Earliest anti-slavery document/movement?

[merkavah12]

A friend of mine on another forum was asking about the earliest
anti-slavery movement/document known to us. Any clues?

[knowingthomas]

Didn't the OT have a pretty harsh punishment for taking someone (non-POW) as a slave?

[bjorn]

Some clues (a big topic, though)...

OT: Exodus 21,16 - The sort of slavery that went on e.g. in the Americas had a death penalty...

The kind of slavery mentioned in the OT, except from prisoners of war, is more alligned to being a servant or someone becoming a "slave" voluntarily, usually to pay off debt.

And there were all kinds of laws to free such slaves, e.g. the Jubilee Laws.

NT: (Here slavery often was more like in the Americas, though more often set free and afterward none being obviously a former slave (no strict color regime...) ).

Jesus and Paul couldn't attack slavery head on (that would have led to nothing or worse) they managed to subvert it in various subtle ways, like Paul advising slaves to be obedient (Col, 3,22 - slaves were expected to be lazy and not follow orders) and slave masters to be fair and just (Col 4,1). Of course Jesus started his minstry by talking about setting slaves free, while Paul insisted there were neither slaves nor free (both were equal before God).

Then there is a lot of voices among the early church fathers, the strongest (but not the first) probably Gregory of Nyssa in his fourth sermon on the Book of Ecclesiastes in 379, ref. mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/fajardo/teaching/SRP435/spring2006/students/Sandra/SRP%20Nyssa%20Project.doc..

[jamierobertson]

Indeed. Most historians don't use the term "slavery" to describe OT practices, as it is fundamentally different on many levels from what we would understand by the word (not least because, every 7 years, all the slaves were freed IIRC!). In the NT, Paul decided it was much more effective to undermine the immoral motivations behind slavery - ie. one person being worth more than another - that simply to shout "Slavery's bad, mmkay?"

[humphreyclarke]

The assumption of religious equality is utterly subversive to old world slavery where a slave was only seen as a shadow of a human being. This concept as promoted by the early church was the negation of slavery as it was practiced by pagan society. Ideals such as ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus’ obliterated social, ethnic and cultural barriers, in other words humanizing the slaves by making them equals to their masters in Jesus. This is a consistent message in Christian thought (and consistently ignored for convenience) so it’s a bit unfair to say, as someone like Dawkins would, that the abolitionist movement of the 18th and 19th centurys was simply revised theological interpretation off the back of some free-thought inspired surge in morality.

We look to the past for an express condemnation but it’s important to remember that slavery was an institution practised in practically every culture in history. Christianity was born into a world where chattel slavery, one person owning another, was the cornerstone of the economy. By way of illustration the servile population at the end of the 1st century BC amounted to between 33-40% of the population.

What is interesting is that, in fact, in terms of sheer fatality rate (80% in some Gulags) and the scale of enslavement (The Soviets managed to enslave 14 million people in just 3 decades - Nazi Germany 12 million in 5 years), the 20th century is way out in front in the slavery stakes.

[zameel]

In Islam too the concept of "slavery" is very different:

Sallam ibn 'Amr reported from one of the Companions of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Your slaves are your brothers, so treat him well. Ask for their help in what is too much for you and help them in what is too much for them."

Jabir ibn 'Abdullah said, "The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, advised that slaves should be well-treated. He said, 'Feed them from what you eat and clothe them from what you wear. Do not punish what Allah has created.'"

From Bukhari's Adab al-Mufrad - www.sunnipath.com/library/Hadith/H0003P0009.aspx

Slaves are in effect nothing other than POW. An introduction to how Muslim slaves contributed to the anti-slave movement, particularly in West Africa and Brazil: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5gJ4e0bV1o

>The sort of slavery that went on e.g. in the Americas had a death penalty... <

What about Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex which gave it religious sanction?