The difference between pagan chattel slavery and the Hebrew laws on slaves is that pagan chattel slavery was for LIFE, and the slaves of the pagans had no rights. In pagan chattel slavery, a slave was born a slave and died a slave with all of their generations also born into the same condition with no hope of getting out. The pagan Spartans would randomly select a slave to slaughter each new year to reassert their dominance and instill fear in the slaves. By contrast, it was written into the Hebrew law that a slave was to be set free in the seventh year. And the slave of a Hebrew had to be treated well. If they would suffer a permanent injury by the hand of their master they would be set free. This was also written in Hebrew law. So, how slavery was in practice with the ancient Jews was like how workers get treated today. As someone else has said, we just call it a different name today. The slavery that African Americans experienced was the pagan chattel slavery model which was copied from ancient Rome and Greece (the Spartans and Athenians). The United States model of government was almost a direct copy of these ancient pagan societies but with a Christian veneer. That’s why the government buildings in Washington D.C. look like pagan temples and why the country has a giant statue of a pagan goddess (the Statue of Liberty).
There is an equivocation of the word ‘slavery’ that has been occurring on this issue, generally, and on this thread, in particular. It is the same kind of equivocation that would view all ‘killing’ as wrong, all ‘lying’ as wrong and all ‘stealing’ as wrong without regard for circumstances or the motives or limited options of those operating within compromised situations.
To claim that slavery is always wrong or that killing is always wrong is to make a general statement, which, like all general statements, (including this one) is only vacuously true. Obviously, killing is NOT always wrong, even though it sounds as if an important moral notion is being denied or abandoned.
Yes it would, on the surface, appear to be making any moral agent who did not officially subscribe to the belief that ‘killing is wrong’ into a moral monster, but that would be wrongheaded, since killing in some circumstances and under some motivations would be the necessary moral obligation. Therefore, to claim that the God of the Bible is morally deficient BECAUSE it does not anywhere clearly state his absolute prohibition on all killing simply misses the point that within a world imbued with evil, killing is at times necessary.
Now it would be necessary to engage in a great deal of discussion surrounding the role and responsibility God has for allowing evil to ‘flourish’ as it does - and that is an important and germane question in this discussion.
Given, however, that evil is an aspect of Earthly human reality, then the question of the role of apparent evils such as killing, slavery, confinement, theft, withholding the truth, deception, dispossession of goods, etc., all must be assessed within context and with regard to how these pertain to ultimate or, at least, a legitimate prioritizing of ‘the good.’
If human society were fully good, period, then killing would be wrong, period. Human society is NOT fully good, therefore some killing is necessarily permitted to prevent further evil. A similar case can be made, in principle, regarding the lawful confinement or detainment of human beings to prevent evil.
A case can, I suspect, also be made for some forms of indentured servitude or some forms of ‘slavery’ given factors such as the absence of a judicial system, absence of health or welfare safety nets, paucity of resources, etc. If, for example, a legal contract or sentence by a judge, in modern times, can legitimately bind individuals for a period of time and restrict their freedoms, it would not be difficult to imagine that under different social or physical conditions, individual freedoms might legitimately be curtailed in other ways.
Does this mean all forms of slavery might be permitted? No. However, what needs to be more clearly understood is what forms were permitted in the OT and for what reasons before we make assumptions about what ‘slavery’ meant under the Law.
The point made by Mike that slaves were harshly treated as a consequence of the Law, appears, at first blush very problematic, until we are reminded that every act contrary to the Law had dire consequences. Even ordinary Jewish citizens, not merely slaves, would suffer severe consequences for violations of the Law. In this respect, at least, slaves were not subject to treatment far different to the treatment accorded everyone else.
