THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Deut. xv. 12-18; Lev. xxv. 39-55). An Israelite could buy a fellow Hebrew, whether male or female, for six years only, and in the seventh year must let the slave go free, a rule which probably applied also to those sold into slavery for theft (cf . Josephus, Ant., XYL, i. 1). On the other hand, a gentile woman given to such a slave as a wife had no claim to freedom, and the offspring of the pair were also held in bondage. In the year of jubilee an Israelite slave was to be set free, together with his children (Lev. xxv. 39 sqq.), but if these were born of a gentile mother, they, like her, must remain in slavery (Ex. xxi. 4) . The Hebrew slave of a gentile master should also be freed in the year of jubilee, although he should previously be redeemed, if possible, by his family or kindred, his price being reckoned according to Lev. xxv. 50 sqq.
Bondservants were better treated by the Hebrews than were those of ancient Greece and Rome, or even Phenicia and Babylonia. At the same time Mosaic law made a distinction between Hebrew slaves and those of alien birth, priestly legislation especially considering a Hebrew bondman not as a " bondservant," but as a " hired servant " (Lev. xxv. 39- 40, 46). While he was not to be compelled to do work that was too severe, or unworthy 4. Legal of a man, this falling to the lot of the Position alien, all slaves, without exception, and Rights, benefited by the Sabbath law. Furthermore, both those slaves who had been born in bondage and also, as a rule, those who were acquired by purchase were circumcised, thus being received among the people of Yahweh, and so possessing the privilege of sharing in the religious feasts, especially in the Passover (Ex. xii. 44; Deut. xii. 12, 18, xvi. 11, 14). If a slave had been circumcised, he could never be sold to a gentile. While it was permissible to discipline a slave (cf. Prov. xxix. 19, 21 ; Ecclus. xxxiii. 24 sqq.), cruelty to slaves was punished, not simply by compensating the master for injury done to his slave, as in Babylonia (cf. Code of Hammurabi, §§ 199, 219), but by enacting that a master who seriously injured his slave, whether male or female, must manumit the slave in question without receiving compensation (Ex. xxi. 26-27). A master had no power over the life of his servant, and if he struck his slave with a rod and he died under his hand the servant should be avenged (Ex. xxi. 20-21); but if the slave survived his punishment for a day or two, no notice was taken, the money loss caused his master by his death being deemed a sufficient penalty. However, according to tradition, if the master used a deadly instrument in chastisement he incurred the death penalty, even though the slave did not die for some time; and tradition likewise held that, should a third person kill or wound a slave, he should be punished as though he had injured a freeman. The status of Israelitish female slaves who were to become part of the immediate family is set forth in Ex. xxi. 7-1 1 ; and it is also provided that a gentile prisoner of war should have a month to mourn her kinsfolk before being married to her captor (Deut. xxi. 10-14). Respect for the rights of a slave was considered a divine ordinance from very early times (Job xxxi. 13-15), and to the present day the lot of the slaves |
of the Semitic Mohammedans is a very tolerable one. In ancient Judaism, however, the Essenes and Therapeuta; alone rejected all slavery, since they regarded the system as irreconcilable with the brotherhood of all mankind, and consequently as unnatural. (C. von Orelli.)
II. Slavery and Christianity: The problem of the influence of Christianity on slavery has been profoundly modified by the researches of economic history concerning the origin, nature, extent, character, and abolition of bondage, so that, rejecting the older view that the suppression of slavery was caused entirely by Christianity, many now hold that this abolition was a purely economic process in which religion had no part. Equally 1. Extent problematical is the precise state of of Greco- affairs confronting Christianity when Roman it came to confront slavery, for the Slavery, extent of the system in antiquity is now underrated as much as it was formerly exaggerated. In Greece the climax was reached at the close of the Persian wars, when a single rich Athenian could lease a thousand slaves for the Thracian mines; and in Rome the system was most flourishing at the close of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire, when at Delos, the chief market, tens of thousands of slaves were sold daily. The majority of these were employed in agriculture and manufacturing, although the Romans availed themselves of household slaves to a greater extent than the Greeks, who preferred financial gain to luxury. At the same time, the freeman was never entirely superseded by the slave, least of all in the provinces (cf. for Palestine, Matt. xx. 1 sqq.; Mark i. 20; Luke xv. 17), even though cheapness made slave labor predominant in estates, mines, quarries, factories, and the handicrafts and trades of the great cities.
The status and the treatment of slaves varied at different times and places as greatly as their numbers. In the patriarchal conditions of the earliest times the slave, generally a prisoner of war, belonged to the family and was treated accordingly. In Greece slaves enjoyed much liberty even later, especially at Athens; but in Rome 2. Status rigid severity was the rule, particularly and in large establishments where cruel Treatment overseers, mostly belonging originally of Greco- to the servile class, intervened between Roman master and slave (cf. Matt. xxiv. 49). Slaves. While, moreover, the slaves seldom worked in fetters, punishments to insure obedience and to prevent escape were so cruel as to cause terrible insurrections. It is true that many slaves fared better than freemen, but even here any day might bring a change of masters, and though the slave had many safeguards, he was still, legally speaking, only a chattel, exposed to every caprice of his owner. His possession of moral qualities was ignored; he might at any time be torn from his family; and he could give testimony only under torture; yet in religious matters he seems to have enjoyed liberty. The ancient world never escaped the antinomy of regarding the slave as at once a person and a thing. Plato considered him a creature of a lower order of being, only semi-rational, this view perhaps being colored by the fact that most slaves