Dave-W

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It contains the Torah - originally, the core theology of the Pharisees. And Jesus also warned us against the teachings of the Pharisees.
Jesus WAS a Pharisee.
 
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Kaon

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The bible explicitly endorses two types of slavery....indentured servitude (for Hebrews) and chattel slavery (for non-Hebrews). With indentured servitude, a person voluntarily agreed to sell his labor to his master for a temporary period of time after which the servant would be granted some kind of remuneration. With chattel slavery (the type of slavery that existed in America during the 1800s), the slave was the permanent property of his master. Most Christians acknowledge that indentured servitude existed for Hebrews, so I won't discuss this. I want to concentrate on the slavery that applied to non-Hebrews (i.e. chattel slavery). Below I will show that the Hebrews got their chattel slaves by buying them or capturing them during war.

Leviticus 25:44-46 (NKJV)
44 And as for your male and female slaves whom you may have—from the nations that are around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves. 45 Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you, and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall become your property. 46 And you may take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them as a possession; they shall be your permanent slaves. But regarding your brethren, the children of Israel, you shall not rule over one another with rigor.


Here you can see that Hebrews can buy non-Hebrew slaves as permanent property. This is in contrast to Hebrew indentured servants who entered into a contract with their masters for a set period (7 years). Indentured servants couldn't be bequeathed as inheritance because they were not considered permanent property. Also, notice that this passage makes a distinction between the treatment of Hebrews servants who are not to be treated ruthlessly like non-Hebrews were.

The second way chattel slaves could be obtained is by attacking foreign cities and enslaving the inhabitants:

Deuteronomy 20:10-18 (NKJV)
10 “When you go near a city to fight against it, then proclaim an offer of peace to it. 11 And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace, and open to you, then all the people who are found in it shall be placed under tribute to you, and serve you. 12 Now if the city will not make peace with you, but war against you, then you shall besiege it. 13 And when the Lord your God delivers it into your hands, you shall strike every male in it with the edge of the sword. 14 But the women, the little ones, the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall plunder for yourself; and you shall eat the enemies’ plunder which the Lord your God gives you. 15 Thus you shall do to all the cities which are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16 “But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive, 17 but you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 lest they teach you to do according to all their [a]abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God.


Here we see that when the Hebrews attacked a non-Hebrew city they made an offer to the inhabitants:
(1) surrender and pay a tribute (i.e. they would be forced to work for the Hebrews) OR
(2) the men would be slaughtered and women/children and livestock taken as plunder.

In case (2), women and children are described as plunder, which is property that is (usually violently) acquired by the victor during a war. Here the Hebrews could march into a house of the conquered city and drag out any women and children and enslave them. These weren't combatants and posed little treat to the Hebrews, but they were of economic value.

Today we recognize that slavery is immoral because slavery, by its very nature, is a violation of a person’s liberty. It reduces people into objects that can be owned. Some apologists claim that slaves were treated with kindness and not abused like black slaves in America were. Even if this was true, this makes no difference to the morality of owning another person as property - slavery was and will always be immoral. Other apologists argue that these laws are no longer in force. Again this is irrelevant. The fact is that there was a point in history where god thought that owning another person as property (chattel slavery) was okay.

My question is, if an omnipotent and benevolent god exists and he gave these laws to humans, why would he condone slavery? A benevolent god and a god that condoned slavery is a contradiction. Either the god of the bible exists, in which case he isn't benevolent or he doesn't exist.

Below is an excellent video which counters many of the objections that apologists have on this subject:


God gave the Hebrews guidelines on how to operate within a worldly economic system - since since the beginning we made it clear we don't want Him ruling us, nor do we want His laws imposing on our civilization (otherwise, we wouldn't have asked for a king like every other nation). It was a doubled-edged sword: the Hebrews got to see what it was like to get what they want, and they got to see what happens when they follow the world.

What God guidelines was tantamount to employment of today: if you didn't ha e gold or silver, you had to enslave yourself to someone to make an income. That is employment of today, and the ROW barely covers what was guidelines for protection by God.

God didn't condone polygamy, but let David (for example) fully reap the "benefits" and loses of that lifestyle. He has made it clear He expects perfection from us, but He also isn't going to force you to do right. The pain and hell that comes from doing what the ego wants should turn people to the way of the Most High God.
 
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Dave-W

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Jesus was a rabbi, not a Pharisee. From what verse(s) are you getting your assertion?
From the general gist of His teachings. They fall right between those of the famous Pharisee schoolmasters Shammai and Hillel. Any religious Jew who has studied Shammai and Hillel and is honest enough to give our Lord's teaching a fair evaluation will tell you the same.

I actually first read that in a book written by an orthodox Jew.

BTW - ALL rabbis in the first century were Pharisees.
 
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Not David

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The New Testament is not the pure message of Truth either. There are both truths and lies in it.

In it, Jesus warned against someone who will claim to see Him in the desert / wilderness --- Saul / Paul.
Funny how he elected the "man in the desert".
 
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icxn

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I'd do the morally correct thing. Commandment 11: thou shall not own other people like they are property.
He did say "love your neighbor as yourself," which is a lot more demanding than simply not treating people like they are property.
 
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Not David

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What many fail to realize is that it is anachronistic to put your moral values as a standard for stuff in the past and compare it with American slavery (why else people would ask those questions)? Folks failed to realize slavery was a voluntary economic system when stuff like capitalism didn't exist and the economic situations were mostly based on survival. Regarding people from other nations who became slaves, what else should they have done with them? Kill them? If that would have happened you would had complained about genocide because you think people interacted like it was the 21st century.
 
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Brother Billy

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He did say "love your neighbor as yourself," which is a lot more demanding than simply not treating people like they are property.

Apparently the writer of Leviticus saw no contradiction between "you should love your neighbor as yourself " and keeping slaves. See Leviticus 19:18
 
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durangodawood

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What many fail to realize is that it is anachronistic to put your moral values as a standard for stuff in the past and compare it with American slavery (why else people would ask those questions)? Folks failed to realize slavery was a voluntary economic system when stuff like capitalism didn't exist and the economic situations were mostly based on survival. Regarding people from other nations who became slaves, what else should they have done with them? Kill them? If that would have happened you would had complained about genocide because you think people interacted like it was the 21st century.
So at some point in human history it became immoral for slavery to be a consequence of war?

I wonder what changed in the conditions of human living?
 
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timewerx

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Funny how he elected the "man in the desert".

It doesn't make sense that Jesus would warn His disciples about men claiming to see Him in the desert if the same Jesus would show up to a bunch of guys in the desert a bit later.

The warning only makes sense if a spirit, a deceiving or an evil spirit would show up to a bunch of guys in the desert pretending to be Jesus.
 
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icxn

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durangodawood

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There lived an ascetic once who sold himself as slave to such neighbors and through prayer and service he managed to convert them. One way to deal with the problem...
I'm thinking your neighbor's slaves are not really neighbors themselves. They are more like cattle, or other property owned by your neighbor.
 
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timewerx

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Jesus WAS a Pharisee.

The Bible does imply it, and there's quite a lot of teachings in the Bible that is Pharisee in origin.

But when Jesus warned us against the teachings of the Pharisees, that probably closed the deal He isn't.

Though it's not suprising that people in His time and our time would think or assume He is a Pharisee. Jesus was agreeable to the Pharisees at the beginning but later went against them. I think it was done to avoid catching the attention of the Romans which didn't want an uprising within the Jewish colony. Otherwise, the Romans would quickly extinguish the new Gospel movement before it had the opportunity to take root which is bad in the big picture of things.
 
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icxn

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Apparently the writer of Leviticus saw no contradiction between "you should love your neighbor as yourself " and keeping slaves. See Leviticus 19:18
Indeed, which means the 'keeping of slaves' he had in mind is not how you imagine it or how some have practiced it.
 
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Brother Billy

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Indeed, which means the 'keeping of slaves' he had in mind is not how you imagine it or how some have practiced it.

If an American slave-owner loved his slaves in the same was as the Hebrews were supposed to love theirs, would you still have objected to the former owning slaves?
 
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icxn

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I'm thinking your neighbor's slaves are not really neighbors themselves. They are more like cattle, or other property owned by your neighbor.
Your thinking, not scripture's, as I understand it.
 
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