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In particular, the Talmud said that Jews should not sell themselves to non-Jews, and if they did, the Jewish community was urged to ransom or redeem the slave. [33] While Jews did take slavery as a given, just as in other ancient societies, slaves in Jewish households could expect more compassionate treatment. [48]
Debt slaves were one of the two categories of slaves in ancient Jewish society. As the name implies, these individuals sold themselves into slavery in order to pay off debts they may have accrued. [1] These individuals were not permanently in this situation and were usually released after six to seven years.
More mainstream forms of first-century Judaism did not exhibit such qualms about slavery, and ever since the second-century expulsion of Jews from Judea, wealthy Jews have owned non-Jewish slaves, wherever it was legal to do so; [20] nevertheless, manumissions were approved by Jewish religious officials on the slightest of pretexts, and court ...
Slavery in the ancient world, from the earliest known recorded evidence in Sumer to the pre-medieval Antiquity Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoners of war.
Ancient Jewish history is known from the Bible, extra-biblical sources, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, the writings of Josephus, Greco-Roman authors and church fathers, as well as archaeological finds, inscriptions, ancient documents (such as the Papyri from Elephantine and the Fayyum, the Dead Sea scrolls, the Bar Kokhba letters, the Babatha ...
Many Jews taken captive by the Romans were deported from Judea and sold into slavery. Josephus wrote that 97,000 Jews were sold into slavery following the First Jewish–Roman War and 30,000 were deported from Judea to Carthage. Many Jews also fled Judea to other areas in the Mediterranean region.
It is known that Jewish war captives were sold into slavery after the suppression of a minor Jewish revolt in 53 BCE, and some were probably taken to southern Europe. [16] After the enslaved Jews gained their freedom, they permanently settled in Rome on the right bank of the Tiber as traders, and some immigrated north later.
David Brion Davis, "The Jews and the Slave Trade," To blame Jews for participating in the Atlantic slave trade is a bit like blaming Native Americans for contributing to the oil industry that now threatens the earth with atmospheric pollution and global warming. After eastern Indian tribes were expelled westward to Oklahoma, some members of the ...