In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...

A significant bit of the Old Testament (I forget which books) was about
competition between tribes, and one standard way to grow one's tribe was
to conquer a neighboring tribe and steal their women, killing or
enslaving the men. Slaves fetch a good price.

And killing or enslaving any overly resistant women. This is probably
the evolutionary basis for the Stockholm Syndrome.

Wow, I haven't heard that connection before, but the principle could be much
the same. That's a very interesting link that you've drawn, Joe.

Thanks. I would hazard that Deut 21:10 (or :11) is the distillation of
millennia of experience with the management of captive women, covering
ages before the invention of writing. Or perhaps even language.

As I think about it, there have been words written about slaves in the
ancient world concerning how they often came to be the greatest defenders of
their owners' families, identifying with those families as if they were
their own. I suppose the same applies to a fully subjugated woman and that
the ancients were quite familiar with the methods.

Yes. But I don't think it was too complex - well-treated slaves (male
or female) reciprocated the treatment, even if they were slaves.

One way for a man of that day to "marry" was to buy a female slave. The
book "Harem ..." was written by the daughter of such a union, and she
commented that her mother (or was it grandmother?) was for all intents
and purposes her (grand)father's wife, although legally her
(grand)mother was literally a slave.

Another of the stories in this book recounts an Englishman walking
through the slave market in Istanbul being surprised to hear the women
calling to him "Buy me!".

And the Ottoman Empire came to be ruled largely by the Eunichs and the
Harems of the titular rulers.

"Harem - The World Behind the Veil", Alev Lytle Croutier, Abbeville
Press, 1989, ISBN 1-55859-159-1, 224 pages.

Anyway, the point is that not all slaves were unhappy with their fate,
whatever we might think of it, centuries to millennia later, and we need
to be very cautious in applying the mores of today to the situations of
past ages.


I also recall that in the less-PC time when I was in college, the Stockholm
Syndrome was also known as the "Sambo Syndrome," as it applied to "Uncle
Tom" African-Americans. And another term used for the same thing was
"Identification with the aggressor." All of which ties in.

OK. I don't recall those terms, but it makes sense.


Probably not efficacious, but I wonder if that would be part of an "abortion
debate" in 1500 BC. It more likely would have been all about religion or
philosophy, I would think.

I would think that if there had been much of a debate in 1500 BC, we
would have at least fragments of the polemics, probably in the Old
Testament.

It appears you've given this some thought and that you're more familiar with
the texts. What's your take on the attitude toward abortion in ancient
times?

Well, I cannot claim to have read all those texts, but my take on the
attitude of the ancients on abortion is that they thought it a bad idea,
but on practical grounds, not moral grounds: It was too likely to fail
and/or kill the mother, given the medicine of the day, so it wasn't
often attempted in practice. Nor did they put much store in "the
sanctity of life" and such concepts; one was doing very well to survive
to 35, and most children died before the age of ten.

Joe Gwinn