Board index ‹ Slavery in the Bible

[Kelvin]

Just because I did not go on at length about my opinions and interpretations does not mean that they are unresearched. My point was that when slavery in the bible is brought up, it is commonly sugar-coated or waved off because they want to deny that immoral things happened in biblical times.

I have a few issues with what you've said. You gave quite an essay so it may not be everything. I completely disagree with making children work as slaves or servants to pay off the debt of their parents. I also think that when you say everyone, you're not taking into account the sort of sexism that existed at the time. It is undeniable that women were not exactly treated equally since they had a "place" and that they did not have the same rights here. Like you said, they also go into this contract with their husbands if he goes into debt since she doesn't really have her own money and is bound to her husband in marriage.

[jimwalton]

> Just because I did not go on at length about my opinions and interpretations does not mean that they are unresearched.

Fair enough. Sorry if I was out of line.

> My point was that when slavery in the bible is brought up, it is commonly sugar-coated or waved off because they want to deny that immoral things happened in biblical times.

Well, I'm certainly not guilty of this. You even admitted, "You gave quite an essay." But I didn't even say everything that needed to be said. Therefore no sugar-coating or waving off here, just research.

> I completely disagree with making children work as slaves or servants to pay off the debt of their parents.

So do I, and so does the Bible. I'm not aware of any place where the Bible endorses or even allows this practice. So I don't know where this comes from.

> I also think that when you say everyone, you're not taking into account the sort of sexism that existed at the time.

Yeah, some sexism seems to be a part of every culture, but sexism doesn't necessarily contribute to a slavery system. Sexism is objectionable, and I find it fascinating to read about the dignity and fair treatment that the Bible affords its women that other contemporaneous cultures didn't. Often, though, our perspective on patriarchalism is colored by anachronisms and misunderstandings. I read an interesting excerpt by Carol Meyers (" 'Eves' of Everyday Ancient Israel," Biblical Archaeology Review, Nov.DEc 2014, pp. 51-54, 6, 68) about patriarchalism in ancient Israel:

"While there were certain activities in the household that the women exclusively did, such as the grinding of grain into flour, anthropologists note that most household activities were not performed exclusively by one gender. ...

"Anthropological studies can also elucidate women’s relationships with other members of their families, especially their husbands. Were women really as subordinate in Biblical times as many people think? Anthropological studies from societies similar to ancient Israel provide useful analogies. Interactions between household members are an example. Because women often have critical roles in maintaining household life, the senior woman in an extended family is often in a position of parity and interdependence, not subordination, with her husband for most aspects of household life. This is an especially significant observation for ancient Israel because the household was the major unity of society for most Israelites. ...

"The negative images of Eve that persist until today can be traced to ancient sources beginning in the Greco-Roman world. Those images were influenced by ideas about women that were current in Greco-Roman times but not in Iron Age Israel. ...

"Social scientists alert us to what they call 'presentism,' the phenomenon in which perspectives and ideas that we take for granted in today's world affect how we understand the past. We tend to read the present into the past anachronistically, which can lead us to misunderstanding the past. It is surely true that human beings have much in common throughout time, but there are also sometimes basic differences, and these must be taken into account. For example, today cooking and cleaning and caring for young children are often seen as unpaid housework. These chores may be undervalued, even trivialized. But in a pre-modern peasant society without supermarkets and day-care centers, these tasks have significant economic value. They are essential for household survival, and they earn women positive regard.

"Similarly, 'presentism' can affect how we view the division between work and family, between what is public and what is private. How these divisions are understood may be very different between a post-industrial capitalist society, on the one hand, and a pre-modern agrarian society on the other. In the latter, the household is the workplace for both women and men, and household activities for both women and men were connected to larger community and kinship structures.

"Consider the concept of patriarchy. Typically this concept has been taken to imply near total male domination in families and in other social institutions. But anthropologists, classicists, feminist theorists, theologians and others who have more recently studied the concept have shown that this understanding of patriarchy does not take into account that women often had considerable agency in certain aspects of household life and that women’s groups and institutions had their own hierarchies. ...

"To get a balanced view of Israelite society in the Iron Age, the broader picture must be considered. Patriarchy is a term that was invented millennia after the Iron Age and is probably unsuitable for characterizing ancient Israel."

I just found that interesting.

[Explorer]

I just want to respond specifically to a piece you reference from Paul Copan:

Dr. Paul Copan writes, "Does this text regard foreign workers as nothing more than property? No: Lev. 19.33-34; Ex. 22.21. These foreigners are still nowhere near the chattel slaves of the antebellum South (US). A significant presence of apparently resentful foreigners required stricter measures than those for cooperative aliens who were willing to follow Israel’s laws. Only Israelites were allowed to own land in Israel (which ultimately belonged to YHWH: Lev. 25.23; Josh. 22.19). The only way for a foreigner to survive was to be incorporated into an Israelite home to serve there. Runaway slaves were given protection within Israel’s borders (Dt. 23.15-16). Kidnapping slaves was also prohibited (Ex. 21.16; Dt. 24.7). Serving within Israelite households was a safe haven for any foreigner; it was not to be an oppressive setting, but offered economic and social stability. All slaves were to be released the 7th year, presumably to go back to his country of origin. They could choose to stay, however."

Firstly, I've watched a number of Paul's videos on slavery and he is rather dishonest in my view. He constantly refers to the slavery described in the OT as "more like indentured servitude", which is clearly apologetic trope and ignorant of what it explicitly describes.

Referencing things like "Lev. 19.33-34" to counter Lev. 25:44-46 does nothing. At best, it just provides a contradiction and then you've got all your work ahead of you to demonstrate one presides over the other. Leviticus 25:44-46 is extremely descriptive and prescriptive, non-mincing of words, that accurately describes the exact definition of chattel slavery.

Also, how did they conclude the only way for a foreigner to survive is slavery? Why not just remove the "slave for life" decree from Leviticus 25:44-46? That would make it far more moral.

[jimwalton]

I have several responses. In contrast to your evaluation of Paul Copan as a dishonest scholar, I find that his assessment of ancient slavery conforms to that of many other scholars. I don't base my conclusion on Copan alone, but on the aggregation of information from many sources.

>Referencing things like "Lev. 19.33-34" to counter Lev. 25:44-46 does nothing.

But it does. Here's where a deeper knowledge of Leviticus is helpful. Leviticus as a book is a holiness code. Walton & Walton write, "Law codes are not lists of God's mandatory moral commands, nor are they lists of rules to be obeyed. They are not legislation. Because they are not comprehensive, and because of the literary context they are in, they are better viewed as legal wisdom—the means of communicating wisdom with regard to this area. Lists of symptoms and treatments, for example, were gathered to give practitioners wisdom about disease. Lists of divinatory observations and the resulting prognoses were gathered to give divination experts wisdom regarding the messages they believed were embedded in the signs provided by the gods. These served the utilitarian purpose of preparing experts in these fields to give competent advice to their clients. They are a gathering of legal situations and the appropriate judicial response to guide judges to make wise decisions.

"Therefore they are not intended to be read as rules, but to circumscribe the bounds of civil, legal, and ritual order. They are hypothetical examples to illustrate underlying principles (much as we use word problems to teach math). The purpose is not to teach about trains, buildings, running, or apples, but to learn trigonometry.

"But the underlying principles are not moral commands either. It is wisdom to guide, not a list to identify a moral code. When fans read the baseball rulebook, it's not to follow them but to understand what is happening as they watch the game. We don't expect a referee to show up at the house to penalize spectators; we also should not expect God to show up handing out judgments on individuals or institutions because they have not behaved according to the principles that were set down for Israel. This legal wisdom was to shape Israelite society, not to provide a set of instructions by which anyone in any place or time can construct God's ideal society."

In other words, Leviticus is not telling us it's OK to own slaves, rape slaves, beat slaves, or any of that stuff. It is giving us wisdom to guide judicial and personal decisions.

So we have to go to the science to find out about slavery in the ancient Near East, and especially Israel. What we know is that slavery in the ancient world was mostly indentured servitude, corvee labor, or prison chain gangs. We know that ownership of humans wasn't a "thing" until Greece and Rome, and was particularly abusive in the colonial west, including antebellum America. We know that "slavery" in the ancient world is a misnomer and an anachronism, because slavery in America was a complete different entity (and therefore shouldn't use the same term, just as the Eskimos have different words for "snow"). We know that there is absolutely no extrabiblical data on any slaves in Israel. The private and public documents of the ancient Near East from 3000 BC to the times of the NT are full of references to the varieties of the practices of "slavery" in parallel cultures, but nothing from Israel. What seems likely is that slavery hardly existed, if it existed at all, in ancient Israel. There is simply no evidence of chattel slavery in Israel.

> how did they conclude the only way for a foreigner to survive is slavery?

Because they have studied the documents and archaeological remains of ancient Israel.

> Why not just remove the "slave for life" decree from Leviticus 25:44-46? That would make it far more moral.

Good question. Translation can be a tricky business. The Hebrew words (v. 44) are וַאֲמָתְךָ וְעַבְדְּךָ (we’abdeka wa’amatka—male and female "slaves"). It's a generic term including bondmen, slaves, servants, subjects. The translators have chosen "slaves," but that may not be the best choice to describe Israel, given the research we have. Later in v. 44 the term is 'eved—the term both Paul Copan and Paul Wright say means indentured servant. Now, the true question here (and I'm being honest), is "Are you a better judge of the best translation of this word for this context?" Maybe you are (I don't know you). But as we search the scholars, we come up with different nuances of what 'eved could mean. Why don't the publishers of the various Bibles build these nuances into their translations? I can just IMAGINE the arguments around those tables...