Maybe you should dust off your Bible.
The Bible condemned slave traders (1 Tim. 1:9-11) & kidnapping for slavery (Ex. 21:16); advised against returning escaped slaves (Dt 23:15-16); and advised slaves to gain freedom (Moses & Paul...Paul 1 Cor. 7:21-23).
Of course, there's some passages where some have thought God "condoned" slavery or was more neutral toward it...see Deut 15; Ex 21; 1 Pet. 2:18; Eph. 6;5-9: Titus 2:9-10; Col. 3:22-25; 1 Tim. 6:1)...but again, first of all, many of the "slaves" of the era were "bondservants"--meaning they were paying off an economic debt...would be released after a certain # of yrs. (no credit in those days)...secondly in many households, servants were treated as family members; For these slaves, anyway, that was no comparison to the slave-as-property mentality of American & Muslim slavery. (Certainly other slaves acquired by conquering warriors were nowhere near treated "like family").
My point is that in Biblical times, there were "degrees" of slavery, from temporary bond-servants to those treated like "plunder" captured after a victorious battle. From servants treated like family members to those abused. (Note, too that God didn't rush in to rescue the Israelites from bondage in Egypt...they were there over 400 years...how many generations is that? Did that mean God "condoned" it? No. But how would we know about spiritual debt & spiritual slavery unless He allowed real-life slavery. How would we know about spiritual warfare unless He allowed real warfare? "Allowance" and "condoning" are NOT the same attitudes.)
Polygamy....sort of accepted to some degree though much of the Bible is devoted in matrimony as between one man and one woman.
Hey, adultery wasn't even outlined til Exodus 20...so can't hold up Genesis folks as "family standards." Beyond that, I can only think of three characters (David, Gideon, & Caleb) who had concubines who were otherwise "positive" in character most of the way through their lives. {The others are hardly role models of other aspects of their lives, anyway).
If you think it was "tolerated" then I guess you'd have to hold up Absalom & Rueben--both who as adult sons slept with their fathers' concubines--as similar acts of "acceptance" (Absalom, son of David; Rueben, son of Jacob).
it's a very recent argument 200 years ago or so in Western thought whereby scholars claim slavery (and the degrees of it you adroitly mentioned) is a sin or is condemned by the Bible.
not sure what your quarrel is on my supposition that polygamy is not really condemned either though one man/one woman is the oft mentioned ideal
I'm just curious, what makes you and others like you who take liberty with implications now 2000-3300 years since they were written and feel that your relatively new interpretations are for whatever reason more accurate than the many centuries before you?
Does it have anything at all to do with the truth of the word and history or more to do with believing what you'd like to fit your world view in 2008?
It's like everyone today is obsessed with slavery, particularly whites enslaving blacks and would like to now in defiance of nearly 3 millennium of Biblical interpretation simply loudly trumpet that the Bible really did condemn slavery and that slavery is/was a sin and yet no one else much thought that until quite recently.
Any special reason you're right and they weren't other than this is today and they were “before”.
Does the truth really change?
I stand by my words, were slavery as important to the Prophets, Christ and the Apostles, it would have been singled out and condemned like murder, blasphemy, theft, etc. but it never was.....