legitimate brethren, not in name only, but in reality and truth.
But in their view this natural relationship of all men to one another has been thrown into disorder by designing covetousness, continually wishing to surpass others in good fortune, and which has therefore engendered alienation instead of affection, and hatred instead of friendship.
Philo associated the Essenes with peace, contentment, and piety–what he later calls “the moral part of philosophy.” Slavery here is associated with greed and war; legal slavery was often with captives of war. But the rejection of slavery is also rooted in the value of equality, fraternity, and friendship.
In On the Contemplative Life or Suppliants, Philo discusses the Therapeutae, Jewish ascetics whom he contrasted with the Essenes. For Philo, the Essenes were more focused on the practical, while the Therapeutae “embraced the speculative life.” Their rejection of slavery is discussed in IX.69:
They do not have slaves to wait upon them as they consider that the ownership of servants is entirely against nature. For nature has borne all men to be free, but the wrongful and covetous acts of some who pursued that source of evil, inequality, have imposed their yoke and invested the stronger with power over the weaker. In this sacred banquet there is as I have said no slave, but the services are rendered by free men who perform their tasks as attendants not under compulsion nor yet waiting for orders, but with deliberate goodwill anticipating eagerly and zealously the demands that may be made.
Like the Essenes, the Therapeutae reject slavery because of the value of equality. They associated this practice with the sin of covetousness. As in the account of the Essenes, there is an appeal here to nature. Here, all human beings are free by nature.