Dr Paul Allen

Butler’s mosaic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In the New Testament a. Systems of slavery in  NT times Jewish slavery, to judge by the Talmud, remained governed as always by the tight national unity of the people. There was a sharp distinction between Jewish and Gentile slaves. The former were subject to the sabbath-year manumission , and the onus fell upon Jewish communities everywhere to ransom their nationals held in slavery to Gentiles . Thus no fundamental division into bond and free was recognized. At the same time the whole people might be thought of as the servants of Yahweh. By contrast, Greek slavery was justified in classical theory by the assumption of a natural order of slaves. Since only the citizen class were, strictly speaking, human, slaves were merely chattels. While this idea was carried into practice only in the rare cases where common sense and humanity broke down, the fact remains that throughout classical antiquity the institution of slavery was simply taken f