Biblical And American Slavery

Biblical slavery is drastically different from many pagan forms of slavery and from American slavery, but it is indeed slavery nonetheless.  The latter point is very rarely acknowledged by anyone associated with Christianity in the modern world.  More emphasis is placed on the enormous differences between these forms of slavery, but while distinguishing them is a necessary task, it is not all that can be said about the matter.  Nevertheless, it is highly important to understand what the Bible describes when it details laws for the treatment of slaves in the Jewish community.

The Bible plainly does permit slavery, but the form of slavery in question is not one involving racism, gratuitous beatings, or a lack of legal rights for the slaves.  In fact, the act of kidnapping someone, with or without the intent to sell them as a slave or force them into involuntary servitude, is a capital offense in Mosaic Law (Exodus 21:16).  There is no allowance for or tolerance of an elaborate trade founded on the abduction of those of a different ethnicity in the Torah.  This alone distinguishes the slavery of Old Testament Israel from that of America, but the differences extend further than that.

For instance, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 not only allowed Southerners to retrieve slaves from the Northern free states, but also mandated that anyone who assisted escapees be subject to legal penalties.  In contrast, Deuteronomy 23:15-16 prohibits forcing an escaped slave to return to his or her master, even if they fled from a foreign power.  A slave who fled abuse was not to be reported.  Mosaic Law in no way demands the predatory exploitation of slaves, but it also opposes the aid of abusive masters or mistresses.

No one can legitimately proclaim that Biblical slavery, for that is what the servitude of Mosaic Law is, is like American slavery in anything except in name and in the regard that servitude was involved in both.  The reasons for slavery, the manner in which slaves were treated, and the laws surrounding runaway slaves were completely opposed to each other.  Beyond a couple of superficial shared traits, the two are irreconcilable due to emerging from conflicting, exclusive moral concepts.  For this reason, no one can equate Biblical slavery with historical American slavery without leaping into error.

The 13th Amendment's provision for slavery as punishment for a crime is a Biblical one as long as it is carried out within certain boundaries (see Exodus 21:26-27 and Deuteronomy 25:1-3 for examples), yet this does not mean that the laws around Biblical slavery are equivalent to those around historical American slavery or the prison system.  The slavery codified in Mosaic Law is fundamentally distinct from the kind which was practiced in the Southern states prior to the Civil War.  The slavery of Biblical law is slavery, regardless of what prominent apologists might say, but it is also quite different from the slavery of many nations besides ancient Israel.