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

Here is the key point on slavery for our purposes. In general, when we think of slavery, we think of the evils of the New World race-based chattel slavery and the Atlantic slave trade with the American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which led to the Civil War. This form of slavery involved kidnapping and forced labor. It was evil. This type of slavery, however, while it did exist in ancient times, was not the common and predominant form of slavery. Knowing this makes a significant difference in how we read the Bible verses about slavery. Here are some of the differences: Slaves Who Lived at the Time of Moses Were More like Servants or Bondservants In modern translations of the Bible, the English word “slave” is not always used. Many translations use the word “servant.” The two situations were very different. In Ancient Israel, It Was Common to Sell Yourself to Pay a Debt or Escape Poverty It is difficult for us to comprehend this way of thinking, but it was quite common back then for the poor to sell themselves to escape poverty or pay a debt. When you sold yourself to someone as a servant, it meant your basic needs would be covered. And while there was an owner-servant relationship, it was not identical with the race-based slavery that began with kidnapping.