(5) The appearance of the MS, in which the text is corrected with the greatest licence, resembles an author's brouillon more than a copy of an ancient work.
Against this evidence no argument can be ad- duced which deserves to be refuted or even cited. Even if it be true that it sometimes has a text which explains both the Greek and the Syriac where they differ, this is fully accounted for by the fact that the re-translator had the two texts before him, and tried to reconcile them ; there is no reason why he should not occasionally succeed.
SISTER
SLAVE, SL.VVEKY
509
But that the original author should have written a series of verses twice with sli<;ht iliH'erences, and the Greek and Syriac translators in each case have selected one and selected dillerently, is a supposition which takes us into the rcjiion of sheer ini)p(issibilitj'. Moreover, any one mistranslation, mull as tliat of ni/inimita above, condemns the whole work absolutely.
Since in Islamic States Jews were regularly associated with Christians in the public bureaux and the medical profession, they saw much of each other, and those Jews who wished to consult Ben- Sira's book could easily do so by borrowing it from their Christian friends ; hence it may be suspected that it was translated into Hebrew from Christian copies many times. In the Ha/cr Oliim of the 11th or l'2th cent., as we have seen, it is quoted from the Latin ; and at least one passage of llie Egyp- tian re-translation shows use of the Latin version. This is in 32'", ' Before thunder there hurries lightning, and before a shamefast man there will precede grace.' The Latin renders this, ' ante grandinem prajibit coruscatio, et ante verecundiam prohibit gratia.' The Egyptian document gives two renderings which agree in substitviting ' hail ' for ' thunder,' while one repeats nsr as a rendering of prwivit, but a very erroneous one, since the Hebrew verb means (as Gesenius renders it) 'cantum pneivit.' Since lightning precedes not hail, but thunder, this Latin is a certain mis- rendering of the original. But why the re- translator should in this case have called in its assistance and in what medium is unknown. D. S. Margoliouth.
SISTER.— See Family.
SLANDER.— See Evil-speakino.
SLAVE, SLAVERY.— 1. Universal prevalence
in the Apostolic Age. — Slavery was a conspicuous and unchallenged feature of the social order into the midst of which Christianity was born. Modern readers easily fail to realize its presence in the background of the NT Scriptures, so great are the social changes that have been brought about in the course of time, and so much is the harsh fact softened by the phrasing of our versions. The AV 'servant,' with its present connotation, is a very mild equivalent for SoDXos ; the RV ' bond-servant ' is clearer, but is still a euphemistic substitute for 'slave' — the term which exactly represents what the SoCXos of the NT really was. In the only in- stance in which the EW use the term ' slaves ' in the NT (Rev 18") it represents a late but significant nseof ffuj^a ('body '). Similarly, the EW 'master' stands for terms ( wliether S^airlrTji or the commoner Ki/pios) that imply ownership. The existence of slavery must have lent special vividness and point to the early use of redemption as a figure to describe the experience of salvation.
In the old civilization of the world .slavery appears as a most natural and inevitaljle fact. The well-known Code of Hamuiuiabi, fragment.ary as it is, affords us considerable insight into the social conditions of Babylonia as existing more than twenty centuries before the Christian era. Therein we have a number of remarkable laws re- gulating relations between slaves and their owners, side by side with others dealing with the wages paj-abie for the employment of dillerent kinds of free labour. And, most probably with a real rela- tion to this older legal .system, we have at a later period the Mosaic legislation similarly embodying slave laws, slavery having been just as much a re- cognized part of the system of things among the Hebrews as among otner ancient peoples. Only the Pentateuchal Code (or Codes) must be admitted to be marked by a conspicuous humanity in this
as in some other respects, and especially in the Deuteronomic form (see, e.g., Dt 15'-"). The ex- istence of slavery, indeed, was so old and general a phenomenon in human history that .St. Augustine could explain it only as a result of sin, so sure was he that it was not the Divine intention that man should own and lord it over his fellow-man (dr. Civ. Dei, xix. 15). (St. Chrysostom takes a similar line in Horn. xl. ad 1 Cor. x. 5.) Incidentally he com- ments more xtio on the fact that the term ' servus' first appears in Scripture in the strange Genesis story 01 the curse of Canaan (Gn 9-^) — a source whence, curiously enough, many a Christian owner of negro slaves in modern times has <lerived 'llatter- in^ unction ' in defence of his position.
But never was slavery more conspicuous a.s a social institution than it was in the Roman Empire in the 1st cent. A.D. Numerous wars of conquest had swollen the numbers of the slave class to an enormous extent : for all prisoners of war were made slaves as a nuitter of course. Slave-dealers followed the armies on their campaigns and pur- chased on the spot those who were taken captive. Indeed, St. Augustine [loe. cit.) gives curremj- to a jjopuhir etymologj' of the term 'servus,' deriving it from the verb 'servare.' The scrvii.i was a man who might justly have been sl;iin, but wnsprejiervcrl alive by the conqueror, though inevitably doomed to lose his freedom. There was, ' moreover, a regular slave-trade carried on in the East, the markets being abundantly sujiplied from the bar- barous tribes of Western Asia. Barbarians were regarded as being naturally designed to be the slaves of their superiors — a sentiment not whollj' wanting even yet in many white people towards the 'inferior races.'