title: Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275425
author:  Kyle Harper 
description: This book reinterprets the end of Roman slavery, providing the most comprehensive account of a pre-modern slave system currently available. Essential reading for students and scholars interested in the social, economic and religious history of antiquity, and for students of slavery in general.
zlib_text: SIDEBAR
  Dating the Patriarchal Age: Where Kitchen Erred
  By Ronald S. Hendel
  056
  In “The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History,” BAR 21:02, Kenneth Kitchen cites six factors
  leading him to conclude that the patriarchs can be dated to the first half of the second
  millennium B.C.E., or the Middle Bronze Age. These factors are (1) the price of slaves, (2)
  treaties and covenants, (3) geo-political conditions, (4) references to Egypt, (5) patriarchal
  names and (6) the social world of the patriarchs. Unfortunately, this evidence does not add up
  to a persuasive argument for the early second millennium B.C.E. as the time of the patriarchs.
  The price of slaves
  Kitchen correlates the price of slaves recorded at various points in the Bible with slave prices
  in the ancient Near East. He finds that the 20 shekels of silver paid for Joseph (Genesis
  37:28) was the standard slave price in the 19th and 18th centuries B.C.E.; the slave price of
  30 shekels listed in Exodus 21:32 matches the going price in the 