Did God not believe all people were created equal? I don understand why He would condone slavery?
Morality changes as the years go by. Back in the biblical days, people were still very tribal, and viewed ‘rival’ tribes (in the case of the bible, anyone other than the Hebrews) as being inferior, and thus below the laws that would apply to your own people. For instance, killing, harming or enslaving a fellow Hebrew would have been considered wrong, but doing it to a non-Hebrew was okay (in their eyes). It was humanity’s ignorance that led to people being treated that way. No god ever instructed people to harm each other, and I’d like to think that a higher power would be above that kind of petty cruelty. Nowadays, we view all people as being deserving as respect (at least in principle… a lot of people don’t adhere to it in practice), so the idea of doing most of the stuff mentioned in the old testament turns our stomachs. Back then, however, it was considered normal and even moral. The moral zeitgeist changes very quickly, so it’s not surprising that texts from thousands of years a
