Slavery in the Bible is a hard thing to wrestle through.

 Slavery in the Bible is a hard thing to wrestle through.

I rejoice in my African American brothers and sisters who instead of turning away from the Bible in disgust, seek wisdom and understanding on this matter. Praise God for preserving our faith in him. 

As descendants of Africans who experienced the unprecedented atrocity of the transatlantic slave trade (TAST), any type of "slavery" triggers us. Indeed it should, because slavery, belonging to another human to do their bidding unpaid, is a symptom of the fall. Nevertheless we have clear instructions in both the Old Testament and the New Testament that does not wholesale denounce the institution of slavery but guides both the enslaved and the masters to navigate within the fallen institution. 

The question is why? My answer, in short, is that the slavery of the Ancient Near East (ANE) and Greco-Roman (GR) time was generally less inhumane than that of TST. I offer a few more points to explain my rationale and will point you to a few more resources on this matter.

1. The TAST was founded on manstealing which was a capital offense in the Mosaic code (Exodus 21:16; cf. 1 Tim 1:10). ANE and GR slavery, on the other hand, was founded upon debt as many have mentioned already, prisoners of war, security, or elevation of status. A slave of an emperor had more power and prestige than the majority of freedmen. Also, a freedman or woman might seek a master if they were on the brink of financial ruin.

2. In the TST, the duration of enslavement was for a lifetime and the exception was a freed slave. In ANE and GR times, in most cases, enslavement usually lasted less than twenty years with most cases being shorter. Most would be freed by their mid twenties, and the exception was lifelong servitude. Usually lifeling servitude was reserved only for slaves that had committed serious crimes. Granted, as we know, those who determine what are infractions and who get prosecuted are those in power. Thus the law is often partial to those in power. So, I am sure many gross injustices took place in Ancient slavery. Yet, there were many slave laws to protect the dignity of enslaved image bearers in the Mosaic code, and even among the pagan GR slavery there were laws to protect slaves. In fact, if a slave ran from his or her master, as a Jew, you were commanded not to surrender the slave back to the master, indicating God's desire to protect from abuse (Deut 23:15).

3.  The TST was racialized and targeted to one ethnic group, whereas, in ANE and GR slavery, anyone could be a slave and anyone could be free. Therefore, one's ethnicity had nothing to do with enslavement or freedom.

4. The TST was wholly characterized by dehumanizing their subjects including erasing their heritage, their names, their family connections, and making them tools like cattle and creating laws and structures that reinforced the lack of dignity of slaves. Strategies of dehumanization and erasure of heritage were not the norm in GR and ANE enslavement. GR and ANE slavery was indeed chattel slavery, meaning viewed as transferable property, but It seems that enslaved people  were viewed as a whole person. Though viewwd as of lesser status and value in contrast to TST where the enslaved were considered a fraction of a person with no status at all. 

5. In the ANE and GR world, slavery was the norm and had been for millenia. There was no world imagined without slavery. It was as present to them as electricity is to us. Freed slaves dreamt of being free and owning slaves. Slavery was the assumed reality of virtually all those ancient societies. Whereas, before the TAST, slavery was near extinction in Europe.  Serfdom, feudalism, and indentured servitude was the norm. Those systems had horrendous atrocities too, as does all fallen systems, but landownership rather than people ownership was the mainstay. Therefore, the wickedness of the TAST conductors was that they re-erected an ancient institution that was almost extinct in their culture in order to subjugate and dehumanize enslaved Africans. 

6. Brutality and abuse were present in both systems, but it was overwhelmingly the norm and expectation in the TST. In fact, the abuse was scientifically used and promoted throughout the enslavers (i.e. Willie Lynch Letters). In contrast, there were laws prohibiting abuse in GR, and Levitical codes. Some law codes like Hammurapi's did not have such protections which makes the Levitical code so revolutionary. It was the expectation that the ancient enslaver should only use physical punishment as a behavioral tool at the owners discretion and not be expected to be life-threatening or mutilating. Ancient slave owners were unjust at times too, but  scientific brutality and cruelty was not the expectation or standard.

***One thing that was commonplace in GR slavery was sexual abuse and predation. The use of power for sexual exploitation was pretty much the same in both GR and TAST.

I say all this to say that in the Bible's commands about slaves, we are dealing with an institution that was 1) inherently fallen, 2) as prevalent and normative as the job systems of America are the norm today, 3) diverse rather than racially targeted, 4) instilled with some levels of legal protections, 5) temporary rather than lifelong, and 6) yet also still capable and culpable of many evils and atrocities. Whereas, our ancestors were dealing with a system that was 1) inherently evil and founded on atrocity, 2) not historically prevalent but willfully constructed for greed, 3) racially targeted on one ethnicity, 4) no legal protections not even the Bible because those responsibilities of the masters to the slave were largely ignored or removed, 5) lifelong, 6) almost inexhaustibly and inescapably directly and complicity evil. The former had corrupt tendencies and oppression but not automatically whereas the latter was intrinsically corrupt and oppressive as an entire entity. 

That is why I deduce that biblical commands regarding slaves to their masters, though perhaps useful to the slave for wisdom on how to avoid extra punishment, there is no a one to one correlation between ancient slavery and the TAST. Therefore, enslaved Africans had the right to fight, rebel, resist, usurp, and escape captivity, and should have been assisted by their Euroamerican Christian brothers and sisters. They had the right to be like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who resisted evil and conspired to bring justice to Hitler. Yet, they still had the responsibility to love their enemy and bless those who persecuted them. They were not expected by God to sit dormant and not fight for justice and freedom.

I commend to you two resources to continue your research on this matter. One is an excellent biblical studies resource and the other is an excellent general history article.

1. Slaves and Slavery in the Roman World by S. Scott Bartchy, pgs 169-78. From World of the New Testament: Cultural, Social, and Historical Contexts. Edited by Joel B. Green and Lee Martin McDonald. 

2. Slavery Before the Transatlantic slave Trade 

3. A counterview to mine is that if Thomas Kidd. He does well with addressing the sexual exploitation of GR slavery but underestimates the gross atrocities of both heterosexual predation and homosexual predation present in slavery. Also, he appears to be misinformed about the length of GR and ANE slavery. And finally, he neglects ANE Law codes and also GR protections of slaves that were often far more protective over slave dignity.