re: #423 LudwigVanQuixote

The phrase you are looking for is ehved Caanani. These were enemy soldiers captured in battle from the early wars with the surrounding tribes. There are many restrictions on mistreating them as well, however, as prisoners of war, they were subject to hard labor. They were also not to be indentured for a period of longer than seven years.

The law for them too is that they are set free and compensated if injured. They too must be well fed and sheltered. The Jewish law on this would certainly be in line with the standards of the modern enlightened POW camps.

Judaism never had a notion of lifelong chattle slavery of the sort that the word slave conjures up to the modern mind. They did not even have a chattle system like that of the Greeks or the Romans.

Now, as tot he actual history, one of the biggest splits between Pharisee (the people who kept the actual Jewish law and Rabbinic tradition) and the Sadducees (Hellenized and Romanized land owners and priests) was the fact that in the times of the Roman occupation, the Sadducim practiced actual chattle slavery. There was a great deal of violence as a result of this. Jews would literally raid wealthy homes and set the slaves free.

According to Wiktionary, עבד all by itself can mean several things, including “slave”.

I think you are making things sound better than they probably were in actual life.

Etymology

From Proto-Semitic *ʿabd-. Formed from the root ע־ב־ד (`-b-d).
[edit] Pronunciation

* (Modern Israeli) IPA: /ˈeved/

[edit] Noun

עֶבֶד (ved)

1. A slave, a serf.
2. (archaic) A servant, a worshipper (of G-d).