Trying to humanize a universal practice that is embedded in the economic life of a culture and is SO universal there is no way to ask people to give it up, is not to my mind the same thing as condoning it; it's simply doing the best you can with a necessary evil. And it's the OLD Testament, not the New, that offers the humanizing rules.
Thanks for the correction. It hints to me that some how the OT is less than the NT. I guess I am reading too much into it.
So this God inspired document, (what is the expression "God breathed", God dictated, ... I dunno) is unable to be lifted above the dirt and squalor of the time of writing? So it a necessary evil to the author of the bible?
To help a bit; who is the one speaking in the quotes that Percy gave?