Didn't we already have the discussion about posting Bible verses without comment. Proof-texting is not the same as a discussion.

Sorry I don't always have time to write lengthy posts. I think these are pretty straightforward, and I don't really see much need for exegesis.

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If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free without paying anything. If he arrived alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrived with a wife, she is to leave with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

But if the servant declares, 'I love my master and my wife and children; I do not want to go free,' then his master is to bring him before the judges. And he shall take him to the door or doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he shall serve his master for life.

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The word "servant' here is ebed - servant or slave. In the Septuagint its "pais" or "boy" which is used of a male slave.

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If a fellow Hebrew, a man or a woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you must set him free.

And when you release him, do not send him away empty-handed. You are to furnish him liberally from your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress. You shall give to him as the LORD your God has blessed you. Remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you; that is why I am giving you this command today.

But if your servant says to you, 'I do not want to leave you,' because he loves you and your household and is well off with you, then take an awl and pierce it through his ear into the door, and he will become your servant for life. And treat your maidservant the same way.

Do not regard it as a hardship to set your servant free, because his six years of service were worth twice the wages of a hired hand. And the LORD your God will bless you in all you do.

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The translators confusing use the word "slave" for the status of the Hebrews in Egypt but "servant" for the status of enslaved Hebrews to other Hebrews. It's the same word in Hebrew - ebed. In the Septuagint it is "oiketes," a household servant or slave (a specifically closer relationship than a "doulos" which is more general).

There's a pretty good paper here, if you're inclined. It touches on the wide range of roles and functions slaves served (everything from horrible menial labor to high profile courtiers), their status in Greco-Roman society, and how this context plays into the interpretative framework of the slave parables.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3267508

Slavery in the US is not a good comparison to Roman slavery. It was much worse in some ways - it was race based, almost strictly limited to labor, little to no hope of manumission, and even a freed black slave had no place in society. Contrast this in Roman society where slaves played every role imaginable, manumission was not uncommon (though this is not to say it was common) and freedmen were a whole class of society.

Now in other ways in the US it was better. I think the sensibilities of the US South were very different than in ancient Rome; Romans were a cruel people by our modern standards and some of the things they did to slaves are practically unmentionable. It should be noted that apparently torture of slaves was the height of comedy, so we shouldn't always take what we see in writing as commonplace but a kind of humorous hyperbole...which is a kind of indictment in and of itself. I don't think it was common to kill a slave for dropping something, or cut off their hands or ears as punishment, for example.

They're just different.

Here's a detailed look at Roman slavery.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Servus.html

There's always a need for exegesis. For instance, there is a thought regarding the Law that makes allowances for human weakness and gently guides people away from this. A few common examples are animal sacrifice and divorce. It is a common argument that God never wanted animal sacrifices as part of His daily worship. However, since that's how the Israelites were going to worship no matter what (see the golden calf episode), then He built it into their Law. It was an accommodation and not an inherent good. Divorce would be seen the same way. We know divorce is not good, but it is an accommodation to human weakness. And God strictly outlined the parameters to prevent abuse. I would make the same argument for slavery. People were already doing it and were going to continue. So God made allowances in His Law for this, and He set very strict limits on the practice. For instance, sleep with a slave and she's a wife and not a slave anymore. Cause temporary injury to a slave and you're responsible for their care. Cause permanent injury and they get to go free. There are things there to prevent the worst abuses, but that doesn't make the institution itself any less evil. Just like divorce isn't any less evil.

You said a person who voluntarily remained a slave sinned against their master. That says that God commanded sin within the Law. That does not compute.

Zobel said:

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You said a person who voluntarily remained a slave sinned against their master. That says that God commanded sin within the Law. That does not compute.

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So how do you figure divorce? God commanded men to give their wives a bill of divorce in the Law, and divorce is a sin.

That's an interesting point, but I'm not sure I would call divorce sin itself. I think divorce is a consequence of sin.

At any rate, I don't think it makes sense for God to say - if a slave loves his master, and doesn't want to leave him, he can stay and in doing so sins.

Zobel said:

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Plenty of poor whites in the south lived lives not much different than slaves. Plenty of poor workers in the 19th century did as well - or worse. Or have you never read Dickens? Or the Jungle?

We moderns tend to conflate the difficulty of life in general with the idea of slavery - I mean, look at that quote. Slavery "was a life of endless labor" with "no weekends or rest days." This sentence couldn't have been written until last century. That description was normative. The idea of a weekend is a 20th century one. The rest day was unique to Judaism in the ancient world.

Again, I think we need to be more careful about what terms we use and the images we ascribe to them (intentionally or no). Here in the US we are heavily influenced by our recent past, so "slavery" means hereditary chattel race-based slavery to us immediately- which, I think, is a particularly evil thing, but not the norm "as slavery goes" in history.

The word "slave" is everywhere in the NT. All modern translations soften it to servant, but its prevalent. Immediately we jump to the image of a black person with a back scarred by whipping, but look at the cases in the scripture - that simply doesn't cover it. I mean look at the sentiment of the centurion about his slave in Luke 7. Look at Exodus 21:5.

I think we need to consider both this, the reality of the view of slavery as normative and as moral as we view employment in antiquity when we read these words. There is a path from there to here, in terms of how we view slavery and why. That is as important as our views, because it informs us. The pagan audience of the majority of the new testament would have felt absolutely no shame in owning a slave. None, none at all.

If we can't get that, we miss a good deal of the beautifully subtle radical views that St Paul puts out there. His positions on slavery are challenging to the institution but also nuanced and insidiously against it. Not by challenging it directly, but by turning the entire thing on its head. He doesn't say - masters, free your slaves, don't you know slaves are evil? But he says - whoever is obedient to something is a slave of that thing. And, masters, you know you and your slave have a common master. And, slaves, serve your master with all diligence - because it's Christ who you are truly serving. This turns slavery inside out and upside down, just as much as his writings and those of the gospels elevate women and children to places of honor and value, and destroy racial and class barriers.

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But those poor whites were free, and not considered property. Did you really just post this wall of text to defend slavery?

Zobel said:

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I think you're missing the point entirely. First, I never said slaves were "little different" than the poor and I didn't say they were the same because of working hours. I said we often conflate slavery with a hard life, and our modern views of what constitutes hard work give us a distorted view of the past.

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"Plenty of poor whites in the south lived lives not much different than slaves. Plenty of poor workers in the 19th century did as well - or worse. Or have you never read Dickens? Or the Jungle?"

that's what you wrote. It's a historically illiterate statement. When we think of slavery, we think of owning a human being. We don't simply think of "a hard life".

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The comparison with the poor was to point out that none of us would want to switch with either a slave or an urban worker in the early 19th century, and often the evils we ascribe to slavery are as applicable to lower class people everywhere.

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Of course none of us would want to trade places with most anyone from that time. But the notion that the poor in those time would be willing to trade with slaves, or that slaves would not be willing to trade with the poor is laughable. And no, most of the evils of slavery are not about the hard work and poverty like conditions. Those are ubiquitous in human history. It's about the debased nature of treating people as property and the sort of lives and abuses such a life entailed.

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It would be better if we understood that life was hard - as I mentioned, in the early days of the colonies the life expectancy was 25! - and that slavery was on top of that, not the unique and chief cause of it.

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Life expectancy was driven heavily by child mortality, most people lived to their 60s. Slavery was an independent and more severe form of suffering on top of the ordinary and difficult lives of struggle most people endured for most of human history. Trying to equate them or soften the severity of slavery is a foolish exercise. And more than one person has responded to your post in such a manner, so rather than us re-reading what you wrote, perhaps you should. Because it reads as a rather straightforward attempt at whitewashing.

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My point wasn't about the US. Societal rights are a relatively new concept. Societal rights outside of the tribe, to all people (not just men, or not landowners) is an utterly modern concept. Globally.

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Some are some aren't. Serfs did have some rights, roman citizenry did have many rights and protections. These didn't occur spontaneously in modern history. Our definition of the tribe, including women, and which rights we provide has certainly expanded but it was not at all a foreign concept to have privileges and protections assured by the government in ancient times. Nor was it foreign to utterly deny those to slaves. Roman slavery is different in that freedom was a rare and possible thing, and some sorts of elite slaves (greeks who tutored in language for example) had much better treatment and prospects than a typical slave in the fiel

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This bias toward projecting what we enjoy as normal backward in time should be avoided. It makes for a naive view of the past.

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I fully agree with this, What you wrote went well beyond this and attempted to soften the severity of slavery as on par with a life of poverty as well as something that we shouldn't be so judgemental of.

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I really think you're .. I don't know what. Arguing against something I'm not putting forward. I know there's a difference between indentured servitude, selling oneself into slavery, serfdom, and chattel slavery. What I said was something very distinct: the particular evil of hereditary, chattel, race-based slavery. This is not the norm for slavery in the world, and it certainly wasn't at the time of the writing.

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It's true that race-based chattel slavery wasn't what the romans practiced. But it's nonsense to argue it was in any way a morally defensible act. These were in large part conquered people, especially in the late republic early empire era. They were cheap and expendable and were very often treated as such. They had their foreheads branded as a mark of their station. Manumission while possible was not realistic for most. For all but a select few urban slaves this is far from a life anyone at the time would choose. Again, slave revolts didn't happen for no reason. A slave sent to a mine was about as good as a death sentence.

Here's an ancient writer named Posidonius' take on that:

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Originally any private person without mining experience could come and find a place to work in these mines, and since the silver-bearing seams in the earth were conveniently sited and plentiful, they would go away with great fortunes. But later the Romans gained control of Spain, and now a large number of Italians have taken over the mines and accumulated vast riches as a result of their desire to make profits; what they did was buy a great number of slaves and hand them over to the men in charge of the mining operations...

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The men engaged in these mining operations produce unbelievably large revenues for their masters, but as a result of their underground excavations day and night they become physical wrecks, and because of their extremely bad conditions, the mortality rate is high; they are not allowed to give up working or have a rest, but are forced by the beatings of their supervisors to stay at their places and throw away their wretched lives as a result of these horrible hardships. Some of them survive to endure their misery for a long time because of their physical stamina or sheer will-power; but because of the extent of their suffering, they prefer dying to surviving.

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Sounds like they were having a great time...

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Ridiculous. I just got through explaining how the NT condemns slavery, and promotes race, sex, age, and class egalitarianism in a radical way.

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It doesn't, and it has plenty of opportunity to. There is not one explicit condemnation of the act of slavery anywhere in the bible and quite a few explicitly condoning the act. The roman church condemned runaway slaves and refused them communion. And several popes endorsed the slavery of non-Christians and Christians thinkers like Aquinas attempted to justify the practice.

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There's a straight line from history to your views on slavery, and the only way there is through the moral force of Christianity. It's silly to suggest that somehow the NT is counter to it or is condemned by abolitionist sentiment.

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The NT was used by both abolitionists and slavers to their desired effect. The old primarily by the latter. Slavery and Christianity were bedmates for quite some time.

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The entire discussion at this point is missing the entirety of St John's point: your station in life is of no significance when we look at things from the view of eternity. Even in the most extreme, which includes being the emperor and slavery.

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This is also colored by the first-century churches' notion that the return of Jesus was quite imminent.

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that's what you wrote. It's a historically illiterate statement. When we think of slavery, we think of owning a human being. We don't simply think of "a hard life".

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"We" - you speak for more than yourself here. You're clearly more enlightened, then, than the person who wrote the article I was originally responding to. Their article focused on the labor aspect. I think it's evidence of the common conflation of evils of slavery == a life of endless labor. A cursory review of articles shows the labor is the focus

Honestly, I suspect the free vs not in history is often a distinction without a practical difference. In principle? Absolutely. Moral terms, surely. But day to day life? I think for most of the poor laboring class in history their freedom was largely notional. (This is less applicable to the average person in the US than the average person in history). Just like access to education (consider, for example, in WWI the US Army's standard for "literate" was if you could sign your name vs making your mark. Some 30% were literate by this standard).

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It's about the debased nature of treating people as property and the sort of lives and abuses such a life entailed.

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I'm not arguing this point. The pernicious evil of slavery is slavery itself. At this risk of repeating myself, I believe most people conflate this with the difficult of life in the period. A comparison is always helpful in this regard.

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Life expectancy was driven heavily by child mortality, most people lived to their 60s. Slavery was an independent and more severe form of suffering on top of the ordinary and difficult lives of struggle most people endured for most of human history. Trying to equate them or soften the severity of slavery is a foolish exercise. And more than one person has responded to your post in such a manner, so rather than us re-reading what you wrote, perhaps you should. Because it reads as a rather straightforward attempt at whitewashing.

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Most people didn't live to their 60s by definition if life expectancy was ~25.

I'd estimate that "most people in most of human history" may well include slaves. If not a majority, a plurality. But likely not the same kind of slavery that existed in the US.

I'm not softening the impact of slavery. I have been, as I've said consistently, stating that it is probably difficult for us to imagine the reality of the situation. The common or popular images are probably not correct. Even a shallow review of contemporary writings reveal this. Not every day was Roots.

The fact that people respond negatively doesn't really show much other than this is a taboo topic or outside of the overton window. If you can find where I've spoken positively of slavery, that'd be support for the person accusing me of "defending" it. That's a ridiculous takeaway from what I've written.

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It's true that race-based chattel slavery wasn't what the romans practiced. But it's nonsense to argue it was in any way a morally defensible act. These were in large part conquered people, especially in the late republic early empire era. They were cheap and expendable and were very often treated as such. They had their foreheads branded as a mark of their station. Manumission while possible was not realistic for most. For all but a select few urban slaves this is far from a life anyone at the time would choose. Again, slave revolts didn't happen for no reason. A slave sent to a mine was about as good as a death sentence.

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Again, where did I say it was morally defensible?? You're arguing against a premise I'm not putting forward.

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It doesn't, and it has plenty of opportunity to. There is not one explicit condemnation of the act of slavery anywhere in the bible and quite a few explicitly condoning the act. The roman church condemned runaway slaves and refused them communion. And several popes endorsed the slavery of non-Christians and Christians thinkers like Aquinas attempted to justify the practice.

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I disagree with the bold portion. The NT is explicit - in Christ, all are equal - no slave, no free, no women, no man, no nationality. As a post on this forum recently said, it's contrast versus opposition. This view of rejecting the premise is a fundamental aspect of the teaching of Christ.

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The NT was used by both abolitionists and slavers to their desired effect. The old primarily by the latter. Slavery and Christianity were bedmates for quite some time.

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Doesn't prove the point, as Christianity has and always will destroyed slavery, even though society in general and throughout history considers it normative. Again - slavery is the default state of human societies, everywhere and always in history. Christianity is the exception.

A modern in the 20th century arguing that the NT doesn't do enough to condemn slavery is like a person using a ladder to climb to the top of their roof then claiming they flew up there on wings.

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This is also colored by the first-century churches' notion that the return of Jesus was quite imminent.

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And yet he taught this in the 4th century.

Look the average person believes that Galileo wound up sideways with the church for teaching heliocentrism (that's not why). Or that most Europeans thought the world was flat until Columbus (they didn't).

There is a desire to arrive at very simple narratives and descriptions when we approach history. The more simplified and popular the less useful these narratives are. The recent history of the US causes us to react negatively - rightly - and to conjure up a certain image. We then project this image into history. The reality is more complex than that image - sometimes worse, sometimes better, most often just different.

That's all I'm driving to.

Zobel said:

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That's an interesting point, but I'm not sure I would call divorce sin itself. I think divorce is a consequence of sin.

At any rate, I don't think it makes sense for God to say - if a slave loves his master, and doesn't want to leave him, he can stay and in doing so sins.

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That goes toward the difference between Jewish slavery and typical ancient slavery, which goes toward your point I guess about not all slavery being equal. It's not explicit in the text, but when a Jewish slave refused to leave his master he was basically adopted. He became part of the tribe and the specific family in the tribe that he served. There are stories of these types of adopted slaves inheriting land and wealth like a firstborn son would. So I would not call the decision to become adopted sinful.

Now if someone had a cruel and rapacious master, the chances of the master reforming while having a willing(?!) object of rape and cruelty is basically zero. So subjecting yourself to that despite a choice to be otherwise would be sinful, because it would interfere with the spiritual growth and repentence of the cruel master.

Yes i agree with you completely.

I guess I view slavery as a microcosm of autocracy in general. It's not fundamentally bad - there is the possibility for a good autocrat.

But it basically never turns out well because people are sinful.

Very interesting discussion.

To Paul the only thing that mattered was the gospel. If remaining a slave furthered the Gospel he would do it. For instance when imprisoned in Philippi an earthquake busted open the prison but he stayed and converted the jailer.

Later he writes to Philemon to release Onesimus from his bondage. So in this case he supports freedom for this particular slave.

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I guess I view slavery as a microcosm of autocracy in general. It's not fundamentally bad - there is the possibility for a good autocrat.

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I'm on the flip side of that. I consider autocracy and slavery as just different forms of one person subjugating another person, and I find that inherently evil. Antebellum chattel slavery is probably the worst example I can think of, but I'd also throw in gradations all the way from autocracy, feudal serfdom, and capitalist debt slavery. Samuel, speaking for God, didn't really mince any words about how God should be the only authority and the desire for a king was unwise at best. I have a strong opinion that the only one with a right to dominion over men is God. I think a king or authority of any kind is only beneficial to the point that they mirror God's desire for goodness and love of the people. The desire for dominion over other men is almost never due to those desires, to the point that any exception to that basically proves the rule. It is a nearly universally selfish desire with predictable consequences

Right. But if we really zoom back on autocracy in general, the prime example is God. So the issue can't be with autocracy in itself - or slavery in itself, because we are slaves to Christ - but in sinful humans exercising authority over each other in harmful ways.

May be a pointless quibble, so apologies in advance haha

No I think that's a good point. It's the sinfulness of man that makes man's dominion over other man something bad. I don't have anything against men being subject as a rule, especially when subject to God who is Truth, Love, Wisdom, and Mercy.