# 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:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/81 "2010-11-09T23:19:21Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Huh? Jesus certainly wanted people to be free from sin. If he drew an equivalency between sin and slavery then we can draw the conclusion that Jesus wanted people to be free from slavery as well. No, that’s not necessarily the case. We even know why he was drawing an equivalency - the Jews he was speaking to are questioning “But wait, how can you say the truth will set us free? We’ve never been slaves!” to which Jesus is replying “Ah, but there are different forms of slavery; just as some may be slaves to other people, so too may some be slaves to sin”. He’s drawing equivalency of slavery in practical terms, not moral ones. It’s not reasonable to assume that someone drawing an equivalency between two things thinks those two things are equal on every point. > [@](#): > > But regardless, some people in this thread started by flatly stating that Jesus never spoke out in opposition to slavery. Now we’ve seen that He did. He spoke out about slavery to sin. He didn’t, in the part you quote, speak out about slavery to other people. Simply explained the practical effects in a way that people accustomed to seeing slavery would understand. > [@](#): > > If you want to backtrack to the stance that he said it but in a way that’s not phrased correctly or “not particularly impressive”, so what? I’m sure the hundreds of millions of people who have been set free because of what Jesus and the Apostles taught will take it, even if folks on an internet message board centuries or millenia later do criticize the wording. I’m not sure it’s reasonable to accuse _me_ of backtracking based on what _other people_ have written. Should I be accusing you of backtracking based on **kanicbird’s** Christian thoughts? I am sure that the people who continued as slaves and who were not set free will not be particularly happy that an omnipotent God and his son didn’t take the time to speak out against the notion. Well, if they had the time to, of course. > [@](#): > > It seems quite helpful to me, and again, probably for the great many people who became free because of it. As others have pointed out, slavery was universal in all civilizations in ancient times. It was simply a fact of life that, once a civilization became orderly enough that some people could benefit from holding slaves, they held slaves. In many places slavery persisted for thousands of years, and during all that time there was no record of anyone showing up and saying that slavery was bad because humans should be free. The institution of humans owning humans was as fully accepted as that of humans owning animals. So as far as I know, Jesus and the Apostles and other early Christians were bringing something wholly new into the world when they advanced the philosophy that all people should be free and slavery was a bad thing. Christian civilization became the first civilization that did not permit slavery. So you can argue, I suppose, that it’s a fantastic coincidence that Jesus opposed slavery and that Christian civlization was the first to get rid of slavery, but I still suspect a logical connection between the two. I’m going to have to ask you for a cite on Christian civilization being the first to get rid of slavery. I honestly mean no offense, but I tend to find your proclamations of Christian firsts and unique place in history are often somewhat flawed. And, of course, you haven’t proved your point about what Jesus and the Apostles said as of yet. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/82 "2010-11-10T13:58:32Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > You’re preaching to the choir in my case and that of many others here, but to most Christians Moses _was_ a real figure and one who spoke directly with and took dictation from God. Proceeding from the notion that he was divinely inspired, those passages would imply God endorsed slavery at least within parameters, for He could easily have called it abomination as He labeled many other things. > > [Butterfly McQueen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_McQueen#Quotes), is that you? Nope!! ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/83 "2010-11-10T14:25:54Z")
> [@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. I went over to [biblegateway.com](http://biblegateway.com) and did a search on the word “slave,” in a couple of the more widely used translations of the Bible (KJV, NIV). Surprisingly, there were very few hits. Hmm, thought I: I could have sworn there was more mention of slavery in the Bible than that. I looked up the passages you refer to. There’s no mention of slaves or slavery as such, though there are “bondsmen” and references to one person being sold to another. Sure sounds like slavery to me, when you’re owning or selling people; we don’t do that anymore (although we might have one person selling their services to someone else, or being under contract to someone else). But it did make me wonder, exactly how are we defining slavery, and what distinguishes being a slave from being something else, like a servant or an employee? ---
**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 10, 2010, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/84 "2010-11-10T14:29:02Z")
Some versions euphemistically translate the words for slave as “servant.” ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/85 "2010-11-10T14:56:00Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Some versions euphemistically translate the words for slave as “servant.” But how do we know when words like “servant” are being used euphemistically? For example, are the “manservant” and “maidservant” listed in the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:10, 17) “really” slaves? Are there more than one Hebrew word that get translated as “servant”? (And how would a person of 2000 or 3000 years ago understand the distinction between slaves vs. servants?) ---
**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 10, 2010, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/86 "2010-11-10T17:28:51Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > But how do we know when words like “servant” are being used euphemistically? > > For example, are the “manservant” and “maidservant” listed in the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:10, 17) “really” slaves? Are there more than one Hebrew word that get translated as “servant”? (And how would a person of 2000 or 3000 years ago understand the distinction between slaves vs. servants?) I don’t know Hebrew, so I can’t answer linguistic questions about it (though I’m not sure that paying servants was a practice that even existed at that time, so the distinction may be non-existent there), but I know that some NT versions (like the KJV) translate Greek words like _doulos_ and _pais_ as “servant,” when those words usually mean “slave” in Greek (especially _doulos_). ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/87 "2010-11-10T17:33:20Z")
> [@Mr.Kobayashi](#): > > Paul is opposed to slavery? In Philemon 1:10-16 he sends an escaped slave back to his master - not exactly the behaviour of an abolitionist. Not to mention that he _doesn’t_ chastise Philemon for owning slaves in the first place. > [@](#): > > Not to mention his famous “Slaves, obey your master” nonsense You mispelled _bullshit_ here. ---
**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 10, 2010, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/88 "2010-11-10T17:43:24Z")
Checking the Greek LXX translation of Exodus 20:10 , I see that it uses _ho pais_ and _he paidiske_ for “male servant” and “female servant.” The usual implication of that is slaves, though it’s not as strong as the word _doulos_, which the LXX uses in the next chapter of Exodus where it talks about buying and selling slaves. Interestingly, I see that the Hebrew word _ebed_ is the same in both chapters, but the LXX translates them differently I don’t know enough about Hebrew to know exactly what that word means or which Greek translation is more accurate, though. ---
**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 12, 2010, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/89 "2010-11-12T04:48:58Z")
> [@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). What’s interesting is it was precisely that realization that ended slavery in Europe. Of course, the slavery I’m talking about was serfdom. I recently read an interesting book about the history of Prussia, in it there is a passage about a Prussian Junker. He inherits some land. On this land live some people who legally aren’t allowed to leave (they can be captured and tried in a manorial court if they are, the manorial courts were ran by the local Junker–further, a Prussian Kingdom wide law existed which mandated runaway peasants be returned to the manor they fled from), and who were legally obligated to physically labor on the Junker’s private fields for a certain amount of time each week. The newly landed Junker noticed that when his peasants had to take their turn working his fields, they did _horrible work_. They were lazy, late, they would bring the worst draft animals, bring their worst tools, and essentially just perform the worst service imaginable. This was near the end of “real” serfdom, so peasants had a lot of protections then versus a few hundred years prior. The Junker could try to have his peasants whipped, but it wasn’t uncommon at the time for peasant work forces to rebel against the local Junker and plunge them into economic ruin. After dealing with it for awhile, the Junker just converted all of his tenants into cash rents, and hired outside laborers to work his own fields. As a consequence his estate went from being impoverished to being the most profitable estate (per-capita) in the region. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2010, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/90 "2010-11-12T14:57:47Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I went over to [biblegateway.com](http://biblegateway.com) and did a search on the word “slave,” in a couple of the more widely used translations of the Bible (KJV, NIV). Surprisingly, there were very few hits. Hmm, thought I: I could have sworn there was more mention of slavery in the Bible than that. > > I looked up the passages you refer to. There’s no mention of slaves or slavery as such, though there are “bondsmen” and references to one person being sold to another. Sure sounds like slavery to me, when you’re owning or selling people; we don’t do that anymore (although we might have one person selling their services to someone else, or being under contract to someone else). But it did make me wonder, exactly how are we defining slavery, and what distinguishes being a slave from being something else, like a servant or an employee? Good question - slavery in the old world existed on a continuum. Some forms were closer to what we now would consider a sort of indentured servitude - in that it had a fixed end-point. In the OT, members of the Hebrew tribes were generally supposed to only “own” other Hebrews by this form; they were to be free after a fixed period; they were not allowed to kill them or do grievous bodily harm to them in the meantime (if they damaged them, they had to free them). Slavery of fellow-Hebrews would appear to have been generally a result of either poverty (being sold for debts, or selling oneself out of desperation), or as a punishment for crime - such forms of slavery are historically common in societies lacking an organized penal system. This appears somewhat different to the notion of race-based chattel slavery that we are more familiar with, due to (more recent) experience. However, the rights of Hebrews over non-Hebrew slaves was more absolute. Such slaves presumably came from war captives and the like, and they were not automatically freed after a fixed time period. There is no evidence about how wide-spread such ownership actually was, though - it was unlikely to have been as significant an issue, as later under the Romans (for one, Judea was not a frequent winner of wars!) ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/91 "2010-11-13T13:57:43Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > 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. I realize i am a little late at replying to this, but can you prove God tolerated or stated anything? If you use the Bible or Koran, then you are using the words and thoughts of other humans. You can state you believe God said or did something but in fact, you are believing another human’s words,or passed on teachings. Why would a loving God who is supposed to be a loving father tolerate such things? If a human acted in that way he/she would be put in jail as a cruel person; shouldn’t a God (or supreme being) who is said to create those people, be responsible for creating a flawed or evil being? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2010, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/92 "2010-11-13T20:04:25Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Good question - slavery in the old world existed on a continuum. Some forms were closer to what we now would consider a sort of indentured servitude - in that it had a fixed end-point. It did in the New World also. Slavery varied widely from time to time and place to place as far as what slaves could and couldn’t do, the types of life expectancy they could expect, their chances of ever being free, etc.. In colonial Cuba for example slaves endured horrors they generally didn’t in what’s now the U.S. _ **but** _ because the Spanish Catholic church was very anti-slavery they had far more chance of being allowed to one day borrow their freedom. New Orleans slave society was very different from Alabama’s in the years before the Civil War, just as slavery in New England was different from slavery in New York City was different from slavery in the Carolinas at the time of the Revolution. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2010, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853/93 "2010-11-16T23:53:04Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Actually it was condemnded. In chapter 8 of John’s Gospel, Jesus makes a comparison between living a life of sin and being a slave, and between freedom from sin and freedom from slavery. Which obviously only makes sense if the whole discourse is occuring under the assumption that enslavement is a bad thing. As Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” and that carries with it the implication that being free is a good thing. None of that constitutes a condemnation of the practice of slavery. It’s just admission that it’s bad to actually be a slave. It’s immediately obvious that it sucks to be a slave. But that understanding is different from the claim that the concept of slavery is immoral. The moral imperative is quite clear for some things in the bible (It sucks to be dead; Thou shalt not kill) and not at all clear in this case (it sucks to be a slave; Uh, try not to be slaves, guys!). The first half is not sufficient. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-slavery-endorsed-by-the-bible/559853.md?page=4)