Did slave owners really print different versions of the Bible for slaves? How was this possible?

by sirmattimous
mydearestangelica

Yes and no.

You're probably thinking of the infamous Slave Bible of 1807. This was printed in London, by the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves, three years after the Haitian Revolution and the same year as the Slave Trade Act which prohibited the slave trade throughout the British Empire. The Slave Bible anticipated the reality: enforcement of the Slave Trade Act would be inconsistent, especially in Britain's lucrative Caribbean colonies. Therefore, the Slave Bible was intended "For the Use of Negro Slaves, In the British West-India Isles."

The Slave Bible carefully redacted the King James Version of the Protestant Bible. The way it was redacted reflects two key cultural contexts: 1) transatlantic Protestant debates about slavery in the Bible, and 2) British colonial and American cultures of scripturalization.

Racialized chattel slavery became a major cultural, legal, and social impetus the UK and British North America/ later the US, at exactly the same time that Protestant theologians were hammering out new kinds of biblicist hermeneutics. Basically, the British Reformation in the 17th century-- and the rise of empirical methods for science and history shortly thereafter-- had changed the way the Protestant Bible was authoritative. During the British Reformation, John Calvin and English Puritans emphasized restoring the Old Testament to lay life. They thought that Catholicism had obscured primitive, pure Christianity, partly by teaching only the "nice" parts of the Bible from the New Testament. There was a huge cultural push in the 17th century to read the Old Testament, memorize it, name children after OT figures, and use the Kingdom of Israel as a plan for various theocratic political utopias. But, new historical also changed how the Bible was read. The British Reformation had strongly emphasized the "literal" sense of Scriptural as most important. British Protestant were eager to demonstrate the literal sense with new empirical techniques-- for example, collecting vast numbers of conversion narratives to prove that all religious experiences followed a shared, Christian pattern, or publishing surveys of Palestine and inventing biblical archaeology to prove that yes, the Bible is true because it's a real history-- everything in it REALLY happened.

And that "everything" included God-sanctioned slavery.

So, the Old Testament and biblicist-historical hermeneutics were crucial to the pro-slavery/abolitionist debates in the 18th and 19th centuries. The New Testament contains certain "clobber verses," mostly drawn from the Pauline pastoral letters. Ephesians 6:5-8: "Slaves, be obedient to your human masters with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart as to Christ." Others include Colossians 3:22-24, 1 Timothy 6:1-2, Titus 2:9-10, and the infamous Letter to Onesimus in Philemon. There, Paul instructs the escaped slave Onesimus to return to his slaveholder, and asks the slaveholder to be lenient on Onesimus and receive him as a brother. But, in the New Testament, the Christian church is persecuted and lives within the structures of pagan Roman society. Abolitionist theologians could argue that Paul didn't like slavery, God didn't approve of slavery, but the sinful Romans had created this system. Paul was merely giving advice about how to live righteously in an unrighteous system.

It was the Old Testament histories that provided clear textual support for slavery. It brought not only "clobber verses" proof-texts; it showed that slavery was practiced by God's people for hundreds of years. When God presents his holy and extensive commandments in Leviticus, there are specific instructions for dealing with slaves, when to sell and buy them, how long someone may hold slaves without freeing them, and the conditions for making lifelong slaves.

So, theologians who protested racialized chattel slavery in the British Empire and US could take one of two tacks:

  1. Leverage their own proof-texts, notably Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." However, they really struggled to find the kind of clear biblical condemnations to make clear biblical support for slavery.

  2. Admit that abolition was unbiblical, but argue for the reform of slavery. This could be more easily accomplished on biblicist terms. Did the legal forms of British slavery match God's commands in Leviticus? And, since God seemed to tolerate Roman slavery in the NT, was the British form of slavery crueler or more sinful than the Roman form?

The Slave Bible omits every proof-text verse that abolitionists might use. It redacts the Bible heavily, and draws attention to the pro-slavery "clobber verses."

But, the redactions of the Slave Bible also show awareness of what Seth Perry calls "the culture of scripturalization." Briefly summarized, in the 18th and 19th centuries, Protestant laypeople in the Americans and British colonies started reading the Bible not just like infallible historical records, but also like a dramatic script. They re-imagined biblical characters and authors as historical figures who they could imitate, and who they could almost embody. A Paul, a Jeremiah, a Deborah-- these figures became more than specific individuals, but social roles. (Any contemporary evangelical knows the "Are you a Mary or a Martha?" personality quizzes. That started in the early 1700s!)

Scripturalization wasn't driven by elite theologians arguing about how to interpret the Bible. Instead, it was overwhelmingly practiced by less-educated and socially marginalized figures: women, children, enslaved person, indigenous persons, and disabled persons. Why? Because taking on one of these roles-- like The Prophet Jeremiah, or Mary the Female Disciple-- gave them new kinds of spiritual authority and social freedom.

The Slave Bible also anticipates lay scripturalization, and completely cuts the biblical stories which became most important for African-American Christianities: Moses and the Promised Land. During and after US slavery, the story of Moses leading the enslaved Israelites to freedom became central for African-American Christian theology. The white authors of the Slave Bible correctly saw the potential-- to them, the danger-- of this episode of biblical history, and removed it.

Finally, the Slave Bible's book history tells us about how the Conversion Society imagined it circulating. The Slave Bible is heavily redacted. Over 3/4 of the Old Testament is gone-- and what remains are the histories of figures being enslaved (Joseph), the practice of slavery in the Kingdom of Israel, etc. Only half the New Testament remains. It's printed in octavo format-- small, portable-- and there's no record of a second edition. Typically, Bibles printed in London at the time would be printed in runs of 50-200. Today, there are only 3 known copies of the Slave Bible. I cannot find records of any other slave-bible attempts, even though the early 19th century was a time when everyone and their dog was printing new translations, versions, or commemorative editions of the bible. This indicates that, despite its notoriety today, the Slave Bible was likely a historical outlier.

Indeed, almost all slaveholders deliberately withheld literacy from their enslaved persons. Many, in both the continental US and the British Caribbean colonies, also withheld access to Christianity (while severely punishing enslaved persons' attempts to practice their original spiritual traditions). Both literacy and Christianity were seen as dangerous, because they might inspire slave revolts. This fear was realized with the successful Haitian Revolution (1804) and multiple uprisings in the US North and South, from the Stono Rebellion (1739) to Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831).

Indeed, by 1807, white slaveholders, radical abolitionists, formerly enslaved persons, and advocates for reform within the system agreed on one thing: literacy was power. A slave who could read and write could make false day-passes and escape North; read the Bible and create syncretic religions that inspired revolts; educate themself; and use their literacy to plan and coordinate multiple escape attempts. So, redacted slave bibles weren't widespread. Refusing to let slaves read the Bible was.

tl;dr: The Bible was used by both white slaveholders and white abolitionists debating slavery. There was at least one attempt to make an edited Bible for slaves, pushing all the proof-texts of the slaveholder theologians. But most slaves weren't allowed to read at all, so these "slave Bibles" are historical curiosities more than anything else.

USReligionScholar

The text I know that is the closest fit for this description is one called the Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands. Archive.org has an electronic copy if you're interested in looking at it. The book was published in 1807 in London.

It's essentially a shortened version of the King James Bible that cuts the vast majority of the Old Testament and about half the New Testament. Removing parts of the Bible to save on publication costs for missionary editions of the Bible wasn't unheard of. In the 1820s for example there was an effort to avoid printing the apocrypha in missionary Bible produced by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

There was a pro-slavery ideological agenda at work in the selection of Biblical text included in Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands. It contains the story of Joseph being sold into slavery for example, but does not have the story of the liberation of the Hebrews from the Egyptians in Exodus. It includes the parts of Paul's command to obey authorities, but not his exhortation in Galatians 3:28 that "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

It's not clear how widely this Bible was disseminated, though I believe there are three existent copies now. The book might have been intended by British missionaries as a way to reassure planters in the British Caribbean, who were often reluctant to convert their slaves. Enslaved people converting to Christianity was sometimes thought to undermine slavery as an institution, and a text that sought use Christianity to reinforce slavery could have been a method to deal with that.