In Reply to: Part 3 of the Torah and Slave ownership posted by Student on October 11, 2006 at 20:36:57:
OK I just saw your request below that the bottom post be deleted, so to allow the coordinators to do that, I'll respost my reply up here under the new posts.
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Thanks for digging into the commentaries of the rabbis to find this information out. To date when I was troubled by passages like this, I had the Bible and other verses to balance things out as well as some reference books talking about ancient customs of that time. But that still wasn't enough. I'm glad to see that a few thousand years of thinking has gone into this whole issue.
Am I perfectly satisfied with the answer you've given? I don't know, but I think it helps.
Thanks!
By the way, it wasn't the Judeo-Christian mindset that established slavery in the first place. That was a widespread practice up until recently which many Jews and Christians also participated in. But it was Bible-believing abolitionists who put an end to slavery.
Christians were also the ones who put an end to the savage gladitorial games that the Romans enjoyed so much.