""'As for your male and your female slaves, whom you may have; of the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves."
Author: Leviticus 25 Verses #: 44
"You masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with him."
Author: Ephesians 6 Verses #: 9
Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament did not speak against slavery. Jesus did not speak out against slavery. The apostles did not speak out against slavery. The church did not speak out against slavery until 1800 years after the life and death of Jesus. The southern baptist denomination was developed and created to speak out for the practice of slave owners and slavery in the south. It was through reasoning, justice and logic and conscience that mankind finally spoke "over" the bible's morality and declared slavery to be wrong, cruel and unjust and immoral. The bible did not establish this truth. Man evolved and advanced and listened to his inner morality and declared slavery illegal, but only after a very bitter civil war. Christians and non-christians alike spoke out against the practice of slavery out of human reasoning and a sense of morality and justice, not because the bible outlawed the practice of buying and selling other human beings for selfish motives and greed, but because man's morality finally broke through the lack of compassion that had existed for thousands of years. I believe that without the bible the practice of slavery would never have taken hold in western advanced societies. Racism fueled a morality that declared someone of another color to simply be "non-human" and thus suseptible to being marginalized and dominated and bought and sold as you would buy a pig or a mule or a cow. Female slaves could not "own" and control the rearing of their own children and could not hope for a lifetime lover and companion. Jesus could have spoken out against the practice of slavery. This truth puts the bible in question. This truth puts the morality of Jesus, the apostles and Moses in question. This truth begs the question of why would a god allow and stand silent for 4,000 years while "his" books were being written and "his" thoughts being told. This truth of silence forces one to ask "Is God Moral?" Who needs a god that does not recognize a basic and simple human truth? The above are just two of many bible verses that condone slavery and legitimate it with biblical laws, rather than rebuking and denouncing it. The bible is not a moral book. The bible condons what should have been condemned.
