Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: sacg1198@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Scott Cattanach) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: questions about slavery. Message-ID: Date: 13 Mar 91 08:30:14 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 28 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) writes: >Well, the Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity is wrong. There was, >indeed, a range of possibilities including relatively good treatement of >slaves as fully integrated family memebers. But Roman latifundias, which Which is more than just freeing them, which was the point of what I posted. What the book said that the negative action of freeing them (i.e. stop doing something wrong and just abandon them to their fate) would not have led to a life of total freedom in and of itself. I don't have a Bible handy, but I think Paul told owners to do something along the lines of what you mention above. >were a major part of the slave population, were much the same as plantations >in the American South. And some kinds of slave usage, as in the Athenian >silver mines, were as abominable as any mistreatment ever meted out by man >against man. The only dimension in which ancient slavery tended to be much I don't believe Paul was addressing the men who owned those mines (at least there is no specific mention of that sort of activity, it seems like the slaves he refers to are not quite in that particular situation). -- -catt (Scott Cattanach - catt@uiuc.edu) "I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, that two become a law firm, and that three or more become a congress!"