Slavery, a Guide

[Tom 1]

Are you having difficulty understanding what I said?

If the answer isn't that ownership means belonging to a person, then please enlighten me.

I have to say, you're not off to a great start.

What defines the principle of ownership in Hebrew law?

 

[InterestedAtheist]

What defines the principle of ownership in Hebrew law?

If the answer isn't "belonging to someone," then I don't know.
Are you ever going to get to the point?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

What defines the principle of ownership in Hebrew law?

Why don't you tell us with sources.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

If you insist on arguments based on imagination, then, as I have already answered this same question numerous times I will answer it again in a slightly different way. You are more than happy to fund modern slavery as it provides you with some useful conveniences. Based on this piece of information, I quite naturally imagine that you are pro-slavery. Your response has been that you ‘feel bad about slavery’ and that this feeling trumps your willingness to support it financially. In a similar way, you have formed an opinion basic on a superficial skim of one small part of the available data. Unlike the contents of your mind, however, we can actually know a good deal about how what we have been calling slavery was practised in ancient Jewish society, due to the fact that a great deal was written about it, by Jewish people.

You are hilarious. And you seem to have some difficulty reading what other people say.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

Why don't you tell us with sources.

We are agog.

 

[Tom 1]

Are you having difficulty understanding what I said?

If the answer isn't that ownership means belonging to a person, then please enlighten me.

I have to say, you're not off to a great start.

I’m not going to spoon feed you, the only way you will gain any understanding is by finding the answers yourself. You can contrast this process with your initial knee jerk method, which will be a useful lesson in itself.

 

[Tom 1]

Why don't you tell us with sources.

Why don’t you educate yourself?

Source, as already quoted, is Maimonides. As you can easily find out, in minutes, his writings codify and elaborate the entirety of Jewish law.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

@Clizby WampusCat , I think this is all bluster. He's got nothing.

 

[Tom 1]

You are hilarious. And you seem to have some difficulty reading what other people say.

The argument is as valid as your own -

Based on what I think I know about your behaviour, which is based on what you have said here in this thread, my natural assumptions are that you are pro slavery, and that you have some sort of belief that feelings are a more important indicator than actions vis a vis a person's proclivities.

Based on what you think you know about Jewish law and the behaviour of people in Hebrew society in the ancient world, you have made certain assumptions.

My argument reflects yours pretty much exactly.

 

[Tom 1]

@Clizby WampusCat , I think this is all bluster. He's got nothing.

If you post something that indicates some attempt to inform yourself, you'll get a response acknowledging that you should be taken seriously, to the degree indicated by your post.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

If you post something that indicates some attempt to inform yourself, you'll get a response acknowledging that you should be taken seriously, to the degree indicated by your post.

You have a huge misunderstanding about how claims and evidence works. First, you are making a claim so you need to support that claim with evidence. Then we get to evaluate that evidence to see if we are convinced. Nobody gets to make a claim and then tell the other person to disprove that claim.

Furthermore, when someone asks you a question that they don't know the answer to it is only decent to answer the question instead of berating them for not knowing. So either stop blowing wind and answer the question I asked or admit that you were wrong.

So I will ask you: What defines the principle of ownership in Hebrew law?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

@Clizby WampusCat , I think this is all bluster. He's got nothing.

We will only know if he attempts to answer his own question. If by answering the question he will show that we are wrong he would have just answered the question in my opinion.

 

[Tom 1]

You have a huge misunderstanding about how claims and evidence works. First, you are making a claim so you need to support that claim with evidence. Then we get to evaluate that evidence to see if we are convinced. Nobody gets to make a claim and then tell the other person to disprove that claim.

Furthermore, when someone asks you a question that they don't know the answer to it is only decent to answer the question instead of berating them for not knowing. So either stop blowing wind and answer the question I asked or admit that you were wrong.

So I will ask you: What defines the principle of ownership in Hebrew law?

What claim am I making?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

What claim am I making?

That the Torah does not allow for people to be owned by others.

So I will ask you again: What defines the principle of ownership in Hebrew law?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

Source, as already quoted, is Maimonides. As you can easily find out, in minutes, his writings codify and elaborate the entirety of Jewish law.

Am I supposed to read all 14 volumes of his writings? Where does he talk about slaves? Please provide the source, more than just a name of a person that wrote some stuff.

 

[Tom 1]

Am I supposed to read all 14 volumes of his writings? Where does he talk about slaves? Please provide the source, more than just a name of a person that wrote some stuff.

Read the posts above.

 

[Tom 1]

That the Torah does not allow for people to be owned by others.

I didn't say that. Listen I appreciate you want to discuss this but you keep responding to things I haven't said, skipping over what I do say and making assumptions rather than engaging in dialogue, I don't really have time to keep pointing that out.

 

[Tom 1]

We will only know if he attempts to answer his own question. If by answering the question he will show that we are wrong he would have just answered the question in my opinion.

I'm not going to work through it one point at a time - that would be pointless, as at each point you would simple reiterate what you both already think, which would be incredibly tedious. There's a lot to absorb if you want to understand Jewish perspectives on 'slavery' and how it was actually practised, you'd make more headway with that in some quite and reflective study. If it doesn't interest you, then it doesn't interest you, but the only way to understand practices within an ancient culture is to study the writings of that culture and the context within which it existed.

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

I didn't say that. Listen I appreciate you want to discuss this but you keep responding to things I haven't said, skipping over what I do say and making assumptions rather than engaging in dialogue, I don't really have time to keep pointing that out.

In post 307 you said:

The basic principle of Torah law that no-one can actually own anything makes the comparison with modern slavery in the US fundamentally different to begin with, but in terms of practice in the context of the ancient world, well people tend to put their own filter on based on some random set of impressions that clouds the whole picture and makes any sort of understanding impossible.

Did you mean to say here that the Torah does not allow for people to be owned or not?

 

[Clizby WampusCat]

I'm not going to work through it one point at a time - that would be pointless, as at each point you would simple reiterate what you both already think, which would be incredibly tedious. There's a lot to absorb if you want to understand Jewish perspectives on 'slavery' and how it was actually practised, you'd make more headway with that in some quite and reflective study. If it doesn't interest you, then it doesn't interest you, but the only way to understand practices within an ancient culture is to study the writings of that culture and the context within which it existed.

You give a source and then don't want to provide the actual text of what that source said. Where are the writings about Hebrew slaves by Maimonides that you are referring to?