# Is Slavery Endorsed By the Bible **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 8, 2010, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853 "2010-11-08T01:41:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/21 "2010-11-08T04:43:06Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > 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. Then God is by your own description of him evil. There is no moral justification for endorsing slavery under any circumstances. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > 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. It’s called “hypocrisy” and “willful blindness”. It _was_ obvious, and still is; but if people don’t want to see the obvious then they won’t. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/22 "2010-11-08T04:46:18Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > The only societies that (as a strict rule) never had slavery were hunter-gatherer societies. Which is simply not true. HGs took slaves routinely in battle. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/23 "2010-11-08T04:49:36Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Seen by this: [http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=24247](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. My personal thoughts are that you are a teenager with many years left to learn the ways of the world from others, and that one day you may combine what you have learned from others with your own personal experiences and develop conclusions. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/24 "2010-11-08T04:57:48Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Then God is by your own description of him evil. There is no moral justification for endorsing slavery under any circumstances. > > It’s called “hypocrisy” and “willful blindness”. It _was_ obvious, and still is; but if people don’t want to see the obvious then they won’t. I don’t see it as hypocrisy at all, I just think there was a time when the majority of human thought didn’t consider the context of your actions outside of how they directly affected you or your kin/clansmen/etc. There’s no real hypocrisy in a slave breaking free only to enslave others. Even while a slave they presumably had no problem with the concept of slavery. To them it was just a matter of power, at one point they had less power than another and were enslaved, but later on they were in a situation where they had more power and used it to enslave others. It’d be hypocrisy for the idealized Spartacus as portrayed by Kirk Douglas to go around enslaving people, because that guy was advocating the _concept_ of freedom as a universal human good. However, in reality most slaves weren’t thinking that way. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/25 "2010-11-08T05:02:03Z")
My personal thoughts are that he should answer questions asked in one thread before abandoning it and opening another, else people conclude his is incapable of answering those questions. ---
**Author:** ![PBear42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PBear42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PBear42)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/26 "2010-11-08T05:16:15Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > 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. This. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/27 "2010-11-08T05:35:20Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It’s called “hypocrisy” and “willful blindness”. It _was_ obvious, and still is; but if people don’t want to see the obvious then they won’t. I don’t know if it was hypocrisy or even willful blindness. This isn’t biblical but I keep thinking about that scene in the Iliad with Hector, having just come back from battle, standing on the walls with his wife Adromache and their son Astyanax. Hector voices his concerns about the fate of wife and child should he be slain and the city of Ilium fall to the invaders. He’s worried that his wife will work the looms of another man and that his son will be killed but he doesn’t wish a peaceful life for Astyanax. He wishes that Astyanax grow up to be a warrior even greater than Hector himself. Presumably so that Astyanax can then go out and make the wives of his enemies work his loom and kill their sons. I don’t think it’s so much hypocrisy as it was about how people in the past believed the world worked. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/28 "2010-11-08T05:55:57Z")
The Bible (by which I mean the OT) was, _inter alia_, the legal code of a Bronze Age society, and as such was fairly liberal for its time and place. On paper at least, slaves had far more rights in Israel of 1000 BC than they had in Rome one thousand years later, or in Virginia 1800 years after that. Taking the Bible out of context is a favorite sport of its most ardent proponents \*and \*opponents. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/29 "2010-11-08T05:57:18Z")
The Bible endorses slavery, accepts it as normal, tells slaves to obey their masters, tells the Hebrews to take slaves and legally treats the murder of slaves as property crimes. As has been said, the Bible says these things because it represents the prevailing view of the ancient world. It’s not even the most repugnant, backwards worldview expressed in the Bible. The worst stuff is reserved for women. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/30 "2010-11-08T05:59:57Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > The Bible (by which I mean the OT) was, _inter alia_, the legal code of a Bronze Age society, and as such was fairly liberal for its time and place. On paper at least, slaves had far more rights in Israel of 1000 BC than they had in Rome one thousand years later Cite? Rome actually had a pretty liberal slave practice. What rights does the Bible give to slaves that Rome did not? The chattel slave system in the Americas was far more brutal than most of what existed in the ancient world. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/31 "2010-11-08T06:21:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Then God is by your own description of him evil. There is no moral justification for endorsing slavery under any circumstances. > . How is a Bronze age, or a pre industrial society supposed to function than unless you send over a couple of engineers from today? ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/32 "2010-11-08T06:24:15Z")
> [@LouisB](#): > > **Is Slavery Endorsed By the Bible** If the answer is yes, do you plan to go out and buy a few? No, Hell No, Fuck No, By God No, NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO I hope you get thepoint ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/33 "2010-11-08T06:35:07Z")
Early Christianity was an apocalyptic cult (I don’t use cult in the pejorative sense here). They weren’t really concerned with what was going to happen in the physical world so much as they were concerned with the state of your soul as the end was nigh. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/34 "2010-11-08T06:49:38Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > How is a Bronze age, or a pre industrial society supposed to function than unless you send over a couple of engineers from today? Pay people to do the job instead of using slaves. The slave owners would have been a little poorer, but the ancient society in question would be richer; slavery is economically inefficient. Slaves do inferior work (IIRC one of the first clues that the Egyptian Pyramids weren’t actually built by slaves was that their construction quality was unexpectedly high for slave labor). ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/35 "2010-11-08T06:49:49Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Early Christianity was an apocalyptic cult (I don’t use cult in the pejorative sense here). They weren’t really concerned with what was going to happen in the physical world so much as they were concerned with the state of your soul as the end was nigh. Sure, but only a small part of the Bible reflects an early Christian perspective. The bulk of it long predates Christianity. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/36 "2010-11-08T06:52:32Z")
To the extent that the Bible condones slavery, it is wrong. And it is wrong because it was written by fallible humans, who may have been inspired by God, but were certainly not themselves God. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/37 "2010-11-08T07:03:57Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Pay people to do the job instead of using slaves. The slave owners would have been a little poorer, but the ancient society in question would be richer; slavery is economically inefficient. Slaves do inferior work (IIRC one of the first clues that the Egyptian Pyramids weren’t actually built by slaves was that their construction quality was unexpectedly high for slave labor). True, although the pyramids weren’t built by employees, either - their construction was a form of tax payment. I don’t think the concept of employer-employee relationships, in the modern sense, really existed in the ancient world. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/38 "2010-11-08T08:49:04Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Cite? Rome actually had a pretty liberal slave practice. What rights does the Bible give to slaves that Rome did not? Perhaps he’s referring to the practice of freeing Hebrews owned by other Hebrews after 7 years. In most places the Bible accepts slavery as normal. It never forbids it. However in at least one place God Himself permits soldiers to take female virgins as unwilling wives or concubines so long as they shave the woman’s head and clip her nails (which really why wouldn’t you?) and give her a month to mourn before raping her. [Scholarly Source 1](http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/slavery/ex21_02a.html) [Scholarly Source 2](http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/prisoners_of_war/dt21_10a.html) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/39 "2010-11-08T11:25:42Z")
I wrote: \> The only societies that (as a strict rule) never had slavery were hunter-gatherer \> societies. In reply, Blake wrote: \> Which is simply not true. HGs took slaves routinely in battle. I was quoting from the Wikipedia entry on the history of slavery: \> Slavery is rare among hunter–gatherer populations, as slavery is a system of \> social stratification. The Wikipedia entry was quoting (as you can see in footnote 16) from the Britannica entry on slavery: \> It was rare among primitive peoples, such as the hunter-gatherer societies, \> because for slavery to flourish, social differentiation or stratification was \> essential. You say that you know more about this than Wikipedia or the Britannica. Fine. Give us some examples and some citations. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/40 "2010-11-08T12:32:00Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > To the extent that the Bible condones slavery, it is wrong. And it is wrong because it was written by fallible humans, who may have been inspired by God, but were certainly not themselves God. Those same fallible people also were the one’s who declared it to be inspired by God, it is a human action, and thought. I do not think a Supreme Being who knew and knows all things,and is supposed to be all loving and fair, would inspire a lot of what the Bible teaches, nor would a Good Father (that is supposed to be) treat some of his children any differently than the rest. Nor would that same being pick out certain people to favor. When one can only look at it through the eyes or mind of another human. The writers were themselves trying to make people slaves through guilt! It still goes on today. Many of the religions use guilt, or fear to control people,making mental slaves out of them! This same God should be able to inspire each person (who he is said to have created), with out the need to have one or 2 people tell them how to act, or what to do. Paul tells slaves to obey their masters and his writngs are supposed to be inspired! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853.md?page=3)