Esther and the Future of the Commentary
Posted on the Web, 30 May 2000Paper originally given to the colloquium Esther 2000, at Creighton University, Omaha and University of Nebraska, Lincoln, April 2000
This paper has not been published, and should be cited only with the permission of the author.
Looking back on my Esther commentary of 1984, I
fell to wondering how differently I would write it if I were beginning now. It
would certainly not be the same book. What is it that has changed in 15 years,
not such a long span of time, that provokes such a thought?
To tell the
truth, when I began working on Esther, it was not from any love of the book, of
which I knew little, but entirely to get my commentary on EzraNehemiah
published, since the publisher wanted to include Esther with those books. As it
turned out, it was Esther that stole my heart, a much neglected book in the
scholarly community in those days (unlike now), a book with hidden depths and
delights, as I was soon to discover.
Strangely enough, though I knew little
about Esther, I had no doubt about what a commentary on it should look like:
like every other commentary on a biblical book, of which there were abundant
examples (even then). Like every other commentary, its aim should be to give the
reader a clear and concise account of what the book was about, what its
individual sections and verses meant. It aimed at being correct. Though there
were doubtless many differing interpretations of many of its verses, my task as
a commentator was to sort out the good interpretations from the bad, the better
from the worse, and tell the reader the best. However modest I might have been
as a person (not very, probably), my commentatorial responsibility was the
extremely immodest one of finding the right interpretation, the best one,
which the reader could rely on as the latest word, the most considered
opinion.
But now, at the turn of the millennium, the word on the street and
in the quadrangle is:
1. Farewell to the one right interpretation!
Before I begin to rubbish that traditional view of
the commentator's task, let me say a word about what a demanding and responsible
one it was.
1. In the first place, it required a humble preparedness to read
and consider the previous commentaries, in depth and in detail. Not, thankfully,
all the commentaries ever written, for it was a facet of the pyramidal view of
the accumulation of true knowledge that the latest was usually the best, and the
further back you went among commentaries the more nonsense and outmoded stuff
you would find. A clever commentator, though, would read back at least to the
beginning of the century (the twentieth, I mean, in case you are becoming
millennially challenged), and would be delighted to able to parade from a really
ancient commentator (a nineteenth-century one, for example) a telling point, a
bon mot, an insight, that had perhaps dropped out of sight in the commentatorial
tradition. In this way, a laudable respect for one's predecessors could be
niftily combined with a self-serving demonstration of the commentator's own hard
work and breadth of learning.
2. In the second place, this style of
commentary writing put a premium on analysis and evaluation. Weighing up the
opinions and arguments of giants among commentators, forming your own opinion
which must not only be the best argued interpretation of the particular passage
but also be coherent with every other interpretational position you had adopted
or were going to adopt in your snail-like progress through the book demanded a
high order of intellectual skills and yielded a quite unique kind of pleasure
when you were successful. Managing to combine the best of Commentator A's views
with the best of Commentator B's, while discarding the dross, not only made you
feel a superior kind of person; it actually made you a superior kind of person.
There was always some room for innovation, but new ideas have never been the
most desirable elements in a commentary. New syntheses, new coherence, new
observations of the detail of the text, new judgments, new angles of vision, new
comparative data-these make a commentary vibrant and vaut le voyage. But, in the
history of interpretation, new interpretations, like new conjectural emendations
of the text, have usually been wrong, and a prudent commentator will suppress
almost every inclination towards novelty.
3. Above all, the quest for the
best and most true interpretation was an instantiation of that wonderful
intellectual project, the quest for truth, the very reason I myself went to
university as a naïve 17-year-old, and the only reason for my entry into the
academic profession. Compared with a quest for falsehood, or even with no quest
at all, the quest for truth, or, in the commentator's case, for the right
interpretation, can only be acclaimed and admired. Where would we be without
that Enlightenment Project, as we have to call it these days? Just wait till
there is a theme park called The Enlightenment Experience.
And yet, in those
magical days between that apocalyptic Orwellian year of 1984, with which I
began, and the present moment, something has happened, something of such import
as to make even an old truth-seeker like myself stop in my tracks, and declare
that, after all, there is no truth, only truths, no right interpretations, only
interpretations that are accepted by this community or that, no commentaries,
therefore, that can enshrine the holy grail of the definitive meaning. Call it
the slide to the postmodern if you will, it was going to happen whatever name we
found for it. As the world expanded and the global village arrived on our
doorsteps, as repressed and underrepresented minorities found their voices, as
pluralism became first a fact and then a virtue, meaning became pluriform. Not
interpretation now, but interpretations must be the commentator's goal, and the
more of them, if not the merrier, then the richer, the more sensitive, the more
rounded the commentary becomes.
What we are looking for nowadays in a
commentary, I decided, is not the authority of the authorial voice (which author
might indeed be a tyro, as I myself was when I wrote on Esther), not a rightness
of interpretation, but:
2. A symphony of readers' voices
Or perhaps, a cacophony. These readers who have
been reading our book of Esther (and the rest of the Bible) over all these
centuries (millennia, even) will not necessarily have been singing from the same
hymnsheet (as politicians, of all people, are supposed to). Some of those
readers would gladly have poured boiling oil over others, and a majority will
have done their utmost to discredit the interpretations of all the rest. But a
subtle chef d'orchestre, which is what commentators of the future must model
themselves on, especially a chef of the atonal variety, will find symphony in
this mélange of voices, and rejoice, if not at every contribution made in the
name of biblical interpretation, at least in their very variety.
Once, it was
enough to be yourself as you read and commentated on the Bible; me Tarzan, you
Jane. Today though, we do not read in private; we are all spokespersons for our
reading communities, torchbearers for pressure groups and interest groups of
every kind, while Jane speaks for feminists in general (though perhaps only
white hetero size 6 feminists) and Tarzan has found that he represents a
'community' (of tree-loving, inarticulate body-builders), none of whom he has
actually ever met.
What's more, standing over the shoulders of these busy
reading communities to which we are attached whether we like it or not, know it
or not, are the denizens and the guardians of the various reading traditions
that stretch back in time-scholarly traditions and ethnic traditions and
religious traditions that taught us how to read, brought those reading
communities contemporary with us into being. How like a Hebraist, how like a
Jewish scholar, how like a church father, how like a nineteenth-century
commentator, we chorus as we encounter yet another interpretation of Esther (or
whatever), with a little squeal of recognition .
It is a signal feature of
our age that whole tribes of readers, from every century since the biblical
books were written, are being brought back to life in a mass resurrection of the
footnoted. Kimchi and Rashi, Augustine and Gregory and Thomas, Luther and Calvin
and Oecolampadius, who yesterday belonged to the history of interpretation have
today become our contemporaries. If ethnicity and gender make no difference to
the validity of your interpretation (since there are no valid interpretations,
only adopted or 'bought' ones), why should deadness? Bring back the old-timers
into the commentators' conversazione (dressed in period costume, of
course, to show we haven't lost our sense of historical context), for they too
are readers, and our business is with readers, not with rightness. Let us
surround ourselves with a vast cloud of witnesses to the meanings of the text,
relish their infinite variety, and celebrate the fecundity of our classic text
that has given birth to all these readings.
And while we are about it, since
we are opening up the circle of readers to scholars of every age, let us not
restrict it by demanding a PhD (or equivalent) of everyone entitled to join our
conversation. Let's extend a
3. Welcome to all kinds of readers
Commentaries are in the business of interpretation,
which is to say, reading, and are in principle doing nothing different from what
readers of all descriptions, readers good, bad and indifferent, have been doing
with the same text all through history. Let us not assume therefore that we can
learn only from learned readers, which means, readers who have been trained to
read in a certain way, readers who are not allowed by their profession to read
in the ways unprofessional readers do. I do not slight professionals. I know,
when it comes to brain surgery, I would rather have my head in the hands of a
professional. On the other hand, for other complaints of the head that need
sorting out, I am not so sure about professionals, Freudian, Jungian or Gestalt.
There are heart problems for which the last person you want is a PhD.
In
fact, I have come to believe that, if I exclude from my bookshelves and my heap
of photocopies the works of non-professional readers, I do myself a disservice.
I restrict my field of vision, and predetermine what will count as valuable and
interesting readings. Look at the bibliographies with which we commentators have
been accustomed to adorn our commentaries. At the same time as showing off
certain impressionable readers how much learning we have picked up from our
academic, textual, linguistic, orientalist, Christian-theological (for the most
part) resources we have been reading, what we are silently admitting, to another
kind of (more perceptive) reader, is our imperviousness to rhetoric, poetry,
literature, psychology, philosophy and art-to say nothing of the relative
subjugation of the our own individuality in the interests of a common
'objective' language of discourse. This does not do us or our texts a favour.
But if our angle of vision is to be enlarged, so also must be the scope, and
yes, the size of our commentaries. Whereupon I invoke a
4. Hail to the Poly-Commentary
In a vision I have seen the commentary of the
future, and (unlike the Anchor Bible) it is not thick but thin, its colour is
silver, it rolls like the wheels of Ezekiel's chariot, and the number of its
letters is six hundred and fifty thousands of thousands. It is a CD-unless
perhaps it is even more insubstantial, and is an internet site on a server in a
place you have never heard of. The commentary of the future, in my vision, is a
resource, a treasury, a showcase, a celebration, of all that the biblical text
can generate. Rather than leading inward, to the one true meaning of the text
buried like a pearl at the heart of the cornucopia of words that have been
spoken and written about the text, the commentary leads outward, to the multiple
meanings the text has engendered in its manifold readers, and the as yet
unrealized potentialities of the text for meaning. If the text is, as Umberto
Eco once called it, a machine for generating interpretations, the commentary
that will suit the text must be a poly-commentary, multi-voiced, indeterminate,
divergent, suggestive and limitless-an infinite set of variations on the
biblical text.
All great music is variations. Antonio Diabelli, composer and
entrepreneurial music publisher, sent his vivacious waltz tune around to almost
all the composers of his day in the Austrian empire, asking them to write him a
variation on it. Four years later, Beethoven, no great time-keeper, delivered
his wonderful Diabelli Variations, a work not of one but of 33 variations,
lasting 45 minutes, his last major work for the piano, and his greatest, one of
the key masterpieces of Western music. I think of the biblical text as
Diabelli's tune, begging to be transposed into as many keys as possible,
transformed rhythmically, tonally, in mood and in spirit; the variations may be
provocative, playful or profound, but never more than variations on an
original, always identifiably in conversation with the original, and
coming to rest in the end with the original, where it all started, and by which
it is forever, in its entirety, bounded.
The commentary as a hypertext
collection of the original, with all its variations-it is not a new idea. The
classic rabbinic Bible was hypertext devant la lettre. In the centre of
the page, the text, and flowing around it the interpretation of the Targum and
the commentaries of the scholars, the biblical text and the commentaries on the
same page, the work of the creative artist and of its readers distinguishable be
nonetheless of the same substance. As happens as a matter of course with
hypertexts, the reader was constantly being seduced into reading what one never
intended to, spending yet another minute checking out Rashi or pondering over
what the ancient dragoman had written in the Targum. Reading could never be
linear and was perforce lateral, each text always in relation to the others-and
the thinking that results from the reading is of necessity lateral thinking,
associative and dialogic, reader-involving. Hypertext is a cool medium, in
Marshall McLuhan's terms, providing you with questions and possibilities rather
than with answers and foregone conclusions, the opposite of television and the
traditional novel. And, even with ancient hypertext, you could never encounter
the Bible pure and simple, for the biblical text always stood in the midst of a
throng of admirers and interlocutors. Perhaps in a way you could say that the
biblical texts already included all their commentaries within themselves, like
the iridescent feathers of a peacock's tail, as the Irish theologian Scotus
Erigena put it when he argued that Holy Scripture contains an infinite number of
meanings within itself. Nowadays we might say, less imaginatively, that the
study of the Bible is at the same time the study of its interpretations, which
is, the study of its readers.
How to make a hypertext commentary, a
poly-commentatorial set of variations on Esther? To give some reality to my
imagination I chose, almost at random, one verse on which to spawn my vision.
Esther 7.4 reads:
For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to
be slain, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and
women, I would have held my peace; for our affliction is not to be compared with
the loss to the king.
For this verse, as for every other in the book, so I suppose, I was able to offer a set of commentatorial choices:
1. Interactive
2. Commentary
3.
Translation
4. Hebrew
5. The Arts
6. Intertexts
7.
Bibliography
There is no correct order in which to visit these
elements of the polycommentary. There is no need to consider all of them and the
reader is entirely free to browse as they choose. Because the material is
hypertext, organized as a website in a web browser, the reader is in control of
the reading experience, and can read for all they are worth, for as long as they
like. In the Appendix to this paper, I have reproduced some of the materials of
this website.
Who will read such a commentary, one may well ask, incalculably
wordier than any commentary of our day? No one. No one will read every word, any
more than they do of the telephone directory, the Encyclopaedia Britannica or
the World Wide Web. But everyone who uses it can find and read what they want,
and be perpetually tempted to read more than they thought they wanted, wander
down avenues they didn't realize existed, waste time (i.e. enjoy themselves)
with the text rather than efficiently pinpoint the answer to the question with
which they had logged on. That is, I suggest, the future of the commentary, the
future of commentary writing and the future of commentary reading, both of them
transformed by reconceiving the commentary as hypertext.
APPENDIX
1. Interactive
I imagine some readers might like to be guided through a
dialogue with the text, not being told the 'answers', but having an opportunity
to see how the text raises questions, time to think how one would answer them
oneself, and a chance to see how someone else might answer them.
Thus, I
ask,
1 Why does Esther say, We are sold [in the passive
voice]? Who has sold them?
2 Why does she say sold Has money
changed hands?
3 Why does she say, I and my people? She is a member of
her people. Would not my people mean the same thing?
4 Why does she
say destroyed slain annihilated? Do they not all mean the same
thing?
The user of the poly-commentary can reflect on these question for themselves before peeking at the answers this commentator offers, such as:
To Question 1, I answer: Well, the king has effectively sold them to Haman, who offered (and presumably paid) the king money for them. Esther can hardly say, You have sold them, for that would sound like an accusation. Anyway, her point is not who has sold them, but the fact that they have been sold.
To Question 2, I answer: Yes, Haman has pledged to give the king 10,000 talents of silver if he will allow him to exterminate the Jews. And on the screen is the text of the passage where that is said:
Esth. 3:8 Then Haman said to King Ahasu-erus,
"There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in
all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every
other people, and they do not keep the king's laws, so that it is not for the
king's profit to tolerate them.
Esth. 3:9 If it please the king, let it be
decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver
into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may
put it into the king's treasuries."
Esth. 3:10 So the king took his signet
ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the
enemy of the Jews.
Question 4, I answer: She is picking up the exact language in which the decree of extermination had been issued by Haman in the king's name. It sounds like formal, legal language, the language of a royal decree. And on the screen is the text of the passage where that is said:
Esth 3.11 And the king said to Haman, "The money is given to you, the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you." (12) Then the king's secretaries were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month, and an edict, according to all that Haman commanded, was written to the king's satraps and to the governors over all the provinces and to the princes of all the peoples, to every province in its own script and every people in its own language; it was written in the name of King Ahasu-erus and sealed with the king's ring. (13) Letters were sent by couriers to all the king's provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, in one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their goods.
2. Commentary
Here is the place where the user will find many commentaries
on the text, from different periods and perspectives, arranged as (1) rabbinic,
(2) traditional, (3) popular, (4) scientific.
Under Rabbinic the user will
see, for example:
Yosef Lekach
As slaves and servant-girls. Esther said to the king: Had my
people been enslaved, I would not have objected, for the Jews were warned in
the, for the Jews were warned in the Torah that if they sin they will be sold to
their enemies. Your punishment,
Ahasuerus, would not have been great for you
would have been instrumental in fulfilling the prophecy. But now you have
decreed the complete extermination of the Jews, something the Torah never
prophesied. For session a deed your punishment would have been enormous. The sar
/ enemy who instigated the decree did not concern himself with nzq hmlk / the
damage to the king that would result in the form of divine
retribution.
Rashi
The adversary is not worthy of the king's damage, i.e. he is
not concerned with the king's damage. Had he been concerned with the king's
welfare he would have advised him to sell the Jews and keep the money, or keep
them-and their descendants-s perpetual slaves,
Yosef Lekach
Of course Esther was not suggesting that her people should
be sold as slaves! She merely wanted to stress the evil intent of the adversary
in not having made this bts suggestion to the king.
Ibn Ezra
The adversary was not concerned with the financial damage to
the king resultant from the enormous loss of tax revenue.
Under Traditional the user will find, for example:
CORNELIUS A LAPIDE
traditi enim sumus ego et populus meus ut conteramur
iugulemur et pereamus atque utinam in servos et famulas venderemur esset
tolerabile malum et gemens tacerem nunc autem hostis noster est cuius crudelitas
redundat in regem
For we are delivered, I and my people, that we should be
destroyed, put to death and perish. Would that we had been sold as slaves and
serving-girls! It would have been a tolerable evil, and I would have held my
peace even as I wept. But now there is our enemy, whose cruelty rebounds against
the king.
WOULD THAT WE HAD BEEN SOLD AS SLAVES AND SLAVE-GIRLS] so that, our
life being spared, we could at least have been servants and serving girls to the
king and to the Persians!
BUT NOW THERE IS OUR ENEMY] who wishes to deprive
me and the Jews and everyone of life, WHOSE CRUELTY therefore REBOUNDS AGAINST
THE KING , for by his edict of death to the Jews, who fill his treasury with
enormous tribute, and who provide many services to the king, and from whom his
own safety and the safety of the kingdom can enlist many valiant soldiers; nay,
whom he can set as wise rulers over his provinces, like Daniel with his three
associates. From these and many other benefits from the Jews that you can
perceive-to say nothing of greater benefits you do not yet perceive-Haman is
depriving you, O Ahasuerus. He is plotting a grave and lasting calumny against
you among all peoples itself that you would destroy our innocent race, a race
that has earned your goodwill. Against you therefore will the cruelty of Haman
in seeking the extermination of the Jews rebound in the highest
degree.
Under Popular the user will find, for example:
McConville
[Esther's] only hope lies in displaying the villainy of her
antagonist in all its hideousness. With this in view she makes reference to the
sordid financial transaction that had accompanied the decree (perhaps the king
had taken the money after all, despite his disclaimer, 3:11, which would then
have to be seen as conventional eastern politeness).
Bjornard
[Esther's] petition follows an interesting Near Eastern
tradition of bargaining. If they had been merely sold away as slaves, Esther
would not have complained. Then their worry would be less than the strain and
stress burdening the great emperor. And their loss of freedom would be smaller
than the king's loss of so many loyal subjects. But since they are slated to be
annihilated, she must be permitted to beg for her life.
Stafford Wright
[Esther] begs for the life of herself and her people. She
knows the terms of the transaction, and the loss in money which the king would
sustain if he went back on Haman's plan with its accompanying bribe (4; cf.
3:9); but it is not evna question of slavery; it is life or death
(4).
Under Scientific the user will find, for example:
Moore
In this verse Esther justifies her
requests in vs. 3. Unfortunately, her rationale is far from clear, probably
because of corruption in the MT.
We've been sold. An allusion to the monetary
transaction between Haman and the king (see Note on 3:9), although many scholars
understand 'sold to be used here in the sense of 'delivered over to' (as in Deut
22:30; Judg 2:14; 4:2, 9; 10:7).
Baldwin
For we are sold is a reference to
financial gain offered by Haman as an inducement to the king to grant his
request (3:9). The verb was not always used literally (cf. Deut. 32:30; Jugd
2:14; 4:9; Ps 44:12), but in the light of the money transaction in this case it
was doubly appropriate.
To be destroyed, to be slain, to be annihilated: the
verbs are exactly those of the decree despite the difference required by the
English translation (cf. 3:13). To emphasize the enormity of the plot it was
appropriate to introduce the idea that the queen and her people might have been
sold as slaves, as though that would have occasioned no protest.
The meaning
of the last clause of verse 4 is problematic for several reasons. The word
translated affliction (Heb. sar) can also mean 'enemy' (RSV 'adversary'), and
there is no indication whose affliction is meant. The word for loss renders a
Hebrew term which occurs only here in the Old Testament, and whose meaning is
therefore uncertain, though in rabbinic Hebrew it means 'damage', 'injury'. The
translator here also has to be interpreter, hence the wide differences between
versions: e.g. 'no such distress would justify disturbing the king' (NIV); 'for
then our plight would not be such as to injure the king's interests' (NEB); ' I
would have kept quiet and not bothered you about it' (GNB, a very free
translation). The older interpretation appears in the margin of NIV, 'but the
compensation our adversary offers cannot be compared with the loss the king
would suffer', a sense which JB expresses very well: 'but as things are, it will
be beyond the means of the persecutor to make good the loss that the king is
about to sustain'. This reference to the king's concerns is good psychology and
the inference that people are to be valued above money is in keeping with
Esther's cause; so, until more light is shed on the meaning, the last two
translations quoted have most to commend them, with RSV a close
runner-up.
Clines
Esther can hardly say that it is in fact
the king himself who has sold them (see 3:9-11), and so she must put the remark
in the passive: we are sold. She has been well primed by Mordecai, and knows
both the sum of money offered to Haman (see 4:7) and the exact terms of the
edict prepared by Haman (destroyed ... slain ... annihilated; cf. 3:13).
The
reason why she would have kept her peace if the Jews' plight had simply been to
be sold as slaves--a common enough occurrence (cf. Neh 5:8)--is that such
affliction would be not to be compared with the loss to the king. This can only
mean it would be too trivial a matter to bother the king (on nsq 'trouble', see
H.L. Ginsberg, VTS 16 [1967], p. 81). NEB has 'would not be such as to injure
the king's interests', but this does not adequately express the force of soweh
'appropriate, fitting'.
3. Translations
This is where translations ancient and modern may be found.
Nothing arms the English reader better for the work of exegesis than studying
the amazing variety of translations available. The more scholarly reader will
also benefit from having the ancient versions at hand.
The polycommentator
will not refrain from engagement with the variety of translations. Attached to
every screen with the text of translations the attentive reader will find
explanations, comments and criticisms of the translations.
4. Hebrew
There will be readers who want to read the biblical passage
in the original, find help with the Hebrew, study the language and grammar and
text-critical problems. A whole section of the commentary will be entirely for
their benefit.
5. The Arts
So that the contribution of the arts to the process of
reading should not be overlooked, this section brings to bear materials from (1)
poetry, (2) film, (3) images, and (4) music. For this text dealing with slavery
and the contemplation of slavery, it is not difficult to summon up elements from
the visual and literary arts that can colour and enhance the significance of the
text.
6. Intertexts
This is the place for a variety of materials the
polycommentator chooses to present to the reader in order to provoke further
reflection through the juxtaposition of the biblical text with other texts
(which are in most cases not influenced literarily by the biblical text). The
selections under The Arts already are intertexts, but in the present section I
have placed texts I would like the reader to consider as they meditate on the
text.
What I have created already is (1) a short list of literary quotations
on the theme of slavery:
Classic quotations on slavery
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The
power to cancel his captivity.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar,
I.ii.101
What more often in nations grown corrupt,
And by
their vices brought to servitude,
Than to love bondage more than
liberty,
Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
Milton, Samson
Agonistes, 268
A cat pent up becomes a lion
Italian
proverb
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in
chains
Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762), 1.1 (tr. G.D.H. Cole)
He who is conceived in a cage
Yearns for the
cage
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 'Monologue of a Blue Fox on an Alaskan Animal
Farm', quoted in The New York Times, 18 January 1968
This is what it means
To be a slave: to be
abused and bear it,
Compelled by violence to suffer wrong.
Euripides,
Hecuba (c. 425 BCE) (tr. William Arrowsmith)
Whatever day
Makes man a slave, takes half his
worth away.
Homer, Odyssey, 17.392 (tr. Pope)
Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is
enslaved, all are not free.
John F. Kennedy, address, West Berlin, 26 June,
1963
This is servitude,
To serve the
unwise.
Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), 6.178
Servitude debases men to the point where they end
up liking it.
Vauvenargues, Reflections and Maxims (1746), 22
And (2), any other texts that might seem relevant to the biblical text, as for example the following letter to the Times:
Sir, The Prime Minister's proposal to commemorate
the victims of slavery (report, March 3) is welcome, not least because one of
the most pressing issues of the new millennium is the continuation of this
horror.
Today, tens of millions of people remain enslaved around the world,
whilst of the more than 100 million trapped in bonded labour, many are
vulnerable children.
This country needs to remember that much of the wealth
which created 'Great Britain' was blood money in the truest sense. I believe
that the greatest tribute would be for Britain once again to lead the world in
campaigning against slavery.
Yours etc.
ZERBANOO GIFFORD
Director
The
ASHA Foundation
Herga House, London Road
Harrow-on-the-Hill HA1
3JUDGE
The Times, 9 March, 2000