Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible?

In the 1850s, pro-slavery theologians wielded Scripture like a weapon, citing biblical passages to defend the peculiar institution. Isaac Allen stepped into this theological minefield with a simple, devastating question: is slavery actually sanctioned by the Bible? What follows is a meticulous, verse-by-verse dismantling of the most quoted proof-texts. Allen argues from the text itself, examining Hebrew and Greek terms for servitude, tracing the context of bondage laws in Exodus and Leviticus, and turning the New Testament's revolutionary sayings about liberty into a blade against the slaveholder's Bible. He distinguishes carefully between ancient Hebrew servitude (often closer to indentured apprenticeship with protections) and American chattel slavery (hereditary, racialized, brutal). Allen contends that even the New Testament's seemingly permissive passages were never meant to endorse permanent, race-based human ownership. This is abolitionist theology at its most rigorous: using the enemy's own sacred texts to argue for human freedom.