Historiographies of Enslavement: The Unthought Body of the Captive in Galatians 4:1–9

Abstract How should New Testament scholarship theorize enslavement, mainly when the victim’s experience is both linguistically unrepresentable (the very essence of pain) and, more relevantly, when primary sources do not contain first-person testimonies? Specifically, how does historiography account for the plight experienced by victims of enslavement when the historical archive is empty of the victims’ voices and, in many cases, mystifies, allegorizes, or erases the victims’ agony? I study the figure of the captive in Galatians 4:1–9 from the perspective of recent historiographical insights in the study of the Middle Passage. This article argues that the binary captive/free-person is foundational to important theological concepts in Paul, such as filiation and inheritance.