Bible, Slavery, and Hector Avalos

Just received an email from Hector that Sheffield Phoenix Press is pre-advertising his new book, Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship.

The Blub:

In this immensely wide-ranging and fascinating study, Avalos critiques the common claim that the abolition of slavery was due in large part to the influence of biblical ethics. Such a claim, he argues, is characteristic of a broader phenomenon in biblical scholarship, which focuses on defending, rather than describing, the ethical norms encountered in biblical texts.

The first part of Avalos’s critique explores how modern scholars have praised the supposed superiority of biblical ethics at the cost of diminishing or ignoring many similar features in ancient Near Eastern cultures. These features include manumission, fixed terms of service, familial rights, and egalitarian critiques of slavery. At the same time, modern scholarship has used the standard tools of biblical exegesis in order to minimize the ethically negative implications of many biblical references to slavery.

The second part of the book concentrates on how the Bible has been used throughout Christian history both to maintain and to extend slavery. In particular, Avalos offers detailed studies of papal documents used to defend the Church’s stance on slavery. Discussions of Gregory of Nyssa, Aquinas and Luther, among others, show that they are not such champions of freedom as they are often portrayed.

Avalos’s close readings of the writings of major abolitionists such as Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Frederick Douglass show an increasing shift away from using the Bible as a support for abolitionism. Biblical scholars have rarely recognized that pro-slavery advocates could use the Bible just as effectively. According to Avalos, one of the complex mix of factors leading to abolition was the abandonment of the Bible as an ethical authority. The case of the biblical attitude to slavery is just one confirmation of how unsuitable the Bible is as a manual of ethics in the modern world.

Hector Avalos is Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Iowa State University, Ames, IA.

This should stir the pot a bit, something Hector is well able and willing to do. I don’t know the history of biblical exegesis or the history of abolitionism very well, but I do think he is on to something. There is within Biblical Studies a strong tendency to defend the Bible and the societies which created it from accusations of ethical lapses and unethical excesses. Things have progressed beyond the once-standard denunciations of Canaanite “sex/fertility” religions that marked much Biblical scholarship.  Feminists have done a great job critiquing standard biblical scholarship on the often apologetic approach to “texts of terror” such as Judge 11, and 19, and Ezekiel 16 and 23, but alas, more work needs be done before the discipline is free making excuses for the Bible’s use of sexist imagery to depict apostasy, the fear of female sexuality, and violence against women.

The worst of the blind-eye approach to biblical ethical norms are now mostly confined to the peanut gallery of conservative hangers-on to the academic party, but vestiges of it probably still remain. It will be interesting to see what levels of it Avalos uncovers in his book and, of course, the backlash against it. Hopefully, he will be read more carefully than his The End of Biblical Studies has been!

For those interested in following up on the excuse making for slavery issue within Christianity, if not biblical studies, check out Joel Watt’s blog post from earlier this month.