Slavery in the Bible - Part 1

I encourage you to research the individual propositions within this entry yourself. In your research, please be aware of the bias of your source material (e.g. religious sites versus sceptic's sites versus material meant for pure scientific/philosophical knowledge).

 

Alas, my pet topic – slavery in the bible. This is one of the earliest reasons for my fall from faith – I could not quite fathom a loving God who permitted slavery. I will freely admit that, as a 13/14 year old, my thoughts on slavery in the bible were not entirely accurate as the verses were not fully and properly analysed.  However, the justifications for biblical slavery that I see now filling the pages of the Internet are still wildly insufficient. These reasons can be laid out into a few broad categories:

 

God wasn’t completely supportive of slavery

1.      God does not support slavery – he allows it.

2.      All people are equal in God’s eyes.

3.      The purpose of the bible is to point the way to salvation, not to reform society. A person who has experienced God's gift of salvation and freedom from the slavery of sin will realise that enslaving another human being is wrong.

There were many measures in place to avoid slavery

4.      Prisoners of wars were rarely, in practice, turned into slaves; a city that surrendered became a vassal of the state of Israel, and war captives were converted into vassal groups

5.      Family members could not be sold into slavery for the repayment of debts unless they consented, and there were many rules which limited the build-up of debt for Israelites.

6.      Paul the Apostle, in a letter to Philemon, indicated that he was returning a run-away slave, but had implored him to treat the slave as a brother and implied that he should free the slave.

7.      Runaway slaves automatically gained liberty.

It’s not exactly slavery

8.      The term “slave” had a very wide meaning in the bible and can mean anything from a slave in the worst sense of the word to a servant to a subordinate – e.g. slave (really servant) of God; slaves (really subjects) of a king.

9.      Israelites could not enslave other Israelites even where unpaid debts were involved – they could only hired as unpaid works for a limited period – 7 years.

It is slavery, but it’s not as bad as you think

10.  The slavery in the bible is not the slavery we commonly think of – where people are kidnapped and sold into slavery (the enslavement of Africans, for example). Biblical slavery was largely voluntary – life as a slave was far better than life in abject poverty.

11.  The purpose of biblical references to slavery was for the protection of the slaves. They were generally protected from over-abuse; injuring/killing slaves were punishable offenses – even with the death penalty in some cases.

12.  Slaves could not be threatened.

13.  The purpose of slavery in the bible was not to improve the economic advantage of the elite, but to alleviate the poverty of the enslaved

14.  Slaves did not live apart from their owners (in barracks on the fields, let's say) but within the homes of their owners and were able to benefit somewhat from their owners' fortunes.

15.  Slaves were semi-free – in that they had freedom in the sphere of their own activities – e.g. taking part in business, borrowing money, purchasing property; this made them more like servants

16.  Because of the economic security and the quasi-family relationship that was developed between slave and master, there was little incentive for slaves to leave; safety lay in belonging not in freedom

 

I will explore each of these broad defenses in its own entry.