C.K. and shanks, good points, both. Avy, you said:
While creating a character it does not seem like he ever thought "writing this character will reflect badly on me."
Actually, I was wondering if such a thought even occurred to him. Perhaps in those times, it was "known" by all in his culture that he was portraying events only, not making any kind of commentary. Though it's possible that people knew the characters were in some way representative of the author, but didn't care. Plus, I think at that time, with so little to compare them with (compare them to?), audiences would have been primarily focused on the product, not how or why it was created, as C.K. said.
My point is that things were different in that time and at that place, and when we observe things from a different background but judge them based on our own values, we often come up with a skewed result. As shanks pointed out, one of the things that runs throughout the Bible is that slavery was a commonly-accepted practice. Today we think it's horrible, but I try to keep in mind that I should not
judge everything in the Bible as horrible because of that.
If these types of things can be looked at in context, I think we can get a much more objective view of their worth, or lack therof.
