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

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.

That may well be true, but to the extent that it is, that isn't the
Stockholm Syndrome. For anyone following this and wondering what we're
talking about, the Syndrome was named for the WWII phenomenon in which many
residents of Stockholm, Sweden identified with the Nazi occupiers, even
calling themselves "Nazis" and, without being asked, becoming informers for
the Nazis with no direct coercion or promise of favors for ratting out their
neighbors. At least, that's my recollection, not having studied it for close
to 40 years.

Stockholm was an extreme case of a phenomenon that had been identified
throughout history. Other examples were Jews in the Nazi concentration camps
who became overseers and informers on other Jews in the camps. In the US, it
applied to black slaves who were trusted with overseeing other black slaves,
often becoming more brutal enforcers than the brutal breed of whites who
were usually hired for the job.

Again, referring to the understanding of 40 years ago, it was attributed to
a psychological defense mechanism that came into play only when the
oppression was extreme and inescapable, or when the individuals succumbed to
high levels of intimidation that were applied for a long time. The victim
eventually snapped and identified with the aggressor in order to escape the
oppression. It isn't a conscious thing; psychological pressure takes over.

The kind of generous and familial treatment you're describing could well
have led to compliant and supportive slaves, but that's a lot different from
the psychological reversal that's traditionally been called the Stockholm
Syndrome, or, more generally, "Identification with the Aggressor."

The modern development of this theory came sometime in the late '50s or
early '60s, when psychologists and social scientists applied it to analyze
the claim by white Southerners that many black slaves actually had been
happy in their enslavement, and that slavery was therefore a beneficent
institution. If it was the Identification with the Aggressor syndrome at
work, the truth was closer to the opposite. Most likely, there were examples
of each. But compliant slaves of any kind -- including the enslavement of
women implied by Deut. 21:10 -- are hard to explain in terms of beneficence.
The Stockholm Syndrome has been strongly identified as the source of many
such examples. The behavior of some Jews in the WWII concentration camps can
hardly be explained by beneficent treatment by the Nazis, and there is
considerable other evidence that slaves and prisoners who identify with
their oppressors do so most often when the oppression is extreme.


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!".

They probably thought he was rich. g


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.

Again, the caution should be informed by what has been learned about the
Stockholm Syndrome. Reading the historical apologia for slavery in the
South, it's easy to be misled.


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

It's interesting that we come to a similar conclusion from different angles.
I've only read the timelines compiled by people with an ax to grind, without
much biblical education, but I've tried to do it from both sides.

--
Ed Huntress