In history class, the references to Confederates and anti-abolitionists using the Bible always made me shudder. Why would these people use my religion as a way to justify the torture of an entire race? The Israelites themselves were freed slaves at one point, right? The argument blew my mind, and I didn’t even know yet about the Slave Bible designed to suppress rebellion among unjustly enslaved Americans.
The reality is that the Bible was, like in many other issues, manipulated to fit a certain value. Cherry-picking and selective hearing runs rampant with these hot-button issues. But the Bible’s view of slavery is much different than American slavery. It never hit me before that slavery wasn’t racially-charged like America, it was mostly a last-ditch effort to pay off debts. This idea reminds me of the child sacrifice topic from Genesis, where desperate times really do call for desperate measures (which vary through cultures and time periods). In the Americanized, revisionist view that pervades Bible study in churches, I sometimes forget to acknowledge these important cultural and historical considerations.
One reply on “Slavery in the Bible”
I feel the same way. It’s hard to remember that these are two different types of slavery we are talking about. One of them is very racially charged, while the type of slavery in the Bible could come about in many different ways. It just shows that there are certain things that people like to pull out of the Bible, and other things that people chose to ignore. There are certain ideas in the Bible that could even dispose of the ideas of tattoos and even hair braiding, and people (even in the time of American slavery) certainly chose to ignore that part of the Bible. It just shows that people will pull whatever idea out of the Bible that they think will benefit them.