In this Thou-shalt-not-book, nowhere does it say, "Thou shalt not enslave."

In the years preceding and during "The Civil War", anti-slavers could find nothing explicit in the Bible to support their cause, whereas pro-slavers were able to quote copiously for their cause.

After the Israelites escaped their slavery in Egypt, they returned to enslaving their own and neighboring peoples.

Putting this in the "popular arena", the novel Ben Hur -- a book which past generations read copiouly (as a child, I read it 9 times), made into a film that set a record for Academy Awards -- describes how Judah Ben-Hur (after his years as a galley-slave) freed two of his slaves -- Esther, his lover, and her father, Simonides.

To take a larger perspective, we're told that "Western Civilization" (comprising Europe and The Americas) rests upon "The Greco-Roman-Hebraic Tradition". But this is also a slave-tradition, providing little comfort or arguments for anti-slavers. (I know what this means, personally, from "a poor white trash" boyhood.)