The Humanisation of Slavery in the Old Testament

Book excerpt: • The Humanisation of Slavery in Old Testament Law by David L. Baker • Slavery, Human Dignity and Human Rights by John Warwick Montgomery • Slavery in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and Today by Thomas Schirrmacher Three scholars discuss slavery in the Old Testament and a Christian view of slavery. They argue, that slavery in the OT had not much in common with Roman- Greek, Muslim or modern European slavery, as the slaves where protected by the legal system. They believe that there is a road from the humanisation of slavery in the OT through the soft opposition against slavery in the New Testament to the abolition of slavery by Christians and in Christian nations. The last essay contains a longer section on “The Role of Evangelicals in the Abolition of Slavery“, that summarizes the research of the last decades showing that the uncorrupted oppositions by pious people and the power of the masses without direct political influence changed history, the first major human rights campaign of history.