Why the Bible Doesn't Condemn Slavery

[Esquilax]

The other thing is this; assuming that Lek's little argument is true, and that slavery was such a crucial component of old testament life that it couldn't be removed, how hard would it be to express the concept of slavery as a necessary evil in unambiguous language? Aside from spinning disparate verses, that are almost uniformly contradicted by other verses, into some subtextual, wheedling plea for kindness, where in the bible do we actually get a clear statement that, while this is not preferred, it is the way we're going to have to do things for a while?

The answer is, we don't. It's just not there, beyond the overtly contradicted spin of christians with presuppositions, but their arguments fall flat because of the clear false dichotomy in place. It's even in the article Lek linked to: it's either "get rid of slavery overnight," or "keep slavery." Never does the idea of gradually reducing slavery over time, and replacing it with more reasonable infrastructure, ever occur to them, probably because such a thing, while being the most rational course of action if god thinks of slavery as they describe, does not show up in the bible at all. And it's important to uphold the primacy of the bible, even in the face of obvious, smarter tactics to use, which god would obviously have known about.