Seen by this: http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=24247 (As a cite not as “go there and debate them”).
My personal thoughts are that God sanctioned slavery in Classical times because the Roman economy was based on slavery and most pre-industrial economies were either slave or serf based. In addition the Classical slave system was not race based and often provided great opportunities as civil servants or teachers and in gaining freedom.
God took his cues from the state of the Roman economy?
This is an example of the sort of convoluted mental silliness that it takes to be a Christian. In order to reconcile an all-loving God with supporting slavery you’re pretending that slavery is totally fun.
In much the same way that banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall provides great opportunities to stop.
Taking the Bible literally is a form of mental slavery.
No I’m not. What I’m saying is that the Roman economy was going to transition into a modern capitalist/social democratic economy of the West to-day anytime soon, so God tolerated it as a necessary evil. There were no abolitionists back than at any rate.
Slavery was pretty common in ancient times. The only societies that (as a strict rule) never had slavery were hunter-gatherer societies. I’ve read (but can’t find any citations at the moment) that there are no known cases of anyone in ancient times saying that slavery is simply wrong in all situations. Even the slave rebellions in ancient times weren’t about freeing all slaves. They were about slaves breaking free from their masters (and usually killing them) and escaping, often to places where they then could enslave others. The Bible may accept slavery, but it’s not true that it opposes the permanent freeing of all slaves.
Well, I agree its sanctioned in the Bible because it was the norm at the time, anyways.
Kind of a marginal point. I’m not sure owning a slave is less evil just because he happens to be the same race as you.
Or an opportunity to be worked to death in the fields.
Exactly! Paul says to slaves to gain their freedom by legal means if they can.
Yes, many times - and never condemned, even by Jesus meek and mild.
See Exodus 21:2-6, Deuteronomy 15:12-15, Leviticus 25:44-46 and many more instances.
The reason being it was written, codified and compiled by primitive men in less enlightened times.
For omnipotent beings there are no necessary evils. So are you saying God is not omnipotent or not all-loving?
Why does god have to tolerate anything?
Which was just as likely if you were free also.
On religious controversies I check religioustolerance.org
The nice thing about the site is that it is fair to both believers and unbelievers alike.
It is then interesting to notice that on this subject the report comes as very critical of the bible and to the ones that did follow it literally:
Your saying that working conditions were just as harsh for slaves as for freemen in all of the ancient world? I’m pretty skeptical. The First Servile War, for example, was apparently started because slave labor was so cheap and plentiful after the Punic Wars that landowners didn’t really bother providing food for their slaves anymore.
This, and the early comment that slaves could gain their freedom by legal means, misses what the bible did say, AFAIK the bible says that the only ones that could get freedom that way were Israelite slaves. They could also get freedom during a Jubilee.
You were a slave but not an Israelite? Tough, you remained an slave until you died.
Yes, and that’s generally because in the ancient world most people wouldn’t want to be enslaved, but most of those same people would have no problem enslaving others.
Most wouldn’t want their land conquered, but would have no problem conquering others. “Do unto others…” actually wasn’t as “obvious” as it seems in retrospect.
Except for the slaves themselves, of course, and they didn’t count because God said it was okay because slavery was going to lead to something good anyway. And besides, it wasn’t a racist thing.
Is Slavery Endorsed By the Bible If the answer is yes, do you plan to go out and buy a few?
One doesn’t have to be a fundamentalist to interpret the bible as being supportive of slavery.