(Not) Letting Go

This article aims at suggesting a plausible contextual framework for Paul’s language of enslavement and manumission, as well as manumission conventions of ancient Christ groups by considering prominent gestures in Roman manumission procedures. While New Testament scholars have been paying increasing attention to ancient slavery, gestures of manumission have remained largely ignored. However, gestural acts were a key part of manumission procedures, highlighting important aspects of freedpersons’ living conditions. By applying Judith Butler’s theory of gesture, I highlight the ambiguity of gestures involving touching enslaved persons with a rod, holding their hand, and spinning them around. While these gestures, on the one hand, granted freedom, on the other hand, they made to-be-freed persons experience bodily that their freedom would always be restricted by their servile past. Following Butler’s theory, it seems to us that those performing the procedures exposed themselves as deconstructing the prospect of absolute freedom they seemingly declared.