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Example research essay topic: 18 Th Century Roman Empire - 1,031 words

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... never debasing or cruel. (619). Slavery seems to be more humane under the patriarchs then it would become in ancient Greek or Rome or under the slave trade to the New World but it still existed, even among Gods chosen people. Supporters of slavery often quoted Ephesians 5: 6 and Colossians 3: 22, which say Slaves, obey your earthly masters. This is the most blatant passage in the Bible supporting slavery. It was passages like these that lead Karl Marx to call religion the opiate of the masses.

Ephesians 5: 6 - 8 clearly tells slaves to be faithful to God so they can be rewarded in the next life instead of this one. In Marx's time he was more concerned about wage slavery when people sold themselves for their labor. Christianity message of obedience and faithfulness as well as Judaism's strict emphasis on the Torah law has caused many to believe that the Bible condones slavery. Why did Jesus not directly address this evil institution? Herb Vander Lugt suggests three reasons, Common sense, futility and priority (11).

The first reason is the Common-sense factor. Lugt says that slavery in the Roman Empire was quite humane (11). Slavery had become so common that even common people kept slaves. Often a family slave would be treated almost as a member of a family. But slaves were also used in the mines under appalling conditions and used to build public buildings. One cannot generalize slavery and call it humane; anytime in which one human owns another there is a tremendous potential for abuse.

The second factor mentioned is that of futility. Mircea Elite writes that the immediate abolition or attempted abolition of slavery in the Roman empire would probably have led to the collapse of the fabric of society (602). This is impossible to know of course, but slavery was an integral, if horrible, part of Roman civilization. To attempt to abolish it would have been a radical and dangerous action, to say the least. Still Jesus silence is disturbing. The final reason offered is that of priority.

Jesus came to provide eternal salvation through death and to reveal the father (Lugt, 12). While Jesus most important act was proclaiming the good news of salvation, surely He had enough time between performing miracles to put in one word about the practice of slavery. Lugt echoes the argument of many Christian scholars when he asks Why should they (Jesus and his disciples) risk getting into trouble over what was then such a minor issue? (11). He points out that Jesus was never a political activist. However Jesus is quite adamant about some other issues such as divorce. In Luke 16: 18 He says that Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

There is no record of Jesus or anyone else in the Bible ever says anything clearly against slavery. Traditionally, Moses is thought to have had the entire Torah dictated to him by God. Conservative Jews and Christians still believe this (some conservative Christians now believe that Moses wrote it himself but that God preserved it from error). Almost any Christian will fervently deny that God condones slavery. What then of the Torah or Peters letters? Before criticism of the Bible in the 18 th century most everybody accepted that slavery was meant to be because of the Bible.

Paul returned a runaway slave to his master but it should be remembered that the early church is not synonymous with Jesus. Just because Paul did this does not mean that Jesus would have. Personal slavery disappeared from the Christian world during the Middle ages to be replaced by serfdom, a condition in which the rural poor were still unfree. It rose up again in fifteenth century with the Transatlantic slave trade. It is ironic that slavery resumed in Europe during the Renaissance, when Europe supposedly became less barbaric and embraced classical ideals.

The greatest debate over slavery occurred during the 18 th century. Christians were divided on the subject. Reverend Furman, a Baptist, said that "The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example. " Rabbi M. J. Raphael (circa 1861) gave an extremely convincing speech arguing that slavery is sanctioned by God.

In it he asks, How dare you, in the face of the sanction and protection afforded to slave property in the Ten Commandments -- how dare you denounce slave holding as a sin? When you remember that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job -- the men with whom the Almighty conversed, with whose names he emphatically connects his own most holy name, and to whom He vouchsafed to give the character of 'perfect, upright, fearing God and eschewing evil' (Job 1: 8) -- that all these men were slave holders, does it not strike you that you are guilty of something very little short of blasphemy?" Still, black leaders and abolition spokesmen all used the Bible to help prove slavery unjust and immoral. Just because many passages in the Bible condone slavery and because Jesus never addresses it, does not mean that God is in favor of it. The Bible was written by real people and editors. The New Testament writers were largely writing for a Hellenistic audience to which slavery was a fact of life. Slavery was finally abolished in the U.

S. in 1863 and in most other Western European countries. Louis Cable writes that It is the secular state, not the Bible, which we have to thank for ending slavery (1). Despite this and the many passages in the Bible that appear to support slavery, Black abolitionist leaders still used their Christianity and the Bible to prove that slavery is wrong. They were inspired by the Exodus story and Jesus teachings of love. Civil rights leaders in the fifties and sixties, most notably Dr.

Martin Luther King, often quoted from the Bible in their struggle for equal rights. They appealed to Christians higher sense of ethics, not to a literal, fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. Bibliography: Works Cited Cable, Louis. Does the Bible Condon Slavery? . 1997.


Free research essays on topics related to: common sense, slave trade, roman empire, 18 th century, ephesians 5

Research essay sample on 18 Th Century Roman Empire

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