A Christian response from a historical perspective to critics' claims that slavery always was a part and parcel of Judaism and Christianity.

    My inspiration for writing this blog article was a presentation that I had prepared in response to a claim by a critic on Christianity that slavery always was a part and parcel of Christianity or the Judeo-Christian worldview, he was mixing up the Judeo-Christian beliefs and faith with the later Islamic worldview that emerged nearly 600 years after the Bible's completion at a different location hundreds of miles to the South of Israel by a man who never knew nor met the writers of the Bible - Muhammad. It was actually a debate when my opponent made claims against Christianity by tying up my Christian faith with slavery and my response was a Powerpoint preparation that I had prepared in response to his arguments wherein I had proven historically using dates that his arguments did not hold water. My objective in this blog entry is to present the details that I had included in that very same ppt to prove that slavery did not have its origins in Christianity and also to clear up any lingering doubts or questions in people's minds on Bible verses regarding slavery by explaining the historical background and the contextual meanings of such verses. Much of the Bible's events took place in the Holy Land Israel and its surrounding countries including Egypt, Syria, Assyria and the New Testament verses on how slaves are to behave towards their masters are related to Christian slaves serving pagan masters in other locations like Asia Minor (modern day Turkey), Greece, Italy, Spain etc. Old Testament's slavery verses need to be seen in the context of the cultural background of Ancient Israel where inability to pay a debt was grounds to work as a slave of one's own volition. Prior to this, the Jews themselves worked as slaves under the Egyptians who oppressed them. We will see these on a period-by-period basis.

Example of a Sestertius issued by Roman emperor Vespasian after destroying the Jewish temple and taking Jews captive, coincidentally we see the Latin words "Iudea capta (Captured Judea)". It is quite illogical if someone is going to blame the Bible, a Jewish book for abetting slavery, when the Jews themselves were taken as slaves by the pagan Romans and many Jews were driven from Judea in AD 70. The effigy of the woman sitting down leaning against her arm in despair depicts Judea's despondent state after the 2nd Jewish temple's destruction when many Jews were taken as slaves by the Romans.



i) Israel's slavery in Egypt:
               
         The story of Israel's exile in Egypt starts during the famine which affected much of the then known world around the Mediterranean sea. Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel who was sold into slavery by his brothers and eventually ended up in Egypt was raised of God to be second in power to have been appointed by the then Pharoah of Egypt. Pharoah had a dream in which he saw 3 fat cows and 3 lean cows and the fat cows were eventually eaten up by the lean cows. Joseph who was in prison at the time, was brought before Pharoah and was the only person who could interpret the dream and went on to state that the 3 fat cows were 3 years of abundance and the 3 lean ones were 3 years of intense famine. Famine so intense that the world would reel under its effect. Hence, when Pharoah asked Joseph what needed to be done, Joseph advised Pharoah to store up grains during the years of abundance in huge storehouses throughout Egypt which could then be sold to the common folk for money or other goods. Long story short, Joseph's brothers and father came down to Egypt with their wives and children to live in the land of Goshen during the famine and were fed and taken care of by the Pharoah of Joseph's time. Historically, some historical scholars suggest that this Pharoah was of the Middle kingdom in Egypt, likely Sesotris-I (Senuseret-I) who ruled from 1971-1926 BC.

    After this Pharoah's death, the Jews in Egypt were exploited and taken into slavery by another suspicious Pharoah (either Ramses-II or Amenhotep-II as per various historians) and the Jews lives became miserable whence the need for a deliverer who turned out to be the prophet Moses raised of God to lead them out of Egypt back to the Holy Land Israel as promised to their forefathers. Here, we see that it was not the Jews who took others captive in the name of the God of Israel rather the Egyptians who took them as slaves and mistreated them leading to tremendous suffering and hardship whence the Lord delivered them and led them back to the Promised Land of Canaan (Israel). This background of the Jews being taken as slaves by the Egyptians and God's deliverance of the Jews to bring them back to the land promised to them by their forefathers as their eternal inheritance on Earth, is key to understanding what happens later when the Jews arrive in the Holy Land.

ii) Joshua and the Gibeonites:

     Fast forward to the book of Joshua after the Jews return to their land. Moses was not around anymore and Joshua had taken over leadership of the Jews under God's instructions to Moses before him to lead them back to the Holy Land after 40 years of wandering in the desert (owing to the sin of the Jews against God) wherefore God allowed the Jews to wander in the desert for 40 years for their rebellion against Him.  Joshua was given explicit instructions from God through Moses that the Jews were to expel/destroy every last inhabitant of the land and take possession of the land which God had promised and given to their forefathers forever. There was however, 1 tribe living in the Holy Land which pretended to be travellers from a far-off country and deceived Joshua and the Jews into making a pact with them to let them live in their midst. When the truth was found out, Joshua asked them why they had deceived them and they responded that they did it for fear that the Jews would kill them off to the last man if they did not and Joshua said that because of their deception, they would be slaves to the Jews by hewing wood and drawing water from wells in exchange for which they would be allowed to live. So here we see that the Gibeonites suffered the fate of slavery because of their deception and willfully accepted to be slaves to the Jews in exchange for life.

    The Jews here never willfully took the Gibeonites captive and made them slaves, rather the Gibeonites paid the price for their trickery and deception of the Jews and they did so willingly. However, we must bear in mind that God lays out the details of how the Jews are to treat not just foreigners in their land but also slaves. For instance, a slave is to be freed after 7-years of serving his master (Exodus 21:2-6; Leviticus 25:39-46). Later, king Saul, David's predecessor on Israel's throne sinned against God by killing the Gibeonites leading to 7 years of famine, when David inquired of the Gibeonites what could be done to atone for the misdeed of Saul, the Gibeonites wanted 7 of Saul's sons to be slain and hung on wooden pillars to atone for it and David did it, therefore God reversed the famine and brought rain to the land again. This just shows the justice of the God of the Bible where He takes up the side of the slaves (Gibeonites) when Saul acted in haste and slew the Gibeonites without taking note of the pact before God between Joshua and the Gibeonites.

iii) Israel's Babylonian exile for their blatant and incessant sinning against God during the reign of King David's successors:

     Later, after King David, his successors were largely people who committed sins like idolatry, they shed innocent blood in Israel and also gave their children as sacrifices to foreign gods to the fury of the God of Israel. God had made it clear to the Jews in the law (first 5-books of the Old Testament called "Torah" or the "Pentateuch") that they are not to worship any God besides Him, nor shed innocent blood or even offer their children as sacrifices to foreign gods like the pagans that lived around them. Eventually, when God's anger came full circle, the Jews ended up in exile in Babylon under King Nebuchadnezzar of the Chaldeans who invaded Israel and took them all captive to Babylon except the poor Jews of the land. The Jewish temple at Jerusalem built by King Solomon, David's son was destroyed and its riches were also taken to Babylon by the Chaldeans under king Nebuchadnezzar. The Jews eventually returned to Israel and Jerusalem later under King Darius by which time, the Chaldean empire had fallen to the Medo-Persian empire. Prior to this, King Cyrus of Persia sent some Jews to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem and had written instructions about what is to be done regarding Jerusalem's broken walls which had to be rebuilt and the temple of Jerusalem which was to be reconstructed. This part of the Bible shows that slavery is a curse that arises as a consequence of sin and that God's original intent was for his people the Jews to live freely and prosperously in the land that He had promised to their forefathers - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by walking uprightly before God throughout their generations. Hence, slavery is evil and is not God's will for anyone in the world, let alone those who trust in Him and worship Him, all that God expects is for the sinner to repent to Him and seek His face faithfully for all time and His mercies are great in his hope to see sinners repenting of their sins.

iv) What about verses on slavery in the New Testament? (Some key dates showing slavery was already a part and parcel of Greco-Roman culture which is the contextual backdrop of verses on how slaves are to behave towards their masters):

    Of interest is Ephesians 6:5 in which the apostle Paul writes "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, as unto Christ; (KJV 1611)". Is God abetting taking slaves in this verse?. The context of this above verse will become clearer as we see the cultural context of the Greco-Roman culture where slavery was a part and parcel of Greco-Roman culture as well as Israel's surrounding cultures' practices before the Greeks and Romans. Let us look at some important dates in the Biblical timeline which will give us an idea of the cultures.  "Servants" or "δοῦλοι (douloi)" can also mean "slaves" but by using this Greek word. Jesus and the Bible's authors are not abetting taking slaves. Rather these reflect the cultural background in which such stories or parables were narrated by Jesus to his disciples with a deeper inner meaning which Jesus wanted only his disciples to understand and must be seen as such - as stories with morals and were historically seen as such by Christians at all times. Now for the important dates - 

1) Fall of Israel to the Greeks post Alexander's conquest of Persia (Israel falls to the Greeks from the Persians)-> 334 BC after the Battle of Issus (333 BC). Being ruled by a foreign power was seen as grounds for enslavement for Jews, this happened both under the Greeks and the Romans afterwards. 

2) Fall of Alexander's domains to Roman control after the Battle of Corinth (hence transfer of Israel from Greek to Roman hands)-> 146 BC.

3) Servile war of Spartacus (Roman slave and gladiator)-> 73 BC-71 BC who revolted against Rome and wanted to overthrow it with his band of slaves, he was defeated and 6000 of his gladiators (former slaves) were crucified at the end of the war in the Appian way from Capua in South Western Italy to Rome. Spartacus himself was killed in the Battlefield as per the historian Plutarch. Note that this incident predates Jesus' life by 100 years.

4) Christianity taken to Greece in AD 52 by Paul, the same year when Christianity was brought to India by one of Jesus' other disciples Thomas. Christianity was later taken to Rome in AD 61 by Paul.

5) Fall of Jerusalem to Romans and destruction of the Jewish temple at Jerusalem -> AD 70 at the hands of Titus under emperor Vespasian and his "Legio X Fretensis (Xth legion)" whose emblem was a wild boar. Many more Jews were taken as slaves by Romans and others were mostly driven out of the land but a few stayed behind.

6) Edict of Milan (AD 313) by emperor Constantine, pagan Rome becomes Christian Holy Roman Empire.

7) Medieval slavery in Europe a continuation of slavery in pre-Christian Rome. As Europe became more Christianised, slavery started waning (AD 476-800).

8) Resurgence of slavery: later some European Theologians made the mistake of combining the curse of Ham with Aristotle's theory of natural selection (meaning some people were born to be slaves) (AD 1500-1807). This was further exacerbated by Islamic barbary pirates' invasions of Europe.

9) This theological error which primarily originates from Aristotles Theory of natural selection was taken up by pro-slavery advocates in the US along with racial prejudices that existed in White people towards people of other colours before the Emancipation of Slaves act. Bible does not explicitly instruct Jews or Christians to enslave Hamites (dark-skinned peoples mostly of African descent).

10) Slave Bible was published by Jessie Carnie Smith in AD 1807 in the US, this Bible had all the anti-slavery verses in the original Bible removed so as to justify the idea of taking slaves and as if such enslavement were divinely prescribed, hence the Slave Bible was a corrupted tool in the hands of the American slavers but eventually with the American Civil War, slavery was abolished and criminalised by Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation of Slavery in 1863, sounding the death knell of slavery in the West.

    Slavery was a part and parcel of Pagan Roman life and in that of the Pagan Greeks before them whose practices the Romans copied, this is attested in the ancient Greek historian Plutarch's work "Sayings of the Romans (Apopthegmata Romana)". Another event of interest was in the life of the famous Roman statesman, advocate, writer and friend of Julius Caesar - Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - AD 43) who frees a slave named "Eros" after the latter had announced to him that a court case had been adjourned giving Cicero more time to practice his speech before his appearance at the court. Another work which attests slavery being a part of Roman life was Plutarch's "Parallel lives (Bioi paralleloi)" when talking about another famous Roman statesman named "Cato Maior (Cato the Elder) 234-149 BC".

   Hence, we see that the Bible being a historical record merely records events as they occurred in Israel and between Israel and the surrounding nations extending up to Rome at a later date as well as the interactions between the Jews and surrounding peoples in times of war, famine, exile and peace alike. Hence it is only natural that there are verses from God outlining how justly and mercifully Jews and Christians are to treat slaves at a time when all the nations surrounding Israel followed slavery and slavery was the norm in some very specific circumstances like after wars, in debt and being enslaved in exchange for life. Even in the Old Testament, God makes it clear that the Jewish people are to set slaves free after 7 years of servitude and ONLY if the slave loves his/her master that he/she does not wish to leave him/her must his/her ears be awled through as a sign of his/her desire to serve his/her master for life of his/her own volition. As for New Testament verses on slavery exhorting how slaves are to behave towards their masters as if they were serving God himself, it is within the Greco-Roman context when Israel was very much a vassal state under Rome paying taxes to Rome under Rome's rulership where rich families had slaves, hence many Greek or Roman Christians who belonged to the lowermost social class under Roman rule, otherwise known as "plebians" ended up as slaves to rich Pagan Roman masters. Hence these New Testament verses are, by no stretch of the imagination, an abetment to taking slaves. I hope that this blog entry of mine has thoroughly cleared out any misconceptions and dispelled any lingering doubts in people's minds as to whether the Bible abets taking slaves. In fact, the very reason why Jessie Carnie Smith - a slaver from the American Southern states which needed slaves, removed all the anti-slavery verses in the Bible to create the Slave Bible which American slavers used in the 1800, proves that the Bible is opposed to slavery and that one has to go to great lengths to expunge or contort God's verses on how humanely masters are to treat their slaves, in order to misrepresent the Bible as a book that abets slavery which is nothing short of a thorough misrepresentation of what the Holy Bible represents and even a blasphemy of God because God makes it clear in the Bible that whoever removes any verse of the Bible will have his own named removed from God's Book of Life in heaven and hence cast into Hell in the hereafter.