http://catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0006.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Coyle

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=2585

http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=550379

http://romereturn.blogspot.com/2010/02/catholic-churchs-black-popes.html

God had to deal with humanity at the barbaric level that it was at. This was why Jesus could later fulfill and reform the Old Law, making it more stringent and consonant with the demands of justice and love.

Exodus 21:2-6 says that the master gives the wife to the slave. The slave would not have a wife or children but for his master in that situation. So there is a certain sense of primitive justice to the master keeping the wife and children. Besides, the Bible still makes quite clear why some slaves didn’t want to leave their masters: “because he is devoted to you and your household, since he fares well with you.”

No, female slaves are freed too after 6 years: “If your kinsman, a Hebrew man or woman, sells himself to you, he is to serve you for six years, but in the seventh year you shall dismiss him from your service, a free man” (Deut 15:12). Though I’m not sure why female slaves sold by their fathers are an exception.

Yes, parts of the Old Testament recognize a slave as property in some sense, but you are ignoring all the revolutionary precepts in the Old Testament for that time which clearly demonstrated that a slave was still a human being and not merely property:
The punishment for killing a slave is the same as for killing a free person, i.e. death: “When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished…. But if injury, ensures you shall give life for life….” (Exodus 21:20, 23). This was unique in the ancient world at that time.
All slaves were expected to participate in religious ceremonies and duties of the household too, including observing the Sabbath and all holy days….

If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.’ If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. Exodus 21:2-6

So, keeping his wife as your personal slave would perhaps encourage him to stay? Morally this is very sound.

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How about this?

When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. Exodus 21:7-11

So female slaves are not free at the end of that 6 year term then! Just male slaves…solid family values there.

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Exodus is a virtual treasure of slavery information!

When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. Exodus 21:20-21

WOW! This must not have been in the bible you were quoting from then eh? God thinks slaves _are_ property after all. My, my.

I like your description of slavery, today we have a much harsher system which entails a mortgage and keeps people bound for many decades, unless they get the place repossessed and lose everything.
Strange, how the lefties do not complain about that system of slavery but make asinine comments about cannibalism, racism, etc.

This hardly compares to the more recent slave trade, in which men traveled to lands far away from their own land, with which their nations were not at war in the first place, and captured people in order to enslave them. Without this practice, there could have been no American slavery.

For this reason, among many others, American slavery could never have existed if Biblical regulations were followed. Those who tried to justify American slavery with Biblical quotations were probably not fond of quoting the numerous Biblical regulations about the treatment of slaves, redemption of slaves, harboring runaway slaves, etc.