Tread carefully, Stephen and David … the whole “Bible promotes slavery thing” went on for literally hundreds of exchanges over weeks of time as I recall in a past forum post. Beaglelady could help you find it if you’re interested … she was one of the frequent participants on it at the time. Condensing the whole thing down, it can be predictably summarized thus:
atheists: “The Bible promotes slavery – have you read [insert several proof texts here --can be found in both old and new testaments, but especially in old].”
the faithful: “No it doesn’t. You’re just taking specific instructions for certain peoples and times and mistaking that for some overall message in which the Bible is affirming that slavery is acceptable. Besides slavery in the Bible was different than the much worse chattel slavery of the early Americas.”
the now indignant atheist: “Of course it approves slavery! [insert all the same proof texts]. And it’s creepy that you seem to want to justify it. [insert yet another proof text where a master is instructed about how much he can beat his slave or what penalties become necessary should the slave die.]”
And so it goes. The faithful (if they have planted their flag on inerrancy narrowly-interpreted) in the end must admit [and rightly so] that slavery is a terrible and immoral thing whenever and wherever it happened, living with cognitive dissonance over how to treat contrary biblical texts. And the atheist will cling to his ideologically-driven notion that the Bible certainly approves and endorses all the most terrible forms of slavery because … well … Judeo-Christianity through all this history is responsible for such a large portion of evil that of course this would be so! The fundamentalist-inspired reading of the text seems to demand it [theists turn into atheists easily enough --but they tragically almost never lose their fundamentalism along the way]. No other approach to Scriptures could even exist, right?
I have a pretty good idea where all of you will park yourselves. Go ahead. Surprise me.
Roll script …