Dr Paul Allen

A 13th century book illustration produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti showing a slave-market in the town of Zabid in Yemen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I. In the Old Testament a. Introduction Under the influence of Roman law , a slave is usually considered to be a person (male or female) owned by another, without rights, and—like any other form of personal property—to be used and disposed of in whatever way the owner may wish. In the ancient biblical East, however, slaves could and did acquire various rights before the law or by custom, and these included ownership (even of other slaves) and the power to conduct business while they were yet under their masters’ control. Slavery is attested from the earliest times throughout the ancient Near East, and owed its existence and perpetuation primarily to economic factors. b. Sources of slaves (i) By capture. Captives, especially prisoners of war, were commonly reduced to slavery (Gn. 14:21, claimed by the king of Sodom; Nu. 31:9; Dt. 20:1...

What philosophers call “the problem of evil” is a family of arguments from the existence or nature of evil to the conclusion that God does not or probably does not exist. The oldest form of the argument is that the mere existence of evil is logically incompatible with God’s existence. If God exists , evil could not, and if evil exists, God could not. I call this argument the “charge of contradiction.” The claim is that there is a logical contradiction in asserting that God is all-powerful, God is all-loving, and that evil exists.  Wouldn’t this kind of God eliminate all evil? The existence of God, in this view, is on a par with a square circle. Given the existence of evil, it is impossible for God to exist. The challenge is to show that theism is logically consistent. Few today, including atheists, think this argument succeeds. If God might have a good reason to allow evil, then it is possible that both God and evil exist. We need not know what God’s actual reasons are, but i...

I. In the Old Testament a. Introduction Under the influence of Roman law, a slave is usually considered to be a person (male or female) owned by another, without rights, and—like any other form of personal property—to be used and disposed of in whatever way the owner may wish. In the ancient biblical East, however, slaves could and did acquire various rights before the law or by custom, and these included ownership (even of other slaves) and the power to conduct business while they were yet under their masters’ control. Slavery is attested from the earliest times throughout the ancient Near East, and owed its existence and perpetuation primarily to economic factors. b. Sources of slaves (i) By capture. Captives, especially prisoners of war, were commonly reduced to slavery (Gn. 14:21, claimed by the king of Sodom; Nu. 31:9; Dt. 20:14; 21:10ff.; Jdg. 5:30; 1 Sa. 4:9 (cf. RSV); 2 Ki. 5:2; 2 Ch. 28:8, 10ff.), a custom that goes back as far as written documents themselves, to rou...