Slavery in the bible.
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DogmaHunter
Code Monkey
It's not.
One is a conscious actions by a human being, the other is a so-called "natural evil".
To compare the two is, frankly, ridiculous and honestly I expected more from you.
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DogmaHunter
Code Monkey
It is not.
It's slavery in every sense of the word: it is keeping and treating humans, not as humans, but as goods. As private property that can be sold, bought and inherited.
It is stripping people from their rights, freedom and dignity.
That is a misrepresentation of the facts. It also ignores that there are (blackmail) ways by which you can enslave a hebrew for life.
ps: freeing someone after 50 years during a time where average life expectancy was 30, is a bit ridiculous.
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Ygrene Imref
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You straightaway accuse us of not reading our bibles, but it seems you are ignorant of slavery in the bible altogether - what it means, the culture, and what God says about it. You are still comparing it to the atrocity of American slavery, and other world nation slavery - which suggests to me you are still cherrypicking verses and coming up with your own idea of how to disprove God, or disqualify Him. Except, this is a hackneyed game. It is all in the Hebrew, etymology and culture. If the bible isn't that important to you as to do some objective research instead, they don't act like you are genuinely trying to converse with people about different ideas concerning that topic of exploit. You insult the intelligence of people when you claim to come from a genuine place.
If the HEBREWS did like the Europeans did - kidnapped and forced people into real subjugated slavery (not ebed, which means "worker or servant) - then other Hebrews were ordered to put those to death. This included foreigners. That bit of information is in the chapter before the one you selected - context matters especially if you have no idea of the meaning of the words used - not transl(iter)ations.
Deuteronomy 24:7
Deuteronomy 25:35
Exodus 21:16
Slavery (ebed) was not American slavery that raped, murdered, tortured, subjugated and bred persons as well as treating them as regular servants. Stop the false equivalency.
If you have a chip on your shoulder, then address that. But, don't just ignore complete historical, cultural and literary information related to your qualms for the sake of qualifying your argument. This entire thread could have gone a different, more educational way - had that been the genuine purpose.
We have to use common sense - the rest of the lot of you that may have this same question. God does not condone slavery; He saved an entire people from slavery. It has been people who accuse God, and leave Him.
The provisions for what people erroneously equate to slavery is how to treat your employee - someone who is so poor that they have to work for a living. This point is still completely above the head - or won' be admitted. But, that is what ebed means in Hebrew.
As far as making them "workers" or "servants" forever - when did God ever condone it? He said that certainly no Hebrew would be a worker to a Hebrew because under God they are the same. God also repeatedly explains how to treat these servants - which is much better than how the world at large treats employees. God is building a Nation that is Holy; where are the HEBREWS supposed to get their servants promised to them if they cannot put their own people under rule?
Where does any country get their "servants" if they don't want to use their own people as servants? How many times did God tell the Israelites nkt to deal ruthlessly with these "slaves?" Do you know what ruthless means? In otherwords, wby the false equivalencies?
The irony is that you are likely a Westerner complaining about a culture you have heard of from pop culture - arguing against something that is NOT part of the object for which you hold enmity, while at the same time remaining complicit in the "slavery" of modernity, as it were, in your own nation(s). Do you realize everyone who works for a living is a biblical slave? Why do Americans reserve the laborous/working/slave jobs for hyphenated "americans," or immigrants? It is amazing the argument you try to make as if you are blind to every social and economic paradigm in the past 100 years.
You could told me the history, culture, etymology and denotation of the entire first five books - and see specifically that "slavery" in Hebrew is nowhere near what you want it to be to vindicate your argument. As I said, perhaps you are purposefully being ignorant. I don't know. I wasn't going to assume, but last time I didn't assume my first mind on this very thread I got an awakening on the mentality of this thread.
I genuinely hope you find what you are looking for, but I won't be able to show you. It isn't my job, will or whim.
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Everybodyknows
The good guys lost
Well, you made the claim that foreign slaves are set free at jubilee. That claim is not supported supported by scripture. What slavery was like in Hebrew culture is irrelevant to the point.
I've never said they are equivalent. I'm defining slavery are people being owned as property for life, regardless of how they are treated or how they got into that situation. The Bible permits this, do you agree?
Leviticus 25:46 You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life,
They could and did use their own people as servants, just not for life. How does not treating them ruthlessly negate them being slaves?
Why the false equivalence?
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Honestly, the way you guys make excuses for the slavery as practised by the Hebrews you would think it was being run by the Salvation Army. As Everybodyknows has already stated, you guys haven't read your bible. The regulations that ostensibly gave "rights" to slaves applied only to Hebrew slaves. Slaves taken by acts of war or from foreign nations could be bought and sold at will and made slaves for life. Hereditary salves were also slaves for life. Kidnapping Hebrews to make them slave was forbidden, but not for people of other nations.
If a slave is beaten and so long as he doesn't lose an eye or a tooth, that's ok, and if a slave is beaten and so long as he doesn't die right away that's ok, and if he doesn't want to lose his wife and children he has to have a hole put in his ear and he and his family remain as slaves for the rest of their lives. Cosy eh?
But even forgetting all that, most people have agreed that the belief that someone is the property of another is repugnant and immoral, yet that is exactly what the biblical god stated, that a slave is the property of another. Exodus 21:20-21 (NASB): 20If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. 21If, however, he survives a day or two, no vengeance shall be taken; for he is his property.
This is quite a dilemma for some Christians, to either agree that claiming ownership of another human being is wrong, or to disagree with their god.
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No, but since you mention property. You should of asked, do you consider it morally acceptable to consider that ancient civilizations incorporated slavery into their economic model? It's rather hard as something for us to project ourselves into and were you and I raised in that time, we would mostly be inclined to believe in its' value or practice capital punishment for enemies of the state. We would be very different people when raised from birth into such a society.
However, what makes for a rather puzzling situation is why does the God of Israel decide to end that nations slavery Genesis 15:13-14 and later allow them to continue to keep slaves of their own? I would guess to say that the answer for that is along the similar line given for marriage. To paraphrase, '“He saith unto them, Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to ...keep slaves...: but from the beginning it hath not been so.' Matthew 19:8
Nowadays western countries allow abortions in the millions where some people try to promote the narrative that pregnancy should be viewed as organ like tissue that has a parasitic relationship with a woman.
Back to your question, I believe that by saying "no" does not by fiat make any person with that view a better person than those that came before us. That there are conditions within our own modern society that elevates us into the same league as those who kept slaves.
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Excellent, this is how I am thinking about it also. It seems to me that God hates slavery, yet condones it because of the peoples hardness of heart -- He is not a control freak but works with the people of the time, leading them towards His ultimate goal of love. I think this paraphrase is on the money.
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Everybodyknows
The good guys lost
Psalms 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul. The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.
Romans 7:12 So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.
How do you understand these verses that hold the law as holy and perfect? It seems in your view that the law is a compromise between God's ideals and the human condition. Indeed what Jesus himself says about marriage would seem to support this view.
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DogmaHunter
Code Monkey
But were are only puny corrupt humans who are in a "fallen state", not benevolent unchanging all-knowing gods defined as the actual standard of moral judgement.
Christians like to offer the bible as the standard of god's unchanging, absolute and objective morality. And what we see in that book, is god not speaking out against slavery in any way and instead, regulating the practice.
But on the other hand, he goes out of his way to make sure that people don't work on a certain day of the week or don't eat specific types of food on certain days of the week. That, apparantly, is hugely important on moral terms.
But treating humans as your private property? Nope, that is just fine.
All this tells me, that our 21st century secular morality, is superior to your god's morality.
Because apparantly, he is a racist who thinks hebrews are better then the others and deserve extra special privileged treatment?
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I'm not quite sure what else I can conclude from that.
It doesn't really sound that different from what a, for example, white supremacist would say concerning the treatment of whites versus non-whites.
Don't try to derail the subject. The subject is slavery, not abortion.
It's not about human morals. It's about your supposed god's morals.
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DogmaHunter
Code Monkey
That's a nice rationalisation. But unfortunatly, the bible doesn't state such anywhere.
Nowhere, at any point, is the practice of slavery condemned. Ever. It is only regulated and allowed.
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To be objective when reading the Bible or past histories of anything, a person would need to factor in one thing about ethics and morality. That it changes over time. You'll find Christians that were against slavery and you'll find Christians that were for the continuation of slavery in America's history. This didn't magically appear out of nowhere, the world's social, economic, population and technical environment all began to evolve and change.
What should be done is to find out whether the God of Israel commanded and instituted slavery world wide or was the written record we find in the Bible actually a reaction to that ancient world which used it as a means to build their civilizations? Basically when people Christian or not decide to read the Bible, how can you tell He wasn't just managing something mankind decided to already do thousands of years ago?
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Yes indeed, all the things you mentioned have evolved and changed, but Christians tell us that their god is unchanging which a Christain site, www.SermonCentral.com, is at pains to tell us with an article titled, "An unchanging God in a changing world." The article talks about peoples attitudes changing, but that "We can trust in God who does not change." So are we to take it that when the biblical god said that a person is the property of another, then an unchaning god would still hold fast to that attitude? Perhaps we will get that old chestnut that Christians roll out when faced with a biblical "dfficulty", "Oh I know it says that, but that's not what it actually means."
Yes, we humans do change and that includes our idea of morality, but as Dogma Hunter has already said, "It's not about human morals. It's about your supposed god's morals."
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Is it possible that the law was holy perfect and good for a set time, but not for all time? Similar to how we tell kids "Do not go on the road" but that doesn't apply to them their whole lives. We train them up with perfect-holy laws that serve a purpose for a specific time based on what they can understand. Hebrews 7:18 says the law was "weak and useless" and Hebrews 7:19 says "Moses' Teachings couldn't accomplish everything that God required". I agree the law was a compromise between Gods ideals and the human condition.
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Not all christians agree on what it means that "God doesn't change". Some say His character is unchanging, that is, He is consistently loving and caring and this can be expressed in different ways at different times. Others say He doesn't change at all in any sense, ever, that all of the Old Testament applies to us as much now as it did back in the day; that God doesn't change in the strongest sense of the meaning -- see immutability for a philosophical discussion, or wikis immutability for the brief overview.
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DogmaHunter
Code Monkey
So far for objective absolute morality....
What you won't find though, is the bible speaking out against slavery.
So clearly, those christians that were/are against slavery, didn't get it from their bible.
Their bible is actually fine with it.
Absolutely.
It certainly didn't appear out of "nowhere". It also didn't appear in the bible.
The God of Israel regulated slavery and didn't have any problems with it. It's right there, in the "good" book.
He didn't have any problem saying to humans to stop doing plenty of things they had been doing for thousands of years. For some of those things, he even already completely destroyed the world once, killing all humans bar 8 (including 99.999% of all complex life on earth, as per the legend).
But apparantly, stripping humans from their dignity and freedom wasn't one of them.
That was just fine.
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One more thing, I still think it's important to take that step back and see the bigger picture. What I mean is, how was the bible written? Did God write it Himself? Is there any part of Moses in the Law? Or is it entirely God's directive? How about David? How about Paul? As you know from our discussions previously, I'm of the opinion that there is some of the writers personality and biases in the bible. That is, the bible is not the "Word of God" as most christians promote. Rather, I see it as our best option in learning about Who God is, and that each author was "inspired" by the Spirit of God to write. So the heart of the message is where I'm looking, rather than the specifics. I realise this undermines the bibles full authority, but from my perspective, it doesn't remove it's authority entirely. It is still the best thing we have to learn about God from history. I think this applies to the writing on slavery.
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DogmaHunter
Code Monkey
I think it applies to every part that you personally don't agree with at face value.
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In the New Testament, women are told to keep quiet and cover their heads (1 Corinthians 11:5-7). The passage is rather sexist and completely foreign to our culture today. God did not write this Himself. So what is the Bible? It's a record of the covenant history between God and humanity. It is still the highest authority on spiritual matters. It is not perfect. It has errors. It has the personalities of the writers interwoven into it. The willingness of Christians throughout history to die for the Bible reveal how important it is, and was, but the scriptures are not God, they are not His direct words, they do not give eternal life. The bible should lead us to God and to understand Who He is -- the God Who works with us to bring us into a better place.
So I don't just apply this to every part I don't agree with, I apply it to the whole book.
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Everybodyknows
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What makes it change from being perfect? Is it because the world has changed?
A better analogy relevant to this topic would be more like if I told my kids they were allowed to punch another kid in the face if they didn't like them, because they're young and don't understand these things. We don't generally allow our children to violate our moral standards without consequence. It's probably the most important part of parenting, teaching your children how to behave towards others and what behaviour is good and bad.
Well, that's a tricky one. For example the book would lead us to believe that the law was directly dictated by God, Leviticus 25 which we have been discussing ends with "I am the Lord your God" to leave us in no doubt who is speaking. This phrase is continually repeated throughout the law, It doesn't say "I am Moses stating my biased view".
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