Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Romans 6:1-23, Slaves of a new master
Baptized into Christ's death, believers are dead to sin. Once slaves of sin, they have been set free to become slaves of God, whose gift is eternal life.
Romans 6:1-23, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul answers an objection: if grace covers sin, why not keep sinning? He replies that baptism joined believers to Christ's death, so their old life has ended and sin no longer has the right to rule them. Drawing on the everyday reality of slavery, he says they have changed masters, from sin, which pays out death, to God, who gives eternal life as a gift.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/proselyte-baptism\/","n":"Ritual washing and convert immersion","s":"Jews washed often for purity, but one immersion happened only once: the bath a Gentile took on becoming a Jew. John's baptism and the church's took that shape.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/adam-in-jewish-tradition\/","n":"Adam in Jewish tradition","s":"The Old Testament says little about Adam outside Genesis, but by Paul's day Jewish writers spoke often of his lost glory and of the sin and death he brought into the world. Each person, they added, became his own Adam.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/slavery\/","n":"Slavery and slave managers","s":"Slaves were everywhere in the Roman world, from field hands to stewards who ran whole estates and handled their master's money. A master away and slaves left in charge was a familiar story.","r":""}
For Jews, baptism was the act by which a Gentile converted, the final removal of Gentile impurity that made him a new person in Jewish law, and in Jewish legal theory a Gentile slave who escaped a Jewish owner and converted by baptism was free of that owner (Keener). The old self can be translated old humanity, the humanity of Adam (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener). Owners often freed slaves, who kept obligations to them, but death ended every obligation (the cultural backgrounds notes). The word for instruments could mean weapons, as of soldiers reporting for duty (Keener). Some scholars see sacral manumission behind the chapter, a slave freed by becoming the property of a god and his temple; Keener finds the philosophers' talk of slavery to false ideas and pleasure clearer, and notes that Jewish teachers said Israel became God's slaves when freed from Egypt. Slaves often received wages, called a peculium, which they could use and sometimes spend on buying their freedom, so wages were normally a good thing, which makes Paul's wages of sin all the more striking (Keener and his notes).
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Romans 6:1-5, 6:6-7, 6:12-13, 6:14-21 and 6:23
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Romans 6:6, 6:7 and 6:23
