Abstract: This study focuses on the impact of the ubiquitous ancient institution on the emergence and early development of Christianity. Slaveholders as well as slaves were pivotal in early Christian circles. The centrality of slavery affects not only the reconstruction of the social histories of the emerging churches but also theological and ideological analyses of Christian rhetoric. Slaves were designated and treated as bodies. The bodies of slaves were the sexual property of their owners; the bodies of slaves were also vulnerable to regular abuse. Free persons were anxious to protect their bodies from the kinds of violations to which the bodies of slaves were regularly subjected. Christians who argued that true slavery was spiritual in nature often depended on somatic metaphors; in its reliance on metaphors of enslavement and liberation, Christian discourse encodes widespread cultural anxiety about preserving the integrity of the free body. In its generally uncritical acceptance of the institution of slavery, early Christianity transmits the ethical patterns of a slaveholder morality

Keywords: abuse, bodies, discourse, morality, rhetoric, sexual, slaveholders, spiritual