Slavery and Christianity

[HarryStotle]

20 When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished. 21 But if the slave survives a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property.

22 When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. 23 If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

26 When a slaveowner strikes the eye of a male or female slave, destroying it, the owner shall let the slave go, a free person, to compensate for the eye. 27 If the owner knocks out a tooth of a male or female slave, the slave shall be let go, a free person, to compensate for the tooth.

Clearly the law of lex talionis applies even in the case of slaves, such that if a slaveowner damages an eye or tooth of a slave, indicating harsh treatment, the slave was to be set free.

That implies an overarching rule of humane treatment. With that in mind, your issue seems to be with Ex 21:20-21 where if a slave dies immediately the owner is to be punished, whereas if a slave dies after a day or two, there is no punishment.

The implication would be that if the owner beats the slave to the point of death there is no punishment, but would be punished if the slave dies. That, however, doesn’t fit well with vss. 23-24 where “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe…” and clearly includes slaves to be accorded the same just treatment (Cf vss. 26-7)

I suggest that what is going on here is that “When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished…” implies capital punishment of the owner, but if the slave does not die immediately there is no capital punishment. That does not mean the slaveowner would be absolved from any punishment, since vss 23-4 clearly stipulate “If ANY HARM follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe…”

The reasoning here, given the state of medical knowledge at the time was that after 2-3 days there would be no sure way of knowing if the slave had died from injuries inflicted or some other cause. That is, if the harm was severe enough to cause immediate death it would warrant capital punishment, but if not the punishment would be “… eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe…”

So far from permitting harsh treatment of slaves, the law here is rigorous that Hebrew slaves should not be “ruled over with harshness,” but regulated by lex talionis.

This chapter is, after all, speaking of Hebrew slaves specifically, so it can’t be permitting harsh treatment to the point of death, but not past it. That is a misreading.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

This thread seems to be a particular instance of a general tendency to quote biblical passages that one finds troubling and then criticize the Bible/God/Christianity for what one finds troubling.

First, it’s not unheard of to reference text when critiquing it. Second, people who are believers are willing to quote passages to point out the positives of Christianity. So I don’t see the problem.

Getting to the first of your four main points, you’re suggesting that these texts require a gatekeeper. And based on other posts on this thread the texts can say X but really mean not X. Trust us! That’s a dangerous precedent and one that guts any conviction one might have with any other portion of the text.

Most of what I’ve quoted are words quoted from God to his people, the common folk. When God twice calls slaves property, belongings that can be bred and passed down the generations like a pair of sandals, we’re to understand this is really about compassion.

When people use passages to praise God, no believer chimes in saying that’s not true at all. X means X. When someone uses these passages to criticize God, suddenly people are up in arms. Now you can’t say X means X. In short, you can’t use the Bible to fault Jehovah, because doing so would show fault in Jehovah. It’s a system devoid of rigor and reason.

For your second and third main points, I haven’t read that particular book. I think it would be best if you could present the more salient points of the book so we can discuss them. If you want to use moral relativism as a defense for God’s instruction book on slavery you’re welcome to. I find Christians are the first to denounce moral relativism and the first to use it in an argument. But let’s take the part as to whether this particular brand of slavery is an “instantiation[ ] of dehumanizing mistreatment”. As of noted, God twice calls slaves property. This includes:

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

It also notes that children can be purchased and bred into slavery, as they too are property. Is what God allows mistreatment? Beating another man, woman, or child with a rod (not even accounting for the possible death) is mistreatment. Prevent a person from migrating elsewhere is mistreatment. Having a person work against his or her will for as long as the master wants is mistreatment. Taking a male Hebrew slaves who paid off his debt and forcing him to choose between his family and freedom is mistreatment. Can you defend anything of Biblical slavery as fair treatment?

On your fourth point this is a false dichotomy. There is no doubt a very large middle ground between absolute freedom and allowing slavery.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Go back to 1 Tim 1. And yes, God was speaking through Paul, which is Sunday school material.

That was your response when I asked what passages in the Bible, besides a stray word from Paul, that there should be no slavery. You could have just said the answer is “no”.

The thing we have to understand is that specifics speak far more clearly than vague platitudes. Imagine a politician who, in a speech, says that he supports the troops. He then does things like slash body armor for soldiers, repeal laws that protected their safety, and gutted funding for veterans’ hospitals. If a person criticized this politician, pointing out that earlier speech about supporting troops means absolutely nothing. God’s specifics regarding slavery are far more telling (and more disturbing) than one vague mention by Paul.

Whatever. At this point, you just want to view it however you want to and not in line with the approaches that started in the Early Church. Maybe we should read the Psalms in the most literal way possible despite the fact they weren’t meant to be read that way. Let’s ignore how the early Christians approached Scripture.

It’s not a matter of “approaches” it’s an attempt to utterly destroy the basis of language. It’s very much an Orwellian use of words. Saying how to enslave is really a way to stop slavery (“Freedom is Slavery!”). Saying how to manslaughter slaves is really a way to protect them (“Ignorance is Strength!”).

Are you suggesting that because God is not human that it’s ok that he tells people to do evil? Parents aren’t the same as children, yet parents have to consider what’s best for children. A deity who is allegedly perfect should understand that.

I can’t speak for Catholics or even all Protestants, but God is God. He created the world, why He would order such harsh and frightening things is beyond my comprehension. What He wills isn’t the same as a human. Parents and children are still humans.

Yes, and as I said the ones who know teaching the ones they have to do right by the ones learning even if they don’t fully understand it. Parents have to set children on the right path from the very start and teach them things that they don’t understand. If you say we can’t understand God’s ways he still has to do right by humans. Telling humans that it’s okay to enslave humans, to inflict harm and misery, to increase a practice that he allegedly wants to stop, to greatly increase the amount of evil in the world – saying God’s ways are his own is a complete cop-out of the highest magnitude.

Search Josiah Nott. He was an atheist who bashed the Bible. He justified slavery. This was when the Methodists and Quakers appeared. David Hume encouraged a peer to invest in a plantation.

You can look up Ralph Waldo Ermerson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine Rose, Marquis de Condorcet, and Robert Ingersoll (to name a few). There were some atheists who were for slavery, just like there were of different faiths. The idea of “many atheists” justified slavery doesn’t add up.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

1. The interlinear Bible I’m using (biblehub.com) doesn’t have it as acquire but buy, as in engage in the slave trade. Few, if any, slave owners in 19th century US actually grabbed slaves from their homes and shipped them to America. What they did was still wrong nonetheless.
2. In the passages you quoted it says that one may purchase the children of foreign lands. What debt do they owe? It also says they may be passed down as property to their children as a permanent inheritance. How can a foreign slave by set free and also be a permanent inheritance? This fiction that each and every person enslaved under these laws requires not only subtracting from scripture but adding to it (something that believers are not supposed to do,
3. Whoopee. I’m sure the 4 year old slave was looking forward to the jubilee 34 years down the line (if she lived that long). This idea of slightly-less-cruel slavery is laughable. The analogy I like to bring up is if a town said it was ok to kidnap women so long as they weren’t molested any Wednesday. Don’t snicker. I’ve had more than a few other pro-slavery Christians champion the fact that the Israelites had to let their slaves rest on the sabbath.
4. First of all, just because the first part of Exodus 21 goes into detail on how to blackmail male Hebrew slaves doesn’t mean that Exodus 21:20-21 is exclusively about male Hebrew slaves. Heck, the first part is about males and the second part is about females. Second, you’re trying to claim that because one line says with no specifics to treat slaves respectfully that it somehow negates the one where it very specifically lays out a scenario that says both a. it’s perfectly fine to beat slaves with rods, and b. as long as the death by rod is lingering, then it’s a-ok? What level of Orwellian dobulethink is needed to square these two concepts in your mind.

Next, you bring up Exodus 21:23-24 as a way to somehow overcome the lingering death passage; but I’m sure you clearly see that is very specifically about the punishment for accidentally hurting a pregnant woman in a fight. We even see the difference in Exodus 21:29-31 as opposed to Exodus 31:32. 29-31 says that if a bull’s owner allows a man or woman to be killed the owner is also to be killed. In 32 if the bull’s owner allows a slave to be killed the same way, he lives and just pays a fine. Notice how the different passages don’t treat slaves as a man or woman. The punishment is less as is the description of them.

Also, with that bit about capital punishment: Stop adding to scripture! You know you’re not supposed to do that, right? The passage in no uncertain terms says “not to be punished”. Only in apologetics does none mean some.

You do agree at least that the passage means that it’s okay to beat a slave with a rod, right? Could you least come to the same conclusion that this is evil?

These slavery threads depress me so much. I so very much want to quote Joseph Welch whenever I see one.

 

[ATraveller]

That was your response when I asked what passages in the Bible, besides a stray word from Paul, that there should be no slavery. You could have just said the answer is “no”.

The thing we have to understand is that specifics speak far more clearly than vague platitudes. Imagine a politician who, in a speech, says that he supports the troops. He then does things like slash body armor for soldiers, repeal laws that protected their safety, and gutted funding for veterans’ hospitals. If a person criticized this politician, pointing out that earlier speech about supporting troops means absolutely nothing. God’s specifics regarding slavery are far more telling (and more disturbing) than one vague mention by Paul.

It’s not a matter of “approaches” it’s an attempt to utterly destroy the basis of language. It’s very much an Orwellian use of words. Saying how to enslave is really a way to stop slavery (“Freedom is Slavery!”). Saying how to manslaughter slaves is really a way to protect them (“Ignorance is Strength!”).

Are you suggesting that because God is not human that it’s ok that he tells people to do evil? Parents aren’t the same as children, yet parents have to consider what’s best for children. A deity who is allegedly perfect should understand that.

Yes, and as I said the ones who know teaching the ones they have to do right by the ones learning even if they don’t fully understand it. Parents have to set children on the right path from the very start and teach them things that they don’t understand. If you say we can’t understand God’s ways he still has to do right by humans. Telling humans that it’s okay to enslave humans, to inflict harm and misery, to increase a practice that he allegedly wants to stop, to greatly increase the amount of evil in the world – saying God’s ways are his own is a complete cop-out of the highest magnitude.

You can look up Ralph Waldo Ermerson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine Rose, Marquis de Condorcet, and Robert Ingersoll (to name a few). There were some atheists who were for slavery, just like there were of different faiths. The idea of “many atheists” justified slavery doesn’t add up.

There’s no point in this discussion frankly. You refuse to accept it because it doesn’t work with your ideology. You make yourself the authority of what Christians should believe so there isn’t much of a point. The fact you ignored my allusion to progressive revelation says all I need to know. This isn’t a real discussion and any genuine desire to understand.
If you understood my point, God allowed slavery then wanted it phased out. That can be hard to take for some and I know some Catholics and other Christians will disagree. Then again, it wouldn’t be too different from the problem of pain. Of course, that wouldn’t work for you.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

There’s no point in this discussion frankly. You refuse to accept it because it doesn’t work with your ideology. You make yourself the authority of what Christians should believe so there isn’t much of a point. The fact you ignored my allusion to progressive revelation says all I need to know. This isn’t a real discussion and any genuine desire to understand.
If you understood my point, God allowed slavery then wanted it phased out.

I didn’t ignore your allusion. I rejected it on its merits and deficiencies.

One way we judge an entity is by his or her priorities. The woman in New York this week who got in front of a madman’s car to save her kids prioritized them over herself. A business that prioritizes profits over safety is judged harshly.

So how poorly does it speak of God when he prioritizes far less urgent matters than slavery? God didn’t phase in honoring the Sabbath. It was to be done by all his people without fail. There’s the story of the man picking up sticks on the Sabbath, and God himself said he was to be executed for dishonoring the Sabbath. You have the command to circumcise children. According to the Bible, Moses was thisclose to dying until Moses’s wife quickly struck his son’s foreskin with a sharp rock. What about slavery? God’s reaction is more “I’ll get to it eventually,” like me and doing the dishes, only I don’t wait 1,800 years for someone else to do my dishes.

God didn’t try to phase in telling people murder is wrong. God didn’t try to phase in telling people theft is wrong. There’s no reason why he had to phase out slavery, unless you claim that they were beholden to the practices of other nations, which I’ve shown they are not.

If you want to claim that outlawing slavery wouldn’t have stopped it, of course not. Saying murder is wrong hasn’t abolished murder. The same true for any evil, that still doesn’t mean you tell people it’s okay to do it.

That can be hard to take for some and I know some Catholics and other Christians will disagree. Then again, it wouldn’t be too different from the problem of pain. Of course, that wouldn’t work for you.

The problem of pain and the problem of evil aren’t factors here. The fact that pain and evil exist in the universe doesn’t explain why God would specifically allow people to cause untold pain and commit massive evil. It’s the difference between accepting that people can get tuberculosis and infecting someone with it.

 

[ATraveller]

I didn’t ignore your allusion. I rejected it on its merits and deficiencies.

You rejected all of them because it goes against what you want Christianity to be. Sorry, it doesn’t work the way you want it. Right from the start, the approaches to Scripture weren’t what you wanted them to be.

There’s no reason why he had to phase out slavery, unless you claim that they were beholden to the practices of other nations, which I’ve shown they are not.

I never made the argument for the bolded.
It all boils down to who is God? Someone greater than us or not? Well, you don’t believe there is one.
To you, there may have been no need to phase it out or it should have happened faster. I would like things to be quite different but unfortunately, I have no control over the universe. So again, who is God? If we can’t agree on this, we’re talking past each other and this discussion is becoming circular.

If you want to claim that outlawing slavery wouldn’t have stopped it, of course not.

Nice straw man. I never made such a claim.

---

Looking back, I only commented to point out your claim that the Bible was for slavery and increasing it wasn’t correct, which was my only interest in this. I responded by saying the OT on its own, yes (mostly), but the NT would negate that. You didn’t like that and made up the claim Paul doesn’t speak for God and pulled other issues in.

 

[Magnanimity]

Of course there is a gatekeeper to any and all religious texts–the religious communities they come from. You only have before you this text because the community supplied it to the world. Somehow this point is controversial for you? So, Jews can have a Talmud. Muslims can have ahadith. Buddhists can have a Theravada school. But, nothing for Christians? We just have a perspicuous text that someone like yourself can crack open as if he’s reading the NY Times?

What do you make of the fact that Judaism and Christianity started out as religions of oral tradition, much like Hinduism and Buddhism, and existed for centuries prior to canonized texts were finalized? None of these four religions could properly be called “religions of the book.” Whatever texts come from these various communities have as their sole purpose the putting of people in contact/communion with the Absolute. There are vast traditions surrounding and encompassing all major religions and their respective texts. So yes, gatekeeper, absolutely, 100%, and it is silly to believe otherwise. That is, it is puerile to treat the Bible as you would the Economist magazine, as I said earlier. They are not equivalent, and any person operating on an assumption that they are is entirely out of bounds.

The function of the church no less than any other religious community is to put folks in contact with the Absolute, which the church understands as God. The reading of the Bible is ecclesial (as I said), to be done in union with the church. But there are other aspects as well. The reading of the Bible should be Christ-centered. And it should also be personal (you should see yourself in its pages before you see the “other”). The church believes that the Bible constitutes a coherent whole. Where is the coherence and wholeness? It is in the person of Christ. I once heard an Eastern Orthodox criticize the Protestant/Evangelical/Catholic inclination to refer to the Bible as the “word of God.” What he meant by that is that the Bible itself quite clearly claims that there is one Word of God, and it is Christ, the God-Man. Christ is God’s Word. If Christ is seen as the bridge between God and humans (and he is), then one must read the entire Bible, as Origen says, from the standpoint of the last book of the Bible. The point of any and all revelations from the church are to put people into encounter with the living Christ. So, all biblical interpretation should be Christ-centered (so says the church) and personal. You should see yourself in the text. And not to be missed, are the metaphorical, allegorical and spiritual truths communicated throughout the texts. If you’re not doing all of these things, you’re beyond doubt doing it wrong.

Here are a couple of really good videos in these regards. How the Church Fathers Interpreted Scripture and Bishop Barron on Violence in the Bible Both are highly recommended.

 

[Magnanimity]

Also, @Mike_from_NJ has no special sense of justice or of what is morally right. Rather, you have the common sense of justice and what is right that we all have. We have it by virtue of being human because part of what it is to be human is to have a conscience. And there is certainly a primacy of conscience, as John Henry Newman says. So, in a way, whatever are your objections to your literalistic reading of these texts on slavery would be the same objections that we all would have. And your knee-jerk, negative reaction to this particular portion of the Bible should awaken a curiosity in you, I would think. Because certainly, these passages have been heard and/or read by, I don’t know, maybe 2,000,000,000 over time (perhaps that number is conservative). Which would make you the 2,000,000,001th person that has read these passages and had a curious and negative reaction to them. Prudence would suggest that as many of the greatest minds in all of history have similarly read passages in the Bible that suggest violence and/or mistreatment of others and yet have maintained their Christian faith, then perhaps you’re doing it wrong. Unless you would have yourself believe that you alone are the rational one while the billions of Christians over the centuries have been deeply irrational…

Finally, my point was that “absolute freedom” doesn’t and can’t exist. That notion of freedom is a bizarre outworking of a “God is dead” existentialist philosophy. There are many and various senses in which we all are servants throughout the courses of our lives. As I said, the ability to do/be/say whatever I want whenever I want to doesn’t exist. So, I suppose I don’t understand the atheist opposition to slavery (no matter how it is instatiated) as some awful moral evil when whatever liberty you think you possess is crucially and severely constrained. Again, St. Paul opens his letter to the Romans with the following language, “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God…” (NABRE). To thrive as a human is to be a slave of/to/for God.

 

[rose321]

Leviticus 25:44 instructs God’s people that they may acquire slaves from neighboring nations

Respectfully was the word can acquire slaves or can acquire servants from neighboring nations? To one only makes no sense for God to take his people out of slavery…to put his people… himself into slavery under him now, and a contradiction of his own Spoken Word is it not? Why Jesus was he sent to us then to take us out of our own bondage of slavery… sin having no path or way to escape?
Just have to know who is speaking when in the Bible maybe? Our Heavenly Father is Love…and why is there so many different names for God, his name mentioned 7,000 times was removed and why was it replaced with God, in the bible also?
Notice Jesus never quotes from theses verses and Jesus teaches us the opposite …why?? confused is all questioning when examining all that is written. Peace

 

[Kei]

Some of the land acquisition was done through making deals and what not. The trail of tears is a dreadfully sad thing. They even won the court case, but were forced anyway. Sad.

 

[Kei]

The Church condemned specific forms of slavery multiple times, but the entirety of the thing is a tad complicated. At times, selling oneself into slavery was something people did on purpose during times of economic troubles, and there are various forms of slaves. I believe the common opinion was that it was due to original sin that slavery existed.
They were equally human. The Bible, and thus the Church, proclaims that there is neither free nor slave in Christ. Popes have been former slaves!
Rather than outright condemn slavery, the Church denied the underlying assumptions of the worst forms of slavery, not overturning economies and starting political revolutions in this way, but bringing about a genuine change in man’s views.

Keep in mind that the Church isn’t just a religious institution. It is also a political institution. One wrong move and revolution and upheaval could take place.

 

[HarryStotle]

1. The interlinear Bible I’m using (biblehub.com) doesn’t have it as acquire but buy, as in engage in the slave trade. Few, if any, slave owners in 19th century US actually grabbed slaves from their homes and shipped them to America. What they did was still wrong nonetheless.

Acquire doesn’t rule out purchase, and nobody was arguing it did. What you presume about buy are the most negative possible connotations. It could very well be that a slave was bought from the owner to whom the slave was previously indebted, a kind of transfer of the debt by paying the previous debtor. That, in itself, proves nothing about the motives of the buyer, nor about the treatment of the slave. You will have to make an independent argument to show Hebrew-owned slaves were maltreated.

Given that slaves of Hebrews could actually inherit their master’s property, if there were no blood relations remaining, that would seem to indicate slaves were not viewed as mere property but as indentured human beings with human rights.

1. In the passages you quoted it says that one may purchase the children of foreign lands. What debt do they owe? It also says they may be passed down as property to their children as a permanent inheritance. How can a foreign slave by set free and also be a permanent inheritance? This fiction that each and every person enslaved under these laws requires not only subtracting from scripture but adding to it (something that believers are not supposed to do,

Again, slaves could not have merely been taken by force – Ex 21:16 explicitly forbids kidnapping under penalty of death: Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is still held in possession, shall be put to death.

This implies some kind of debt purchase was involved. For example, a parent selling a child to pay off a debt. That also implies that slaves could redeem themselves by paying the price of their redemption [i.e., purchase] by their labour.

Lev 25:46 does not say “permanent” possession. That is you interjecting your own thoughts. It says, “46 You may keep them as a possession for your children after you, for them to inherit as property.”

There is no implication that this was a long term eventuality. It may have been that the slave was acquired shortly before the owner’s passing and that implies the debt owed to the owner would be transferred to the owner’s beneficiaries. By itself, that doesn’t imply what you assume.

Continued…

 

[HarryStotle]

1. Whoopee. I’m sure the 4 year old slave was looking forward to the jubilee 34 years down the line (if she lived that long). This idea of slightly-less-cruel slavery is laughable. The analogy I like to bring up is if a town said it was ok to kidnap women so long as they weren’t molested any Wednesday. Don’t snicker. I’ve had more than a few other pro-slavery Christians champion the fact that the Israelites had to let their slaves rest on the sabbath.

Now, would you care to provide evidence that the price of a slave would be so exorbitant as to require 34 years to repay? We can’t just assume stuff like that.

Evidence, please.

It isn’t sufficient to provide an “analogy” absent any historical evidence that the analogy would hold given the situation of the time. Presumptions are not facts.

1. First of all, just because the first part of Exodus 21 goes into detail on how to blackmail male Hebrew slaves doesn’t mean that Exodus 21:20-21 is exclusively about male Hebrew slaves. Heck, the first part is about males and the second part is about females. Second, you’re trying to claim that because one line says with no specifics to treat slaves respectfully that it somehow negates the one where it very specifically lays out a scenario that says both a. it’s perfectly fine to beat slaves with rods, and b. as long as the death by rod is lingering, then it’s a-ok? What level of Orwellian dobulethink is needed to square these two concepts in your mind.

Actually, beating with a rod does not imply harm. It may just be that it was perfectly fine to “beat” slaves with rods to a point of not inflicting harm, i.e., not a burn, wound, or stripe – which would presume no whips could be used on a slave. That would be the implication behind: 23 If ANY harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

Given that slaves were specifically the subject of the verses before and after, and specifically named in vs 26 regarding eyes and teeth, there is no reason to presume that “…eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe…” would not have applied to slaves, thereby demonstrating that slaves were regarded as human beings with human rights, but with a monetary debt to be repaid.

It is you who are presuming much more than the passage permits.

 

[AlNg]

To thrive as a human is to be a slave of/to/for God.

I don’t see what that has to do with the white male European slavemaster going to Africa and rounding up black people at the point of a gun and shipping them to the USA to be sold at auction, as you would sell a piece of property. And what did this white male slavemaster force these beautiful young black female slaves to do under pain of beating or death?

 

[Magnanimity]

I don’t either. The two aren’t equal at all. As I said in another reply above, “not all slavery is created equal, as has been argued by others above. A good piece of scholarship that illustrates this is Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study.”

 

[AlNg]

Actually, beating with a rod does not imply harm. It may just be that it was perfectly fine to “beat” slaves with rods to a point of not inflicting harm

So it is not harmful for the white male slavemaster to beat his young black female slaves with rods if they don’t comply with his wishes?

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Actually, beating with a rod does not imply harm. It may just be that it was perfectly fine to “beat” slaves with rods to a point of not inflicting harm

So it is not harmful for the white male slavemaster to beat his young black female slaves with rods if they don’t comply with his wishes?

When did you stop beating your wife?

The point here is the distinction to be made between the socially sanctioned requirement on the part of some to repay a debt owed and the infliction of actual lasting harm.

Given we are speaking of Old Testament times some 3000 years ago when sophisticated legal, political and economic systems were not the standard, the point to be considered is that the “rule of thumb” for determining harm could have been something like NOT knocking out teeth or plucking eyes, not causing burns, wounds or stripes, nor any lasting marks.

Seems a reasonable standard given the state of civilization at the time, all anachronistic consternation aside.

Life, back then, was indeed nasty, brutish and short – for everyone including the debt owners – unlike our current entitled first world utopia where a thoughtless comment or unintended smirk could purportedly inflict everlasting emotional turmoil and apocalyptic trauma to the feelings of the perpetually triggered.

 

[AlNg]

Seems a reasonable standard given the state of civilization at the time, all anachronistic consternation aside.

I don’t believe it is reasonable for a male slavemaster to beat his young female slaves. I would say it is morally wrong to do so.

When did you stop beating your wife?

In the USA, and other countries as well, they have the MeToo movement and it is not appropriate to beat your wife. Generally, it comes under domestic violence and is a criminal offense. But I have heard from a Saudi, that in Saudi Arabia, a man may beat his wife but not on the face and only for serious reasons.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

Seems a reasonable standard given the state of civilization at the time, all anachronistic consternation aside.

I don’t believe it is reasonable for a male slavemaster to beat his young female slaves. I would say it is morally wrong to do so.

When did you stop beating your wife?

In the USA, and other countries as well, they have the MeToo movement and it is not appropriate to beat your wife. Generally, it comes under domestic violence and is a criminal offense. But I have heard from a Saudi, that in Saudi Arabia, a man may beat his wife but not on the face and only for serious reasons.

You have completely missed my meaning.

The idea is that you are imposing your preconceptions on the text and the individuals living at the time.

Never mind.