How (Not) to Read the Bible: Making Sense of the Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery and Other Crazy-Sounding Parts of Scripture

by Dan Kimball

Keep in mind that God commanded the death penalty for those who kidnapped people and made them slaves (read Exodus 21:16 and 1 Timothy 1:10). Although this type of slavery did happen at times, we never see God endorsing it or teaching people to do this. Instead, we see God condemning it. And when we do find slavery being addressed in the Bible, it is generally speaking about the type of slavery that existed to help the poor survive in the ancient world, forms of slavery that were established for people to work off debt (Leviticus 25:39), for example. When we look at slavery in the context of the ancient world, we need to deprogram our normal definition and redefine it according to what it meant in that world.