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

Leviticus 25:43 says, “Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.” When we read Bible verses about slavery, they are offering guidance, but this guidance was always intended to improve what already existed. Here are two quick examples: 1. Killing a slave merited punishment (Exodus 21:20). 2. Permanently injured slaves had to be set free (Exodus 21:26–27). These biblical directions deviated significantly from the normal treatment of slaves at that time, part of God’s process of gradually moving people toward a more dignified relationship between a slave and the household the slave served. In the New Testament, We See God Moving the People Away from Slavery We see the seeds of a movement (the church) that would equalize the worth of both slave and free people. Paul the apostle writes a letter to a slave owner named Philemon concerning a slave named Onesimus, who had run away from Philemon. Onesimus met Paul while Paul was in prison and had become a Christian during this time. Paul was sending Onesimus back to Philemon, and in the letter we read some amazing, radically countercultural things. Paul asks Philemon to not just take Onesimus back (after running away and stealing money from his master), but to receive him “no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.”* What makes this so unusual for that time is that Paul does not want Philemon to punish O...