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Slavery in the New World caused one of the greatest controversies of modern times. People have used the Bible to argue for and against this extremely inhumane practice. Few institutions in history have caused more suffering. A Slave is defined as a human being who is the property of another and subject to compulsory labor, beyond the limits of the family (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics p. 596). Slavery comes in different forms.
Women in some societies are called slaves because they have almost no rights. People refer to whole nations of slaves living under totalitarian dictators or to the subjection of tribes or an entire peoples or to various forms of serfdom as enslavement but true slavery can only exist where there is freedom, where free men hold other men in bondage. Slavery has existed throughout known history and is still carried on today in parts of Africa and Asia. People have used the Bible to both support and condemn slavery.
But what does the Bible really say about slavery? Parts of the Bible condone slavery while others show outright support for it; however these passages reflect the writings and customs of people, not of God. A true Christian would see the evils of slavery and rally against it instead of literally believing in the Bible as the absolute source of all truth. The first mention of slavery in the Bible appears in Genesis, when Noah cursed his grandson Canaan (and all of the descendants of Canaan) because Noah's son Ham had seen Noah naked (Genesis 9: 25 - 27). In these verses, Noah curses Canaan after Ham, his son, sees him naked. These verses seem to send a highly immoral message.
The curse does not punish the person responsible. It instead punishes the son of the perpetrator, and the son's descendants forever. In all probability, Canaan was nowhere in the vicinity of Noah's tent when the event happened. This was one of the favorite passages of theologians who tried to justify slavery on Biblical grounds.
The descendants of Ham were assumed to be Africans. According to this verse, they were to be slaves forever. Thus the Southern slave owner was only carrying out God's wishes. In the Bible it is often unclear whether the Greek word dolls is meant to mean slave or servant.
The King James Bible often uses ambiguous terms such as servant or bondsman while modern, more accurate translations often use slave. Some scholars believe this was done on purpose to disguise the practice of slavery in the Bible. Because of this, the entire issue of slavery in the Bible has become clouded. While no passage in the Bible clearly condemns slavery, two passages have been used to try to show that the Bible is against it. The first is Luke 4: 18 which describes Jesus as quoting a passage from Isaiah 61: 1 - 2 which says that "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. " The word captives is the crucial part of this quote. It is unknown whether it refers to slaves or to prisoners.
The second passage is 1 Timothy 1: 10. In the OAB it refers to a group of fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers... Different versions of the Bible translate the verse differently, with slave traders usually translated as kidnappers or men-stealers. In the original Greek, the word is "andrapodistes", which combines the words for man and foot. This apparently means to control a person completely. In any case this passage is ambiguous.
The Bibles seemingly ambivalent stance on slavery has lead some people to question it as a source of morals. The book of Exodus is an ironic place for the Bible to condone slavery but in Exodus 21: 1 - 6 guidelines are set forth for the buying, selling, and treatment of slaves. This is similar to Deuteronomy 15: 12 - 18. It differentiates between a male Hebrew slave and Gentile slaves, saying that a Hebrew who sold himself into slavery is to be freed after six years, but if he has married or had a family they are to stay with the master. The Hebrew can choose to stay a slave to be with his family by mutilating his ear (the organ of obedience) with an awl and remain a slave for life. In the Ten Commandments, four and ten both mention slavery and say nothing about its evils.
This may be because the accompanying explanations of each commandment were added by a later editor. An important time in Biblical history is the time of the Patriarchs. In about 2000 B. C.
God called to Abraham and and told him to leave his fathers family and to travel to the land we know today as Israel. He obeyed and took with him his wife Sari and his brothers son Lot, and all the possessions they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired... The people they had acquired were most likely slaves. Jefferson Davis (President of the CSA) said that slavery "was established by decree of Almighty God. " We now know, through archeological evidence, that slavery was common in the ancient Middle East and that the custom was adopted from neighboring tribes and not an order from God. Abrahams son, Issac and Issacs son Jacob, also possessed slaves, including concubines that bore them sons.
There is no legislation about slavery during the patriarchal times in the book of Genesis, but we can guess what it was like from the Nuzi Tablets. The Nuzi Tablets are ancient Middle East legal documents from Abrahams time that include many laws and regulations concerning slaves. Slaves had (limited) protection from the law when they were mistreated. The Genesis narrative portrays the slaves more as members of the family. In Genesis 17: 9 - 14, in order to keep the covenant, Abraham must circumcise his male slaves as well as himself and his sons.
This suggests the slaves were considered more than just property because they too were recipients of the spiritual blessing of the covenant. Mircea Elite says that among the Jews treatment of the slave was...
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Research essay sample on Slave Traders Middle East
