by krapp | 2025-08-23 17:21:49+00:00
>In a modern democracy slavery is detestible because non slaves are not the property of anyone and are (ostensibly) subject only to the rule of law.

Slavery is detestable under any system and in any time. It being ubiquitous doesn't make it less so. It was ubiquitous in the 19th century as well.

>But we're talking about a time period where everyone was a slave to someone else. Palestine was under Roman occupation and everyone owed absolute fealty to the Roman Emperor. Everyone was a slave to the emperor.

One doesn't bother making a distinction between "slave" and "free" as the New Testament does in a society wherein everyone is a slave to someone else. Obviously not everyone was a slave in the context of the slavery being discussed here.

>In this period there was no hope of creating a system that recognized the equality of all people through rebellion.

As you mention, Jesus was willing to commit violence against the moneychangers in the temple just to send a message. He was willing to say the rich can never enter the kingdom of God. That it would be better that a millstone was hung around the neck of those who harmed children. That it would be better to gouge out one's eyes and cut off one's hands than give in to temptation. He invited persecution, and invited his followers to seek persecution, suffering and death. Jesus was obviously willing to be confrontational when he felt it.

But the morality of slavery never merited even criticism, not even in the abstract form of parable.

>One way to spread that message is to demonstrate that love to everyone, even your cruel master. In that way it's not passive acceptance, but acknowledgment that long term change is your only option.

That slaves should be expected to endure the cruelty of their masters indefinitely and, at least according to Luke, with pathetic scraping obsequience, in hopes that at some point in the future a change will come is grotesque. And there is still no condemnation of slavery here, because this is meant to be a metaphor of how Christians are supposed to treat everyone.

>It was only made possible by centuries of advancement directly springing from the radical egalitarian teachings of the New Testament.

The Bible was the moral basis for slavery.

The concept of innate human rights separate from any religious context is contrary to Biblical teaching - the Bible is clear that humans are entirely the property of God to dispose of as he will, with no inherent value beyond that will.

The concept that ownership of one person by another is fundamentally immoral contradicts Biblical teaching. The God of the Old Testament - also the God of the New Testament - the God Jesus worshiped and whose law Jesus claimed to embody - endorsed slavery. Verbatim. Full stop.

The concept of government by any means other than the absolute divine right is contrary to Biblical teaching. The Bible makes it clear that God creates the governments of the world and that they rule with his authority.

The concept of gender equality is contrary to Biblical teaching, because according to the Bible, women are created to be subservient to men and inherently unequal to and less than men, and inherently unclean, because Eve was the source of original sin.

The advancement of morality beyond this paradigm came as a consequence of diverging from the requirement that morality conform to Biblical doctrine. It would have been impossible otherwise, because Biblical morality itself cannot evolve beyond the canon. The Bible will never say that women are equal to men, it will never say that slavery is wrong, it will never endorse government of and by and for the people.