What were these false notions? During the era of slavery in America, slave owners/supporters, )southerners especially), formed several unreasonable or flat out untrue justifications for it. Some argued that it was natural order taking its course, saying Africans were inferior beings. This made it acceptable to treat them as less than human, because they believed they were. Others claimed that slavery was good for the enslaved because it was better to be enslaved than free and dead of starvation, or because they were unable to make any decisions for themselves. There were, of course, “arguments” that weren’t arguments at all, like the fact that slavery was not only legal, but acceptable in the society they’d built and fought to keep.

There was, however, one justification that stands out, and that is that slavery was supported in the bible. A majority of white Americans, slaveholders and abolitionists alike, identified with Christianity, so using religion, something they agree on, to support their distorted view of slavery was likely the most effective approach. While the old testament was picked apart to demonstrate how common slavery was, most rebuttals from the bible were taken from the new testament, why? There are about 400 years between the end of the old testament the beginning of the new testament, and empires like Rome influenced common practices. For example, Caesar Augustus took part in normalizing worshiping emperors, like himself, as gods. Communication systems were also improved in those 400 years, making it easier to exchange ideas with other empires and taint the original interpretations of the bible. Essentially, there were more man made ideas and humanity influencing normalities in the new testament than in the old, so they were following the predispositions of man rather than the Christian God they claim to have followed. All in all, even when people used the bible to justify slavery, they were primarily using more of man’s ideas than their God’s. 

Sources: 

• [KJV] The Holy Bible

•  “How Christian Slaveholders Used the Bible to Justify Slavery,” Noel Rae ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/%3famp=true )
• “The Greek and Roman Background of the New Testament,” H. Carey Oakley, M.A.
• “The Southern Argument for Slavery,” ushistory.org ( https://www.ushistory.org/us/27f.asp )