Slavery has been the subject of several debates, and for a long time.

Critics, especially atheists have used the slavery argument to mock and ridicule Christians. They have claimed that Church-going christians owned slaves alongside non-believers, more importantly, atheists claim that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, citing biblical references and hence the conclusion that God (who is not supposed to exist) sanctioned slavery.


Below is an example.
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A controversial billboard with a biblical quote mocking Christians in Harrison, it was partially torn overnight.


Many Christians rightfully have the right to be offended by such ridicule and mockery, especially when they don't have answers as to why slavery is recorded in the Bible. This article is an attempt to explain to Christians who might be seeking for answers, and to also pose a question to atheists.

The issue of Slavery is multifaceted and briefly, I'll try my best to articulate in points.


Cc: KingEbukasBlog, emmanystone, Goodmuyis, Amberon11, Ishilove, Butterflyleo.

1. Slavery did not begin with Christianity. Slavery stems from many nations, culture and religion, from ancient times till date. Many historians opine that slavery is as old as humanity itself. Evidence of slavery predates written records.

Slavery was popular in the very first civilizations such as Sumer in Mesopotamia (as early as 3500 BC), as well as in almost every other civilization. The earliest records, such as the Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (1860 BC), refers to slavery as an established institution, and it was common among ancient peoples.


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Wikipedia notes that some of the earliest wars in history (Byzantine ottoman wars and the Ottoman wars in Europe), resulted in the capture of large numbers of Christian slaves, especially amongst the Slavic peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. This proves that some of the earliest known victims of slavery were Christians.

Slavery became common within much of Europe during the Dark Ages and it continued into the Middle Ages. The Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, British, Arabs and a number of West African kingdoms played a prominent role in the Atlantic slave trade, especially after 1600.

Also, contrary to what many people have heard, Africans - though victims of a more violent type of slavery have been involved in conquests and forceful lordship in Europe. The western media will most often not portray europeans as weak. However, Pre 17th century slavery records show that African moors conquered and ruled Spain for more than 700 years, some historians say they were responsible for bringing Europe out of the dark ages. The great mosque of Cordoba is still one of the achitectural wonders of the world inspire of later Spanish disfigurement.

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"The fact remained that at the beginning of the nineteenth century an estimated three-quarters of all people alive were trapped in bondage against their will either in some form of slavery or serfdom."- David P. Forsythe.

2. Christians and the Bible.
** A lot of Christians and non-christians alike may not understand the origin and meaning of the word christian. Regardless of the meaning the word has ascribed to word "christian". The word appears 3 times in the Bible, the new testament and each instance is referring to the first “Christians” of the early church (Acts 11:26, Acts 26:28, 1 Peter 4:16).
They were called “Christians” because their behavior, activity, and speech were like Christ Jesus. The word Christian means, “follower of Christ” or “belonging to the party of Christ.” This means many of your favourite characters from the Bible were not Christians. Abraham, Moses, David, Joshua, Esther e.t.c were not Christians. We must note that they served God through religion guided by certain laws. Christ came to modify religion, to amend the law, to show us how to live and to present an easier way to God. This is why there is an old and a new testament. (Romans 8:2). Religious adherents do not like being challenged most times and this is why some of the greatest opposition to the life of Christ were religious zealots.

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** The word “Bible” comes from the Latin and Greek words meaning “book,”. It contains the historical record of ancient civilizations, the actions of God, and His purpose with creation. Some of the ancient civilizations in the Bible are recorded so that Christians can easily understand the build up to the life of Christ, who is the central character of the Bible.

It is important to recognize that Christians don’t always accurately understand or represent the teaching of Scripture. Many religious practices in the old testament
were as a result of certain ethical, ceremonial, and social (mosaic) law codes and as such do not apply to Christians today. Practices such as animal sacrifices, physically burning incenses etc. Some christians go as far as hoping on prophesies specifically made for certain characters of the old testament. Many of these practices are unapplicable in Christianity. History is vital to growth and this is why the Bible records the historical buildup to the life of Christ. One must understand the Bible and what it says before one can attempt to interpret it.

Let's take a look as an example of how Jesus [the focal point of christianity] reacted to one of the laws/rules of the Old testament
In Matthew 19:3-10, the Pharisees came to Jesus, attempting to trap Him with questions about the Old Law. They asked: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” Jesus informed them that divorce was not in God’s plan from the beginning. Thinking they had trapped Him, they inquired: “Why, then, did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?” If it was in the Old Law, they suggested, then it must be God’s ideal will. But Jesus’ answer quickly stopped that line of thinking. He responded:

Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.

Jesus’ point was crystal clear—some things permitted in the Old Testament did not necessarily represent the ideal. Due to the hardness of ancient Israel’s heart, God tolerated (and regulated) some things under the Old Law that He did not endorse. As He did so, however, He progressively revealed His divine will to mankind, clarifying that will more fully through Christ.

This proves that there are Old Testament laws and principles that don't have validity today, and there is a redemptive-historical flow in the Bible that accounts for why some things were both commanded and permitted earlier that aren't now.

The regulation of slavery should therefore be seen as a practical step to deal with the realities of the day resulting from human fall. The aberrations that lead to alienation among individuals, races, and nations are the result of a fundamental broken relationship between humankind and God.

3. Slavery in the Bible.
"During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God” (Exodus 2:23).
The humane legal rights given to slaves/servants commanded in the Bible among the Israelites was often prefaced by a reminder that they too were slaves at the hand of the Egyptians. In other words, they were to treat slaves/servants in a way that they wanted to be treated.






The Bible is often criticized for "permitting" and "regulating" slavery. There are a few things we must understand.
**Many innately good things may not need regulation. However, those things that can be used as a force for evil definitely need to be regulated. For instance, There is no regulation against good health. In Nigeria, there are regulations on driving vehicles, regulations in governance etc. This is because some of these can be used as a force for evil. This is the first observation that we can make about Biblical slavery.

**We also have to understand the cultural-historical context from which the Bible emerges. As explained in point 1, slavery was common to almost every ancient culture, nationality and religion. The Bible originated from periods in history where slavery was commonplace. However the social, economic, and legal positions of slaves were vastly different in different systems of slavery in different times and places. In the Bible, we will see the legal positions of "slaves".

Corroborating point 2, Christian scholars such as Copan and Enns have argued that God accommodated himself to non-ideal circumstances as he progressively revealed himself to his people. This is also corroborated by the story of Jesus and the Pharisees in point 2.

**Very importantly, we must understand that slavery in the Bible is not what we commonly recognized amongst slavery among the 17th century Armericans and europeans. This will be better explained in point 3.

An example of Old Testament slavery (servitude) was when one would, via his own volition, sell himself or family members into the service of a fellow Israelite since he has come on hard times financially. This would mean that his family would still be able to eat, have a roof over their heads, and be productive members within Israelite society. This is remarkably different from what critics would have us assume.

Theologian James White explains that “In the biblical context, slavery was often the last resort, and as such, was a life-saving institution, allowing a person to remain alive when all other possibilities were exhausted, even with a hope of redemption and eventual freedom". Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.

**Also, in the Old Testament, God desired that all people love their neighbors as themselves (Leviticus 19:18). Yet, in a time when God used the children of Israel as His arm of justice to punish evildoers, certain questions arose. What was to be done, for example, with the survivors of those wicked nations? What was to be done with a man who was so far in debt that he could not repay his lender? These issues, and others like them, necessitated that God institute some form of humane regulations for “slavery.”

Below are some laws in the Bible that regulated slavery and protected slaves:
-Injuring or killing slaves was punishable - up to death of the offending party. (Exo 21-20, Exo 21-26,27)
-Hebrews were commanded not to make their slave work on the Sabbath. (Exo 23:12)
-You must not slander a slave (Prov 30:10)
-You must not have sex with a woman slave (Lev 19:20)
-You must not return an escaped slave (Deut 23:15)
- A Hebrew was not to enslave his fellow countryman, even if he owed him money, but was to have him work as a hired worker, and he was to be released in 7 years or in the year of jubilee (which occurred every 50 years), whichever came first. (Lev 25:39-43)
- A slave owner was encouraged to "pamper his slave" (Prov 29:21)


Having explained that Slavery was peculiar to almost all races, nation and religion in point 1, we must also understand that certain types of slavery are not morally wrong. For instance, when a man is convicted of murder, he often is sentenced to life in prison. During his life sentence, he is forced by the Nigerian State to hard labour sometimes for long hours. He is justly confined to a small living space, and his freedoms are revoked. He labours and does not receive even minimum wage. Would it be justifiable to label such a loss of freedom as a type of slavery? Yes, it would. However, is his loss of freedom a morally permissible situation? Certainly. He has become a slave of the Nigerian state because he violated certain laws that were designed to ensure the liberty of his fellow citizen, whom he murdered. Therefore, one fact that must be conceded by anyone dealing with the Bible and its position on slavery is the fact that, under some conditions, slavery is not necessarily a morally deplorable institution.

Taking that into account, we also must ask: Who has the right to determine when slavery can be imposed on a certain person or group of people? The answer, of course, is God. In the Old Testament, immoral nations who practiced unspeakable evils surrounded the Hebrews. In order to rid the world of their destructive influence, the children of Israel dealt with them in several ways. One of those ways included forcing the wicked nations into slavery. Many of the slave regulations in the Old Testament deal with the humanr treatment of individuals and nations who had committed crimes against humanity that were worthy of death. The wicked people were graciously allowed to live, but they were subjected to slavery, much like a lifetime prison sentence in modern criminal cases.

For instancr, In Leviticus 18:21,24 we read that the Lord told Moses to instruct the Israelites as follows:

And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through the fire to Molech.... Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you.

In order to understand this scenario, it is important that we understand what the phrase, “pass through the fire to Molech,” means in verse 21. In brief, it means that the nations around the Israelites were burning their own children as human sacrifices to a pagan god named Molech. Fitting this into our discussion, would it be morally permissible for God to allow a government (e.g., the Israelites) to punish those people who were viciously murdering their own children? What punishment would be appropriate for a person who had committed such heinous crimes as to murder his or her own innocent children? The answer to that question rages even in our own society today when instances of child homicide arrive before the courts of our land. Legitimate answers often include the death penalty, or a life in prison in which many freedoms are revoked.

Another instance can be seen in Exodus 22:1-3, the Bible discusses a situation in which a man was caught in the act of thievery. The thief was instructed to restore what he stole, returning four sheep, and five oxen, for every one stolen. The text further states: “He should make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft” (vs. 3). Being sold into slavery was often a government-regulated punishment based on a criminal action. One can see, then, that it is morally permissible to revoke the freedoms of certain people or groups of people based on their inappropriate conduct.


Accordingly, many of the slavery regulations in the Old Testament pertained to people who deserved far worse. Dan Vander Lugt commented:
"Old Testament laws regulating slavery are troublesome by modern standards, but in their historical context they provided a degree of social recognition and legal protection to slaves that was advanced for its time (Exodus 21:20-27; Leviticus 25:44-46). We must keep in mind that on occasion it was an alternative to the massacre of enemy populations in wartime and the starvation of the poor during famine".


In a nutshell, this was slavery in the Old testament. People sold themselves into slavery because of their financial situations and terrible people who otherwise should have been destroyed or kept in prisons (there were no prisons in ancient Israel) were taken as slaves like the Nigerian government would do to modern day criminal cases.

Whom do you think would have more right to take away the freedom of a criminal in prison and subject Him/Her to hard labour? The God of Creation or the Nigerian Government. I hope you can answer that honestly.

4. Slavery among the 17th and 18th century Americans and Europeans (the slavery we all know) VS Slavery in the Bible.


Slavery during Old Testament times is not what we commonly recognize as slavery, such as that practiced in the 17th century Americas, when Africans were captured and forcibly brought to work on plantations. Unlike modern government welfare programs, there was no safety-net for ancient Middle Easterners who could not provide a living for themselves. In ancient Israel, people who could not provide for themselves or their families sold them into slavery so they would not die of starvation or exposure. In this way, a person would receive food and housing in exchange for labor.

In Bible times, slavery was based more on economics; it was a matter of social status. People sold themselves as slaves when they could not pay their debts or provide for their families. In New Testament times, sometimes doctors, lawyers, and even politicians were slaves of someone else. Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.

As explained in point 1, slavery was commonplace in the world but the legal, social and economic positions on slavery varied amongst ages and nations. The slavery we know (the African slave trade) with its whips and chains is not similar to many of the much older types of slavery. It was Racial-based and black people were often regarded as animals.

It is more important to note that neither slavery in New Testament times nor slavery under the Mosaic Covenant have anything to do with the sort of slavery where “black” people were bought and sold as property by “white” people in the well-known slave trade of the last few centuries. Nothing can justify the African historic slave trade, which is still a major stain on the histories of both the United States and the UK.

The United States and the UK were not the only countries in history to delve into harsh slavery and so be stained.

a. The Code of Hammurabi discussed slavery soon after 2242BC after the Tower of Babel incident.

b. Ham’s son Mizraim founded Egypt (still called Mizraim in Hebrew). Egypt was the first well-documented nation in the Bible to have harsh slavery, which was imposed on Joseph, the son of Israel, in 1728 BC. Later, the Egyptians were slave masters to the rest of the Israelites until Moses, by the hand of God, freed them.

c. The Israelites were again enslaved by Assyrian and Babylonian captors about 1,000 years later.

d. "Black african” Moors enslaved “whites” during their conquering of Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century AD for over 400 years. The Moors even took slaves as far north as Scandinavia. The Moorish and Middle Eastern slave market was quite extensive. (Check point 1 for pictures)

e. Norse raiders of Scandinavia enslaved other European peoples and took them back as property beginning in the eighth century AD.

f. Even in modern times, slavery is still alive, such as in Libya, Sudan and Darfur.

We find many other examples of harsh slavery from cultures throughout the world. At any rate, these few examples indicate that harsh slavery was/is a reality, and, in all cases, is an unacceptable act by biblical standards (as we would see).


The old and new testaments spoke outrightly against the type of slavery we know, especially slave trade.

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According to Old Testament law, anyone caught selling another person into slavery (slave trade) was to be executed:
"He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death."
(Exodus 21:16)

Also in the New testament, God listed slave traders among the worst of sinners in 1 Timothy 1:10.

So to make this point brief, I'll point out a few differences in the trans-atlantic slavery (the slavery we know and biblical slavery).
www.nairaland.com/attachments/6895892_img20180328133407_jpeg089dad2abd8bad9400b4fe6c8c804c3d Those who were paid engaged in another kind of servitude. The only slaves who were not paid something in the Bible were criminals as explained in point 3.

May John Wycliffe (the man who translated the Bible to English and lost his life for it) rest in power. The word slave was a compound word used for several kinds of servitude. For instance, the mordern stewards of the Oba of Benin or Emir Sanusi, would in biblical terms be referred to as slaves.

The term “slave” in Ephesians 6:5 is better translated “bondservant.” The Bible did not support the practice of bondservants, who were certainly not paid the first century equivalent of the minimum wage. Nevertheless, they were to be paid something (Colossians 4:1) and were therefore in a state more akin to a lifetime employment contract rather than the “racial” slavery we know.

The slavery we know was based on the fact that Africans/Black were mere "animals". Till date, this idea is evident. For instance, an ex football player (Dani Alves) of my favourite football team (Barcelona) in a racial slur, was thrown a banana when he was about to take a corner kick. The racists still think blacks are inferior animals and the slave traders thought so too.

So with force and the help of some african rulers, they kidnapped, captured and sold several black men and women into slavery in America and much of Europe where the slaves were humiliated, exploited and abused. A few examples are shown below:

*The Sharpville massacre of South Africa.www.nairaland.com/attachments/6896053_img20180328135306_jpegdea4633c692c6d74a68fd37c5e22eb5c

* Slaves were often sexually exploited and dehumanized. I recall a slave movie I watched where females slaves were captured by the virtue of their attractive breasts and buttocks. History also records the story of one amongst many, Saartji Baartman, apart from being sexually abused severally, was cruelly exploited in Europe by being exhibited as a freakshow because of her protruding buttocks.

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After her death at the age of 26, her body was dissected and studied as a science specimen and displayed in Paris for more than 100 years until 1974. In 2002, her body was taken back home in South Africa and laid to rest.

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* Africans were kidnapped from Africa and exhibited in the human Zoos, frequently with monkeys and other animals, many of them died quickly.

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Below is Ota Benga, An African native who was kidnapped from Congo and taken to America and kept in the Bronx zoo with monkeys. He committed suicide.
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Many Africans who resisted the white force were mutilated and killed in the most inhuman way possible.
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Kenyan camps where slaves were kept inspired so much terror that some of the slaves drilled their fingers into their necks to commit suicide as it was the only way out.
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The worlds first death camp occurred in Shark island by the Germans in Namibia. I can't post some of the pictures here because of the gruesomeness.

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In Belgium Congo, women were held hostage until their husbands returned with enough rubber for colonizer King Leopold. The butcher of Congo, some of them were shot and had their hands chopped for not meeting the rubber quotas. Belgium mocked the victims by naming the streets after him.

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This type of harsh slavery continued till the 20th century.

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Emmet Till, aged 14, was kidnapped and brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman.
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I'll like to go on but i must stop here. The slavery we know of was racial based, black were considered animals. They were kidnapped, sold, used, exploited and abused, they had no rights and most times due to the high level of hardship, many of them preferred to die. This is different from the type of slavery that existed in ancient times amongst several nations.

5. Did the Bible reject Slavery
Despite the fact that the Bible originated at a time when slavery was common in almost all parts of the world and despite the fact that slavery was an alternative to imprisonment of criminals, Biblical slaves were to be treated as the people of God would also want to be treated.

Also, as explained earlier, certain types of “slavery” not only are permissible, but sometimes necessary to the well-being of a society at large. For the biblical stance on slavery to be condemned as unjust, it must be established that the specific regulations of slavery described in the text are immoral and unfair. However, when closely scrutinized, the biblical stance on slavery aligns itself with true justice. All regulations found therein were established for the just treatment of all parties involved. Many times, slavery as regulated in the Old Testament was a mutually beneficial relationship between servant and master, similar to an employee/employer relationship. Furthermore, slavery often was a substitute for the death penalty—which certain nations deserved. Debt accumulation caused many free persons to sell their labor and become slaves.

But why didn't the bible outrightly reject slavery, the Bible actually did. The Bible began to modify the culture of the day as God progressively revealed himself to man. I'll try to explain below:

**The Bible highlighted that Slave trade was punishable by death.

"He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death." (Exodus 21:16).
The was the first sting to slave trade, people were not to be kidnapped or stolen and sold into slavery. (Exodus 3:15)

** Slave traders were listed amongst the worst of sinners in 1 Timothy 1:10. After the Israelites were enslaved for 400years without rights, God proclaimed judgement on the captors after freeing the isrealites

** The Bible highlights that foreigners (interpreted as aliens) are to be treated with respect.
Leviticus show us the importance of treating “aliens” and foreigners well, and how they can become part of the people of God (for example, Rahab and Ruth). Also, the existence of slavery in Leviticus 25 underlines the importance of redemption, and enables the New Testament writers to point out that we are slaves to sin, but are redeemed by the blood of Jesus. Such slavery is a living allegory, and does not justify the race-based form of slavery practiced from about the 16th to 19th centuries.

**If God had simply ignored slavery, then there would have been no rules for the treatment of slaves/bondservants, and people (being naturally exploitive) could have treated them harshly with no rights. But the God-given rights and rules for their protection showed that God cared for them as well, as he progressively refined the culture of the day.

** Apostle Paul suggests that Slaves are to be treated as brothers.
Critics cite the book of Onesimus (Philemon) often in the argument of slavery, and rightly. However, Paul was sowing the seeds to explode the whole situation of slavery. Onesimus himself was a slave when he got converted. Paul sent him back to Philemon who had been his master, and he said, "I am sending him back as a brother. Honor him." That kind of spiritual dynamic was intended to explode the system.

**The Golden Rule
Another thing to explode the system is when Paul says to masters, "Do not threaten them, remembering that you too have a master." So he puts the command of neighbor-love—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—in the place of the right of the master to threaten. And if you don't threaten, what do you do? You win by love, and that transforms slavery into employment.

**All men are equal before God.
God created us all equal (John 13:16). In His eyes, no man is perfect, lest we should boast (Ephesians 2:9).
God also specifically tells us not to judge each other (Matthew 7:1), much less make one a slave to the other.

**God does not distinguish between slaves and freemen:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)

knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. (Ephesians 6:

And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him. (Ephesians 6:9)

a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. (Colossians 3:11).

**The Bible encourages slaves to get out of slavery if they can.
1 Corinthians 7:21 “Were you called while a slave? Do not worry about it; but if you are able also to become free, rather do that.”
“If the Bible were endorsing slavery, then it wouldn’t be telling slaves to take opportunities to become free. And yet that is exactly what Paul does.”


**The Bible condemns racism
“The Bible forbids treating someone else as less than human because of their race. God created man in his own image—all men—not just white ones or black ones or red ones or yellow ones. Because of that, every person—not just some people—every person has inherent dignity and worth as image-bearers of almighty God.”

The Bible originated at a time when slavery was normal, the way out of financial predicaments as well as other economic issues, however, as God progressively revealed himself to man, we can see a progressive refining of the culture of the day (where slavery was normal) to a point where those referred to as slaves are not different from those referred to as freemen.

6. But many Christians justified the trans Atlantic slave trade of the 17th century
There are quotes from Christians endorsing slavery and some examples are shown below.

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As explained in Point 2. We must recognize Christians don’t always accurately understand or represent the teaching of Scripture.

While there were obviously believers who read the Bible and came to the conclusion God supported slavery, there were also many others who came to the opposite conclusion. In the early years in our country, the Church of the Brethren (German Baptist Brethren) denounced slavery and would not allow any of their members to own slaves. Ministers who tried to defend slavery from the Bible were quickly excommunicated. During this same early period of time, Quakers and Mennonites also condemned the practice of slavery. Many of the founding fathers believed slavery was wrong and they formed their opinions based on their Christian upbringing:

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In fact, the abolitionist movement was dominated by Bible believing Christians so moved by their faith (and God’s Word), they felt compelled to eliminate slavery altogether. So, how did two diametrically opposed views on slavery develop from the same sacred text? Why did some people read the Bible and conclude it supported slavery, while others used the Bible as their foundation for the abolition of slavery? Even as a skeptic, I knew there was more to the story than met the eye. Jesus clearly taught a high ethic related to our treatment of others:

Matthew 5:39-42 “…if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you…”

Matthew 7:12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

How could Jesus affirm such a high standard related to the treatment of others, yet condone slavery?

Many words in the Bible had one meaning for those who lived in New Testament times and another for those of us living today. As an example, we often read the word “church” in the New Testament and interpret it through our contemporary cultural lens. We typically think of a building or a place of worship. But those who first read the text understood the word to describe a group of people who shared a common faith in Christ. Therefore, when Paul said he would visit the Church in Ephesus, he didn’t mean he was going to visit a building, he meant he was going to visit all the believers who lived in Ephesus. The word has a different meaning for us today than it did for those who first used the word two thousand years ago. As it turns out, the term “slave” or “slavery” poses a similar challenge for those of us who are trying to understand what God has declared about the issue. Before we can begin to understand what the Bible teaches about slavery, we’ve got to understand what the Bible means by slavery. Refer to point 3 and 4

7. Christianity was present in Africa prior to the trans-atlantic slave trade
Many critics push that Christianity is a slave religion and if not because of Slavery, there will be nothing like christianity in Africa. They go ahead to mock christians by saying that chistians are still slaves (mentally) because they retain the christian ideology mostly spread by slave traders.
Some Christian apologists have responded by saying that slavery was Gods way of bringing christianity to Africa. I'd like to say that both the critics and apologists are incorrect to a large extent.

We must be historically informed that the above is inaccurate, Christianity existed in Africa before the transatlantic slave trade.

Many African empires were conquered by white slave traders because of the disparity in the weapons employed by both sides. Historians record that many Africans relied solely on their spiritual system to combat invaders while invaders (white supremacists) relied on their arms and ammunitions. As a result, many African empires fell and were at the mercy of the invaders.

Ethiopia however was not completely dominated and conquered, this was because King Menelik II understood that he needed more than just spirituality.
www.nairaland.com/attachments/6897159_img20180328170108_jpeg07a4430993f28dc525fe2f91bfdbfdf9
www.nairaland.com/attachments/6897151_img20180328172116_jpeg5a9a076ba99849937201c226411ea404


He knew he had to be practical and so he got guns, guns that rivalled that of the italian invaders. During the faceoff, the Ethiopians used their landscape to their advantage. Some historians concede that Italy underestimated the Ethiopians and their military genius and that this led to the fall of the italians.

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Interestingly, the western media began to portray king Menelik II as a white man because of this feat. He was depicted in pictures and cartoons as a white man because they didn't want the world to see that europe was defeated by a African man. Many historians also propose that Jesus Christ is also depicted in a similar way.
www.nairaland.com/attachments/6897152_img20180328172055_jpeg633a21aa3f67a518466d29c76866ba71


To cut this story short, Christianity was already present in Ethiopia. Hence the elitist modern Pan-african belief that Jesus Christ is a foreign God is quite misinformed.
In northern African territories under the Roman empire (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Lybia), Christianity was the predominant religion centuries before colonialism.

Ethiopia which also was not colonized has Christianity centuries before the colonizers came to Africa. Some of the Bishops at the First council of Nicea(which agreed on the uniform Christian biblical doctrine were from Africa I.e the church of Alexandria, the lybian pentapolis. Again centuries before colonialism.

In addition some historians believe that Matthew, one of the 12 disciples found his death while evangelizing in ethiopia, Africa centuries before colonialism.

Many Historians also believe that Jesus Christ lived his early years in African territories centuries prior to the white man's invasion. They have suggested that Christ's race and skin colour was anything but white.

8. Slavery is still very much alive

Although slavery is no longer legal anywhere in the world (with the exception of penal labour), human trafficking remains an international problem and an estimated 25-40 million people are enslaved today, the majority in Asia.
During the 1983–2005 Second Sudanese Civil War people were taken into slavery.
Although Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007, in Mauritania it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labor. Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery on cacao plantations in West Africa.
In Libya, many Africans are still captured and sold in an active slave trade environment.
In Nigeria, slave trade is active and the master-slave type of slavery is predominant in many homes. Many families give out their chiodren when they are in a financial crisis, such children work in exchange for food, clothing and shelter (in few cases, schooling).Many slaves are paid and many are not paid.

Spiritual slavery is also not left out. In The Social Record of Christianity, atheist Joseph McCabe wrote: “Slavery is the last word that any Christian apologist ought to mention”. But he missed one of the main points in the Bible—that point being that everyone is a slave to something. As the apostle Paul wrote through inspiration:

Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:16-18).

Some people are slaves to drug addiction, sexual promiscuity, attitudes of pessimism and complaint, or any number of other vices. Others, however, are slaves to righteousness, teaching the Gospel, helping the sick, and taking care of the poor. We each must decide which master we will allow to control our lives. As the psalmist so beautifully stated it many years ago, “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness” (Psalm 84:10).

God’s injunctions and instructions pertaining to slavery have a clear ring of justice, compassion, mercy, and kindness to them. When analyzed fairly and fully, the idea of slavery gives the honest person one more piece of evidence that points to the perfection of the God of the Bible.

God’s not after perfection, but surely isn’t justifying our sin either. That’s why we need Jesus for salvation.
Don’t put it past Him to work a miracle through a fallen situation; to restore life to a dead place, or to save a heart that the rest of us deem unworthy and less than.

“Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good - no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (Philemon 15).

Some people are born into unfair circumstances. Others are brought into them under no control of their own. Slavery is an injustice, but God is just (James 5:7-9).

9. Christians led a worldwide fight to abolish slavery so that you and I can live as a free man
The transatlantic slave traders were determined to prove that black men were animals, at every point, the black man fought back and throughout history, we find ex-slaves fighting against the institution of slavery.

The slave trade abolitionists consisted mainly of Christians at a time when harsh slavery had eaten deep into the world.
Let it also be clearly stated that the principles set forth by Jesus and His apostles, if followed, would result in the abolition of all types of abusive relationships.

Slavery would have been nonexistent if everyone from the first century forward had adhered to Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 7:12: “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them.” Any discussion of slavery would be moot if the world had heeded the words of Peter: “Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another, love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous” (1 Peter 3:.

Truly, the teachings of the Lord and the apostles would have abolished slavery like no other social reform system ever known. As Herb Vander Lugt accurately observed:

Jesus and the apostles didn’t go on an anti-slavery crusade, because doing so would have been futile and a hindrance to their primary mission. The priority of Jesus was the provision of salvation. For the apostles it was the proclamation of the gospel. But both Jesus and the apostles undermined the basis for slavery by making it clear that God equally loves rich and poor, free and slave, male and female. The apostles also welcomed into the church and gave equal status to all who believed, regardless of race, gender, nationality, or social position.

Furthermore, an outright condemnation of kidnapping, or slave trading, is found in the New Testament. In 1 Timothy 1:9-10, Paul wrote:

We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine...

Other versions render the Greek word andrapodistais as “kidnappers,” or “menstealers,” but it also is translated slave dealers or slave traders. Therefore, in keeping with the Old Testament injunction that anyone kidnapping and selling a person involves himself in immoral conduct, Paul certainly distinguished between certain types of slavery practices that were inherently wrong, and others that were not intrinsically sinful.


As discussed earlier, the slavery of “black” people by “white” people in the 16th to 19th centuries (and probably longer) was harshly unjust, like many cultures before. This harsh slavery is not discussed in Moses’ writings because such slavery was forbidden in Hebrew culture. This is not surprising. Paul tells us in Romans 1:30 that people are capable of inventing new ways of doing evil. Peter even reveals that some slave owners were already being disobedient and treating slaves/bondservants harshly (1 Peter 2:18). Of course, the Bible gives no endorsement of such treatment.

“White” on “black” slavery was opposed by Christians such as William Wilberforce, but not by examining passages on slavery because the slaveries were of different types. “Racial” slavery was opposed because it was seen to be contrary to the value that God places on every human being, and the fact that God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). The last letter that the revival evangelist John Wesley ever wrote was to William Wilberforce, encouraging Wilberforce in his endeavors to see slavery abolished. In the letter, Wesley describes slavery as “execrable villainy.”

"Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a “law” in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?

Wesley concentrated on the value of a man, irrespective of the color of his skin. It is this principle of the value God places on human beings—a biblical principle—which was Wesley’s motivation in opposing slavery.

The famous hymnwriter John Newton at one time actually captained slave ships. He did so even after his conversion to Christianity, because he was influenced by the prevailing attitudes of his society; it took time for him to realize his errors. But realize them he did—and he spent the latter part of his life campaigning against slavery. He wrote movingly and disturbingly of the suffering of slaves in the ships’ galleys in his pamphlet “Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade.”

If the slaves and their rooms can be constantly aired, and they are not detained too long on board, perhaps there are not many who die; but the contrary is often their lot. They are kept down, by the weather, to breathe a hot and corrupted air, sometimes for a week: this added to the galling of their irons, and the despondency which seizes their spirits when thus confined, soon becomes fatal. . . . I believe, upon an average between the more healthy, and the more sickly voyages, and including all contingencies, one fourth of the whole purchase may be allotted to the article of mortality: that is, if the English ships purchase sixty thousand slaves annually, upon the whole extent of the coast, the annual loss of lives cannot be much less than fifteen thousand.

Like Wesley, it was the biblical value of human life that was the deciding factor in Newton’s opposition to slavery in his latter years.

The use of the term “one blood” in Acts 17:26 is very significant. If “races” were really of different “bloods,” then we could not all be saved by the shedding of the blood of one Savior. It is because the entire human race can be seen to be descended from one man—Adam—that we know we can trust in one Savior, Jesus Christ (the “Last Adam”).

Many other Christians could be named in the fight to abolish slavery, which seemed to culminate with Abraham Lincoln in the mid-1800s (slavery was one of the reasons for the Civil War in the United States). Below is a list of the abolitionists, christians constitute an overwhelming majority:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_abolitionists

http://www.americanabolitionists.com/illustrated-list-of-abolitionists-and-activists.html

10. What did atheists and other unbelievers do about slavery
Slavery was getting extremely inhumane and man was using it as a source of evil. African slaves were subjected to extreme labour, beautiful African women were exploited sexually, men were humiliated and mutilated and ultimately killed for slight protests.

Atheists always want to mock Christians and Christianity especially on every issue. This is why Christianity is blamed for almost everything an atheist can think of. Atheists have gone as far as mocking Christianity for the failure of Nigerians in Olympics as well as other ridiculous blame games. Below are some evidences:

https://www.nairaland.com/3300546/some-benefits-atheism

https://www.nairaland.com/4416369/atheists-mind-free-enough-question

In other instances of ridicule, Christianity is also mocked for claiming the earth is 6000 years old. They claim the Bible must be incorrect since it claimed the earth is 6000 years old, whereas such claim is never found in the Bible.

The claim of 6000 years was gotten from archbishop James ussher, Bishop in the Church of Ireland in the 16th century. He took the genealogies of genesis, assuming they were complete, and calculated all the years to arrive at a date for the creation of the earth on sunday, october 23, 4004 B.C.
Many people have also come up with dates for creation, such as Johannes Kepler (3992 BC), Gerhard Hasel (4178 BC), and Isaac Newton (~4000 BC) but have received far lesser criticisms.
These were men who were simply trying their best to get answers for humanity. But only Christian scientists seem to be lambasted.

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These men are disrespected based on the virtue of their beliefs when in reality, no one knows the actual age of the earth. Those who hold to billions of years trust that methods such as radiometric dating are reliable and assume that nothing has occurred in history that may have disrupted the normal decay of radio-isotopes. and of course, God could have created the universe in a state that “appears” to give it a very long age.

Such bigoted mockery and ridicule is found in almost every atheist circle especially since one of the 21st century's foremost atheist Richard Dawkins has urged his followers to mock christians wherever they are found. This is similar to a verse in the Book of another religion where adherents are urged to kill unbelievers wherever they are found.

While atheists ridicule Christianity for slavery and other evils, It can be argued that atheists and many other religious adherents did virtually nothing to oppose slavery. Everyone else seemed to depend on the move Christians were going to make. Whilst many christians fiercely spearheaded the antislavery movement, people from other religions followed the movement. Its was then that people like Ingersoll (an agnostic) followed suit. Very few Muslims are also recorded to have joined in the antislavery movement.


It is important to note that much of the late 19th century and the 20th century was heralded as the age of the "freethinkers" (atheists). It seemed to be the era of the atheist. Several great countries had their head of state as atheists, and much of those regimes were intended to be run on atheism and "science".
Atheists had the chance to show the world why "religion is cancer" as claimed by many atheists, but history shows otherwise:

https://www.nairaland.com/3232176/atheist-presidents-heads-state-quick

https://www.nairaland.com/2988881/atheism-terrorism-annihilation-quest-atheistic

Also we find that majority of the people who fought against slavery were not atheists but Christians who used Christianity and the Bible as their inspiration.

11. Do atheists have the moral rights to blame anyone for slavery?
Most atheists blame Christianity for slavery and this begs the question, how does an atheist determine if slavery is right or wrong?.

Atheism does not provide us with any solid ground for condemning slavery. This does not keep atheists from condemning slavery. It just keeps them from having a good reason for doing so.

Scripture on the other hand does provide us with a solid basis for eliminating slavery.

“It is easy to see on these principles how slavery is not what God intends for us. Christ came to proclaim liberty for the captives (Luke 4:18). The Bible prohibits the manstealing that was the foundation of the slave trade (1 Tim. 1:10). In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, slave or free (Gal. 3:28). The logic of the new creation in Christ provides liberation from the slavery of sin which is the foundation of all other forms of slavery (Gal. 5:1).

But how could atheism lead to a condemnation of slavery?.

Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has declared, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. . . . DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.

Here the atheist admits that there is neither good nor evil and that DNA does not care if you're a slave or not

Many atheists agree with Dawkins but most times they don't act like they actually believe that. Dawkins recently affirmed a woman has the right to choose an abortion and asserted that it would be “immoral” to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome. According to Dawkins, the “right to choose” is a good thing and giving birth to Down syndrome children is a bad thing.

So Well, which is it? Is there really good and evil, or are we just moist robots dancing to the music of our DNA?

There isn’t a moral standard in the materialistic universe of atheism. So atheists must steal the grounds for objective moral rights from God while arguing that God doesn’t exist.

This is not to say that you have to believe in God to be a good person or that atheists are immoral people. Some atheists live more moral lives than many Christians. This is not also to say that atheists don’t know morality. Everyone knows basic right and wrong whether they believe in God or not. In fact, that’s exactly what the Bible teaches (see Romans 2:14-15).

What I am saying is that atheists can’t justify morality. Atheists routinely confuse knowing what’s right with justifying what’s right. They say it’s right to love. I agree, but why is it right to love. Why are we obligated to do so? The issue isn’t how we know what’s Right, but why an authoritative standard of Rightness exists in the first place.

You may come to know about objective morality in many different ways: from parents, teachers, society, your conscience, etc. And you can know it while denying God exists. But that’s like saying you can know what a book says while denying there’s an author. Of course you can do that, but there would be no book to know unless there was an author! In other words, atheists can know objective morality while denying God exists, but there would be no objective morality unless God exists.

If material nature is all that exists, which is what most atheist’s claim, then there is no such thing as an immaterial moral law. Therefore, atheists must smuggle a moral standard into their materialistic system to get it to work, whether it’s “human flourishing,” the Golden Rule, doing what’s “best” for the most, etc. Such standards don’t exist in a materialistic universe where creatures just “dance” to the music of their DNA.

Atheists are caught in a dilemma. If God doesn’t exist, then everything is a matter of human opinion and objective moral rights don’t exist, including all those that atheists support. If God does exist, then objective moral rights exist. But those rights clearly don’t include cutting up babies in the womb, same-sex marriage, and their other invented absolutes contrary to every major religion and natural law.

Now, an atheist might say, “In our country, we have a constitution that the majority approved. We have no need to appeal to God.” True, you don’t have to appeal to God to write laws, but you do have to appeal to God if you want to ground them in anything other than human opinion. Otherwise, your “rights” are mere preferences that can be voted out of existence at the ballot box or at the whim of an activist judge or dictator.

In other words, no matter what side of the political aisle you’re on — no matter how passionate you believe in certain causes or rights — without God they aren’t really rights at all. Human rights amount to no more than your subjective preferences. So atheists can believe in and fight for rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, and taxpayer-provided entitlements, but they can’t justify them as truly being rights.

In fact, to be a consistent atheist, you can’t believe that anyone has ever actually changed the world for the better. Objectively good political or moral reform is impossible if atheism is true. Which means you have to believe that everything Wilberforce, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King did to abolish slavery and racism wasn’t really good; it was just different. It means you have to believe that rescuing Jews from the ovens was not objectively better than murdering them. It means you have to believe that gay marriage is no better than gay bashing. (Since we’re all just “dancing to our DNA,” the gay basher was just born with the anti-gay gene. You can’t blame him!) It means you have to believe that loving people is no better than raping them.

You may be thinking, “That’s outrageous! Racism, murder, assault, and rape are objectively wrong, and people do have a right not to be harmed!” I agree. But that’s true only if God exists. In an atheistic universe there is nothing objectively wrong with anything at any time. There are no limits. Anything goes. Which means to be a consistent atheist you have to believe in the outrageous.

If you don’t like the behaviors and ideas I am advocating here, you are admitting that all behaviors and ideas are not equal — that some are closer to the real objective moral truth than others. But what is the source of that objective truth? It can’t be changeable by fallible human beings like you or me. It can only be God whose unchangeable nature is the ground of all moral value. That’s why atheists are unwittingly stealing from God whenever they claim anything is right or wrong. Atheists must steal from God in order to claim Slavery is wrong.

Some selected references:
Wikipedia.com
Crosswalk.com
Desiringgod.org
Dougwills.com
Zachariatrust.org
Jamesbishopsblog.com

Picture credits:
Twitter.com @AfricanHistory

Admittedly, even with all the humane slave laws contained in the Old Testament, there are certain laws that we, in modern times, have a difficult time understanding. For instance, Exodus 21:20 reads:

And if a man beats his male or female servant with a rod, so that he dies under his hand, he shall surely be punished. Notwithstanding, if he remains alive a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his property.


In the first place, how could God allow a slave owner to beat his slave at all? To answer this question, we must remember who many of the Old Testament slaves were. They were members of the wicked, sinful nations who had been delivered into the hands of the Israelites because of their immorality. Suppose that a slave from one of those nations had made up his mind to do as much damage to his owner as possible. The slave had the option of running away to a gentler owner whenever he wished (Deuteronomy 23:15-16). However, suppose that he chose to stay and steal from the owner, or break the owner’s equipment intentionally, or destroy the owner’s crops. What could the owner do to stop such sabotage? Herb Vander Lugt put it like this:

Then, too, no matter how well the slaves were treated, some might have been rebellious and defiant. Forgetting that they were alive because they were taken as war captives instead of being executed, they might have blamed their master for their slave status. They might have shown their resentment by destroying property, abusing fellow slaves, or refusing to work. The master may have had no other way to bring his slave in line than to use physical punishment (1999, p. 17).


As appalling as it is to the sensitivities of most mordern day citizens, many countries still employ some type of beating or bodily harm to deter crime (some readers may recall the controversy over “caning” in Singapore in the early 1990s). When a modern-day prisoner violates rules while incarcerated, more stringent punishment (such as solitary confinement) often is required. If a slave deserved the death sentence, yet was allowed to live under certain conditions—and then did not comply with those conditions—would it be feasible to suggest that his death sentence could be reinstated? Even though it seems harsh to us, Exodus 21:20 does not militate against the justice of God.

In fact, the more closely the passage is scrutinized, the more it manifests the idea that God was protecting the slave. Concerning the punishment that a master would receive if he did beat his slave to death, Christopher Wright noted that the word “punished” as used here actually means “avenged.” And,

in any other context [it] would mean that the guilty party would be liable to death himself at the hands of his victim’s family.... This law’s natural sense is that the murderous master was to be executed by the legal community on behalf of the slave, who had no family to avenge him (1983, p. 180).


While not all commentators are as confident as Wright is (that in this passage the death penalty is involved), there is no concrete case which argues that the death penalty is not at least a possibility in this situation. The authors of the Pulpit Commentary observed how this fear of punishment would protect the slave.

Involving, as the death of the slave did, criminal proceedings, and, on conviction, severe punishment, the mere danger of a fatal result ensuing would be a powerful deterrent from exceptional violence.... The mere risk of incurring such a penalty would inspire salutary caution (Spence and Exell, n.d., p. 179).


Adding additional weight to the argument that the restriction in Exodus 21:20 was for the benefit of the slave, Burton Coffman wrote:

This was a protective right granted to slaves that they should not be beaten to death! If that seems like a small blessing to us, let it be remembered that under the system in vogue all over the pagan world of that era, and extending down even till apostolical times, the Roman Law, in force all over the world, provided as a penalty against slaves, even for trivial and unintentional violations, that shame of the whole pagan world “flagellis ad mortem” (beaten to death), a penalty usually inflicted in the presence of all the other slaves of a master. God here provided that punishment should be meted out to a slave-owner for following that pagan custom (1985, pp. 309-310).[/I]


By way of summary, then, Exodus 21:20 documents that under certain circumstances, beating could be morally acceptable as punishment. This passage, however, provided rights that did not exist in other pagan cultures for the protection of the slave.

Exodus 21:26-27 provides another example of a law that seems difficult for us, in the present day, to understand as coming from a righteous God.

If a man strikes the eye of his male or female servant, and destroys it, he shall let him go free for the sake of his eye. And if he knocks out the tooth of his male or female servant, he shall let him go free for the sake of his tooth.


Again, let it be noted that physical punishment might be the only solution to an unruly, rebellious slave who should have received the death penalty. However, something else of interest emerges from this verse that, rather than expressing the cruelty of Old Testament laws regulating slavery, shows instead God’s care for those enslaved. The text states that the eyes and teeth of slaves should not be knocked out or destroyed. However, the nations around the Israelites did not adhere to any such standards. When the Philistines captured Samson, they “took him and put out his eyes; and brought him down to Gaza. They bound him with bronze fetters; and he became a grinder in the prison” (Judges 16:21). Also, when the Babylonian soldiers raided Israel, capturing King Zedekiah, “they killed the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes, put out the eyes of Zedekiah, bound him with bronze fetters, and took him to Babylon” (2 Kings 25:7). God’s regulations for the treatment of slaves provided the slaves with many more rights than they had in the nations surrounding Israel.

Another of the most startling regulations concerning slavery is found in Leviticus 19:20-22:

And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman, that is a bondmaid, betrothed to an husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; she shall be scourged; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the Lord, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, even a ram for a trespass offering (KJV).


Of course, skeptics have a heyday with this reading from the King James Version, which seems to indicate that if a free man has sexual intercourse with a slave woman who is betrothed, then the slave woman is to be scourged and the man simply supplies a ram as a trespass offering. However, upon further investigation, it can be seen that this passage says something far different.

In the first place, the translators of the KJV most likely mistranslated the part of the text “she shall be scourged.” The ASV translators rendered the passage as follows:

And whosoever lieth carnally with a woman that is a bondmaid, betrothed to a husband, and not at all redeemed, nor freedom given her; they shall be punished; they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. And he shall bring his trespass-offering unto Jehovah, unto the door of the tent of meeting, even a ram for a trespass-offering.

The NKJV translators offered this reading:

Whoever lies carnally with a woman who is betrothed to a man as a concubine, and who has not at all been redeemed nor given her freedom, for this there shall be scourging; but they shall not be put to death, because she was not free. And he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting, a ram as a trespass offering.

A brief look at these three translations shows that the recipient(s) of the punishment is not as clearly delineated as the KJV indicates. Keil and Delitzsch, in their commentary on the Pentateuch, noted that the scourging “referred to both parties, as is evident from the expression, ‘they shall not be put to death’” (1981, p. 422). G.J. Wenham has introduced another interesting solution regarding this passage by translating the disputed passage about scourging as “damages must be paid” (1979, p. 270). Concerning this translation he wrote:

[i]This is the most problematic phrase in this law: literally, “there will be a biqqôret.” The word biqqôret occurs only here in the OT, and its meaning is therefore quite uncertain.... Other renderings of biqqôret have less to commend them. “An inquiry shall be held” (RSV; cf. NEB) is vacuous: every legal dispute would have involved inquiry. “She shall be scourged” (AV) goes back to an old Jewish interpretation, probably based on the dubious derivation of biqqôret from bâqâr, “ox, i.e., an oxhide scourge” (pp. 270-271, emp. added).

Taking these things into account, it appears that the passage does not indicate that the female should be scourged apart from the guilty male. Rather, whatever punishment was inflicted should be applied equally, except for the fact that the guilty male alone shoulders the responsibility of supplying the ram for the trespass offering.

According to God, the Israelites did not have absolute control over their slaves, as is evinced by the instructions in Exodus 21:20,26-27 and Leviticus 19:20. This idea was a departure from the generally accepted notions of slavery in the Near East during the Israelites’ day. “Any demeaning or oppressive treatment of slaves was condemned as wrong by biblical writers” (Copan, 2001, pp. 173-174). God’s laws in the Old Testament not only regulated slavery (so that those enslaved would be given many rights that they otherwise would not have had), but they also supplied the means whereby fairness could be meted out with regard to criminal activity and debt. Every regulation of slavery in the Old Testament can be shown to be in harmony with the principles of justice and fairness.


Source

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Good God.

Let me call in an intelligent atheist and his fellows to.come and do justice to this thread.

Cc:@Fegelfire, Superhumanist.dalaman. Budaatum. Sheybebabe, Cutemadrista.

Emmanystone:
Let me call in an intelligent atheist and his fellows to.come and do justice to this thread.

Cc:@Fegelfire, Superhumanist.dalaman. Budaatum. Sheybebabe, Cutemadrista.

Remind them that they can ignore the first 10 points and focus only on the 11th

The op of this thread is a wilful slave (of christianity) and so, he must defend slavery.


However, lets examine the silliness in denying slavery in christianity as per the op

1. The op claims that the transatlantic slavery by Europeans and Americans was "raced based" but that of the bible was not "raced based". This is a lie because we know two things that happened in the bible;

a) Yahweh only cared about the slavery of Isrealites. He did not care about the slavery of the Canaanites and other people. Yahweh only acted when the Isrealites were enslaved by Egyptians- he sent Moses to save the isrealites.

b) It was a crime in the old testament to enslave a fellow Jew but not other people. A jew could only work 7 years as an indentured servant.

winner01:

3. Slavery in the Bible.
These issues, and others like them, necessitated that God institute some form of humane regulations for “slavery.”

Below are some laws in the Bible that regulated slavery and protected slaves:
-Injuring or killing slaves was punishable - up to death of the offending party. (Exo 21-20, Exo 21-26,27)
-Hebrews were commanded not to make their slave work on the Sabbath. (Exo 23:12)
-You must not slander a slave (Prov 30:10)
-You must not have sex with a woman slave (Lev 19:20)
-You must not return an escaped slave (Deut 23:15)
- A Hebrew was not to enslave his fellow countryman, even if he owed him money, but was to have him work as a hired worker, and he was to be released in 7 years or in the year of jubilee (which occurred every 50 years), whichever came first. (Lev 25:39-43)
- A slave owner was encouraged to "pamper his slave" (Prov 29:21)

2) There was hard slavery in the bible. This is a fact that the op is trying to twist and deny.

You could beat your slave in the bible;
Exodus 21:20-21
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property


The bible makes it clear that the slave is the property of the master and you can beat the slave as long as the slave does not die.

superhumanist:
The op of this thread is a wilful slave (of christianity) and so, he must defend slavery.


However, lets examine the silliness in denying slavery in christianity as per the op

1. The op claims that the transatlantic slavery by Europeans and Americans was "raced based" but that of the bible was not "raced based". This is a lie because we know two things that happened in the bible;

a) Yahweh only cared about the slavery of Isrealites. He did not care about the slavery of the Canaanites and other people. Yahweh only acted when the Isrealites were enslaved by Egyptians- he sent Moses to save the isrealites.

b) It was a crime in the old testament to enslave a fellow Jew but not other people. A jew could only work 7 years as an indentured servant.

I'm a slave to God and theres nothing your daily wailings will do to end this.

I proved several points in the op which I'm sure you didn't bother to read. Not that the explanation was for you anyway.

a) Non isrealite slaves were legally protected as indicated in the op.

b) It was a crime to kidnap anyone and sell into slavery, Jew or no Jew.

You may focus on point 11, that in my opinion is what concerns atheists on this thread.

CAPSLOCKED:

THE FACT THAT YOUR SKY DADDY PASSED UP THE CHANCE TO ABOLISH SLAVERY, TERRORISM, AND RACISM WHEN HE GAVE THE 10 COMMANDMENTS, BUT RATHER WASTED THE SLOTS ON TELLING US TO NOT HAVE SEX, IS ENOUGH REASON TO NOT TAKE HIM SERIOUSLY.

So who abolished slavery? Atheists?

And who is a Sky daddy?

superhumanist:



2) There was hard slavery in the bible. This is a fact that the op is trying to twist and deny.

You could beat your slave in the bible;
Exodus 21:20-21
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property


The bible makes it clear that the slave is the property of the master and you can beat the slave as long as the slave does not die.

Try to read the 11th point downwards, your repeated chorus is already answered. Beating a slave was punishable (by death). That was a legal right.

hm

CAPSLOCKED:



MORTAL MEN LIKE YOU AND I DISCOVERED IT WAS BAD, AND STARTED TO FIGHT AGAINST IT.

.

Read, read and read.

Christians ended slavery when atheists had all the chance to show the world how moral atheism is.

CAPSLOCKED:




YET YOUR BIBLE DISHED OUT INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO ENSLAVE AND TREAT THEM. YOUR BIBLE GAVE INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW WARS SHOULD BE FOUGHT.. THE MEN KILLED, THE WOMEN ENSLAVED, AND THE YOUNG VIRGINS MARRIED BY FORCE.

The bible gave regulations on how slaves were to be treated. People became slaves willingly, criminals who should otherwise be sentenced to death were enslaved and they had humane rights.
Learn to read.

CAPSLOCKED:




I'M NOT HAVING FURTHER CONVERSATIONS SOMEONE WHO SUPPORTS A TERRORIST RELIGION AND A POWER-DRUNK MISOGYNIST GOD.

I thought you said God did not exist?

Now you think God is evil

Lol. Atheist logic

www.nairaland.com/attachments/3805217_weah_pngf85713a799391ff3b1b9eee3632a3f34

I'm still wondering how atheists think they have the moral rights to blame anyone for anything.

An atheist never thinks he/she was indoctrinated with morality

winner01:


11. Do atheists have the moral rights to blame anyone for slavery?


This is not to say that you have to believe in God to be a good person or that atheists are immoral people. Some atheists live more moral lives than many Christians. This is not also to say that atheists don’t know morality. Everyone knows basic right and wrong whether they believe in God or not. In fact, that’s exactly what the Bible teaches (see Romans 2:14-15).

What I am saying is that atheists can’t justify morality. Atheists routinely confuse knowing what’s right with justifying what’s right. They say it’s right to love. I agree, but why is it right to love. Why are we obligated to do so? The issue isn’t how we know what’s Right, but why an authoritative standard of Rightness exists in the first place.


Atheists are caught in a dilemma. If God doesn’t exist, then everything is a matter of human opinion and objective moral rights don’t exist, including all those that atheists support. If God does exist, then objective moral rights exist. But those rights clearly don’t include cutting up babies in the womb, same-sex marriage, and their other invented absolutes contrary to every major religion and natural law.

Now, an atheist might say, “In our country, we have a constitution that the majority approved. We have no need to appeal to God.” True, you don’t have to appeal to God to write laws, but you do have to appeal to God if you want to ground them in anything other than human opinion. Otherwise, your “rights” are mere preferences that can be voted out of existence at the ballot box or at the whim of an activist judge or dictator.

This your point 11 is laughable and false.

1) Morality comes from 2 sources; human logic and human empathy. God is not necessary for morality. In fact, religious people and countries are usually the most confused about morality.

2) There are different kinds of atheists. Some are humanists, some are buddhists, some are liberal and some are conservative. Some believe in objective morality grounded by religion. Some believe in objective morality grounded in logic and some, do not believe that theres any objective morality.

3) You even contradict yourself by admitting that there are atheists who live a more moral life than some christians. How then are they able to live such moral lives if they cannot ground it? If one cannot ground his morality or beliefs, the person will never be consistent in that belief. The truth is that morality is and should be grounded on logic and empathy which is common to all humans (except the mentally challenged).



In summary, atheists have every right to question the immorality of slavery in christianity. The argument that atheists have no right to crtitize wrongs because their moral beliefs are different is just foolish. It is the equivalent of slapping an atheist and telling him not to complain because his morality is not grounded in God- you will find yourself in Jail

winner01:
Read, read and read.

Christians ended slavery when atheists had all the chance to show the world how moral atheism is.

Stop repeating lies and revelling in ignorance.

1. There were freethinkers in the slavery abolition movement. Stop telling lies as if it was only christians that worked against slavery

2. There were also many christians who wanted slavery to remain the status quo. There was even a war to keep slavery in America.

3. In fact, christians enjoyed black slaves for over 300 years before abolishing it. So please, you cannot eat your cake and have it. Christianity supported slavery since the early catholic church- that is over 500 years and after enjoying it thoroughly, you want to take the glory for ending it.

superhumanist:



This your point 11 is laughable and false.

Of course, any rebuttal against atheism is false

superhumanist:


1) Morality comes from 2 sources; human logic and human empathy. God is not necessary for morality. In fact, religious people and countries are usually the most confused about morality.

firstly you have no proof of this.

Secondly, human logic always acts in the best interest of individual humans. And this has always been proven to be selfishly oriented. For instance, why won't I rob a bank if it will make me richer

Human empathy is also not a prerequisite for morality. All the humans who enslaved Africans had empathy, yet they didn't deem it fit to eradicate slavery until Christians took a stand.

superhumanist:





2) There are different kinds of atheists. Some are humanists, some are buddhists, some are liberal and some are conservative. Some believe in objective morality grounded by religion. Some believe in objective morality grounded in logic and some, do not believe that theres any objective morality.

Na you know. Atheists are atheists. Whatever sugar you wish to coat it with is your headache.

superhumanist:



3) You even contradict yourself by admitting that there are atheists who live a more moral life than some christians. How then are they able to live such moral lives if they cannot ground it? If one cannot ground his morality or beliefs, the person will never be consistent in that belief. The truth is that morality is and should be grounded on logic and empathy which is common to all humans (except the mentally challenged).

Its not a contradiction. Its only proof that morality is innate, it is god-given. You must steal from God while still claiming the God does not exist. This is the only justification for anything condemned by an atheist. I pointed out all these in the op, you people don't read.

superhumanist:


In summary, atheists have every right to question the immorality of slavery in christianity. The argument that atheists have no right to crtitize wrongs because their moral beliefs are different is just foolish. It is the equivalent of slapping an atheist and telling him not to complain because his morality is not grounded in God- you will find yourself in Jail

Loo, you've said nothing dude. Why is slavery wrong if my actions are calculated to satisfy me, did your grandma fix a standard for my morality or that of everyone on earth