'Inscriptions at Delphi have been the principal means of enlightening

us concerning the nature and ritual of manumission, with a religious

object in ancient times' (Deissmann).

Among the ways in which a slave could attain his freedom, we find the

solemn rite of fictitious purchase of the slave by some divinity.  What

actually happened is, that the slave having deposited enough of his savings

at the temple, the owner comes forward and goes through a form of selling his

slave to the god, but this was simply to save the owner's face.  When this

transaction was done, the slave was a completely free man.  Here is one such

formula of manumission preserved at Delphi and belonging to the period 200 -

199 b.c.:

Date.  Apollo the Pythian Bought from Sosibus ... For Freedom, a female

slave ... With a Price.

Galatians 5:1,13 can read:

'For freedom did Christ set us free ... ye were called for freedom',

and 1 Corinthians reminds us that we are 'bought with a price'.  In these

words we have the literal words of this manumission.  In many of these

records, the enfranchised slave is expressly allowed to 'do the things that

he will', words echoed in Galatians 5:17 where a possible relapse is

envisaged, 'that ye may not do the things that ye would'.

These manumissions also expressly forbid that any one thus enfranchised

shall ever 'be made a slave' again (see Gal. 2:4; 5:1).  How the heart of the

redeemed in those days must have thrilled at the well -known words now

invested with such glorious new meaning, 'Ye were bought with a price, become

not slaves of men' (1 Cor. 7:23).  When the word 'ransom' was used in such

times, it would be impossible not to associate it with the price that had

been paid, and the word lutron, 'ransom' is found in the Oxyrhynchus Papyrus

in connection with the manumission of slaves.  We will quote again from

'For the poor saints at Corinth, among whom there were certainly some

slaves, he could not have found a more popular illustration of the past

and present work of the Lord.  A Christian slave of Corinth going up

the path to the Acrocorinthus about Eastertide, when St. Paul's letters

arrived, would see ... the snowy peak of Parnassus ... the shrines of

Apollo, or Serapis, or Asclepius the Healer bought slaves with a price,

for freedom.  Then in the evening assembly was read the letter lately

received from Ephesus, and straightway the new Healer was present in

spirit with His worshippers, giving freedom from another slavery,

redeeming with a price the bondmen of sin and the law -- and that price

no pious fiction, received by Him out of the hard -earned denarii of

the slave, but paid by Himself with the redemption -money of His ...

self -sacrifice, rousing up for freedom those who languished in

Turning to Romans 6:7 we read:

'For he that is dead is freed from sin'.