Slavery and Christianity

[TK421]

Slavery is a moral evil. It was outlawed in the 5th century as a result of the Christianization of the Empire.

Many centuries later it massively re-emerged with the African slave trade. This was a result of people’s lust for power and wealth. It was a moral failure of the Church to not speak more strongly about it, just as it is a moral failure of the Church today to not be more strong about a variety of issues. It is composed of human beings and therefore fully capable of both venial and mortal sins of commission and omission.

While this may make people uncomfortable - as it should - it’s worth noting that the secular world was in the past and continues to be far worse. No matter where you go, you will find human beings, and human beings are disappointing.

 

[Damian]

No surprise here. Once secular community does the heavy lifting of solving moral dilemmas that the regional religion does not address or has actual direct links in the texts to promote the moral evil, the church only has a “revelation” or “new interpretation” when they see that their religion is either on the threat of being on the wrong side of this issue (longer than they needed to be) when everyone is caught up on it or the religion is becoming irrelevant in the society because secular society is solving these issues without the need of the church’s official endorsement and involvement in solving these issues.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

I never made the argument for the bolded.

No, you didn’t make that argument; nor did I say you did. I’ve been in enough of these slavery threads to know that it’s the most common response to the question I asked as to why God had to wean people off slavery, but not wean people off of murder or honoring the Sabbath. What’s interesting is that you haven’t given a reason why slavery gets a multi-millennium pass where other actions do not. Why is slavery so special in that regard?

So again, who is God? If we can’t agree on this, we’re talking past each other and this discussion is becoming circular.

You’re saying that if it’s claimed that an entity is the creator of the universe, then we can’t judge his character even if he does things that would not pass muster if a person did it. So no one would be able to criticize Allah or any other god. You may want to let those who try to show that non-Christian religions are false that they simply have to back off.

Nice straw man. I never made such a claim.

No, and I never said you did. I brought it up because that is one of the common alleged defenses to explain why slavery gets barely a peep against it but murder, and honoring the Sabbath, and not letting a sorcerer live does.

You didn’t like that and made up the claim Paul doesn’t speak for God and pulled other issues in.

It’s not about liking it, it’s about assessing the volume and precision of the words the Bible uses for/against slavery. The word (singluar) against it is surpassed by the many specific ones for it My analogy I gave earlier about a politician who says in vague tones that he’s for the troops, but in specifics harms them by his actions is against the troops.

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?

I agree it doesn’t make sense to have a group of people who experienced the pain and terror of slavery to enact it upon others, but God plainly said they could. You’ll have to take it up with God.

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?

But Jesus didn’t take people out of slavery like we’re discussing here. You can’t equivocate slavery with regards to sin and slavery to a slave owner. Jesus didn’t say a bad thing about the practice. His Church even owned slaves and multiple times allowed for the increase in slavery.

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

God is speaking in the passages quoted, which is why I am questioning God’s morality.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

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?

If I read what is an instructional text I should be able to get the gist of it, even if I may miss some of the nuances. But there are those believers who have no regard for language or structure that will try to spin an interpretation on a text, going so far as to say a text means the exact opposite of what the plain reading of the text is. As I said earlier the passages regarding slavery were instructions from God, meant to be understood by the common person. It’s tort.

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?

So long as the oral traditions aren’t trying to convince me that X means not X, then it has no bearing on this discussion.

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.

Again these were instructions to his people. When I give instructions to my co-workers I aim to make them as clear as possible. I certainly don’t instruct them to do the opposite of what I want them to do.

I snipped the part about the Bible bringing people closer to God. It has nothing to do with this discussion. We can be brought closer to God without doing evil with his permission.

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.

I cut a portion out to save space. First, you didn’t define what a special sense of justice is. It sounds like a fabricated term to rescue the fallacy of special pleading. But let’s say there is such a thing as a special sense of justice: Can it conflict with our so-called common sense of justice? At the time these passages were written was God incapable of satisfying both the so-called special and common senses of justice? Remember, this is the almighty God. He can see all things, including all possible things. He would see ways where landowners and workers can work together without the evil that is slavery. He would see forms of worker-employer actions that we haven’t even fathomed yet. And God, as I’ve shown, was not restricted by what other cultures did in directing his people.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

And yet, many apologists have to make God very small to try and explain away some of his actions. They revel in his powerlessness and wash themselves in his holy impotence in not being able to not endorse slavery. God can supposedly do anything until apologists tell the story.

To your point about me being the two-billion-and-first person to read these texts, it doesn’t matter if all two billion before me interpreted it differently than I did if I’m right. History is filled with people who went against common thinking. Galileo went against common thinking that bodies dropped at different rates based on their weight. There were a handful of men in the American colonies who went against the idea that a king was necessary to run a state, than the people themselves would have a say. But the thing is the two billion before me felt the same about slavery. Many Christians and non-Christians disregarding God’s acceptance of the practice and had the courage of their convictions to speak out against it. If you find the appeal to popularity fallacy convincing that’s on you.

Finally, my point was that “absolute freedom” doesn’t and can’t exist.

But you brought it up in response to my saying it is wrong to enslave another. I too don’t be absolute freedom can’t exist. I strongly believe in the notion that one is allowed to swing his arms only to a point before the other guy’s nose. And as I said there is a very wide middle ground between slavery and anarchy. To use “absolute freedom” to defend slavery completely misunderstands the point.

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@HarryStotle I’m limited to three posts in a row. I have a lot to say on your most recent posts, and i’ll post my response when I can.

 

[ATraveller]

Once secular community does the heavy lifting of solving moral dilemmas that the regional religion does not address or has actual direct links in the texts to promote the moral evil, the church only has a “revelation” or “new interpretation” when they see that their religion is either on the threat of being on the wrong side of this issue (longer than they needed to be) when everyone is caught up on it or the religion is becoming irrelevant in the society because secular society is solving these issues without the need of the church’s official endorsement and involvement in solving these issues.

The abolition movement in the Anglosphere was done by Methodists, low church Anglicans and Quakers. The heavy lifting was done by them not secularists.

 

[ATraveller]

The word (singluar) against it is surpassed by the many specific ones for it

It’s qualitative not quantitative.
How much of the OT is binding when the NT has been given? That’s what covenant theology and related hermeneutics cover, which you oppose because it doesn’t give the outcome you want. If we were to follow your method, Christians would still have to perform ritualistic cleansings and keep kosher.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

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.

Once again, you’re adding to scripture. It just says they may be purchased – including being bought by someone who had captured the slaves.

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.

As I re-explain to you below Exodus 21 gives rules for being careless in the death of another man or woman versus the accidental death of another person’s male or female servant.

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.

It doesn’t say anything against purchasing slaves that had been captured by others. Claiming a passage means more than it says is de rigueur for pro-slavery Christians.

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.

What debt does a baby born as a slave owe? Why in Exodus 21 does it say that when a male Hebrew slave is released his wife and children that he acquired during that time would stay with their master? Why then would the blackmailed male slave have to agree to serve permanently instead of when the wife and child paid off their debts?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

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.

New International Version
You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

New Living Translation
passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat them as slaves, but you must never treat your fellow Israelites this way.

English Standard Version
You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.

Berean Study Bible
You may leave them to your sons after you to inherit as property; you can make them slaves for life. But as for your brothers, the Israelites, no man may rule harshly over his brother.

New American Standard Bible
'You may even bequeath them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.

King James Bible
And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour…"

Shall I go on?

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.

This wasn’t an analogy. Female slaves were slaves for life (as were those born into slavery and those non-Hebrew male slaves that were purchased). You were the one that touted that every 50 years slaves got released. I’m trying to explain that’s not much to look forward to for someone serving with the jubilee far away. It would be like Ariel Castro telling his kidnapees he’d let them go when the Browns win the Super Bowl.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

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.

I already quoted the passages that showed the penalties for carelessly letting a slave be killed were less than that of killing “a man or woman”. Exodus 21:28-31 says in such a case the man who owned the bull would be put to death if a man or woman was killed, but only had to pay 30 shekels of silver if a slave was killed the same way. The penalty was far less, it’s not an eye for an eye, and it clearly shows that slaves weren’t considered men or women.

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.

In all the many discussions I’ve had regarding slavery in the Bible, you are the first to even suggest that one can be beaten within a rod without inflicting harm. I want anyone who might be watching/lurking in this thread to take note: Harry is saying it’s ok to hit someone so long as one doesn’t leave a mark. I especially like how you put “beat” in scare quotes, as if to separate bad secular beatings from holy Biblical beatings.

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.

You conveniently left out the fact that Exodus 21:23 was a continuation of a thought from the previous verse about what happens if a pregnant woman gets injured in a fight between two men. It has nothing to do with slaves. As I demonstrated above, the rules for slaves were different than those for men and women.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

Yeah, like abortion, contraception, gay marriage, and women priests.
(Sarcasm)

 

[rose321]

But Jesus didn’t take people out of slavery like we’re discussing here. You can’t equivocate slavery with regards to sin and slavery to a slave owner. Jesus didn’t say a bad thing about the practice. His Church even owned slaves and multiple times allowed for the increase in slavery.

Respectfully thanks for the kind reply Matthew Chapter 23 seems thou he was greatly displeased with his own Temple Elders, Pharisees and Sadduccees was he not?
Maybe why Jesus tells us also in 3 days I will destroy this Temple and in 3 days I will raise it up? And flows fully with St Paul asking us wanting us to know…Do you not know you are the Temple of the Lord?? Kinda setting us all free right and that authority has been given to us now? Free indeed but our choices we will be held accountable? And let your yes be yes and your no be no? Make no vow to another, then subject under that vow?

Jesus quotes heavily from OT and there is no Thus says the Lord in NT is there? In OT His name was mentioned…Lord was not mention but his name right? God and Lord is it true are not Names but Titles and in Jesus time there were many Gods and many Lords right? Why He has a name and Jesus tells …I gave them your name but they accepted another? Ask in my Name, baptize in my Name, those who call upon my Name salvation comes through?

In the book of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah in Psalms… does our Heavenly Father not stress how important his name is and all who call upon his name?

Can you help me understand?
I have heard that Holy Scripture is when it begins with…Thus said Name was mentioned at one time right?..thus he speaks…lets us know who is speaking? When one studies the history of religions in and before Jesus time, there were many different gods or Lords being worshiped right?
Thank you kindly…

Jesus did he not break away himself from his own Temple High Priest and those who served within why? John Baptist also? Calling themselves The Nazarene’s their motto was I am the Way the Truth and the Life follow me? Why was Jesus so displeased with the teaching of his own Temple and foretold its demise, be destroyed? Why?

Peace

 

[Damian]

Secularism is the inclusiveness of every group, not only religious groups. The dismantlement of the slavery economy was a universal humanitarian movement to push back against the slavery economy that was being argued for through many means. One excuse for promoting the slave economy was direct passages within religious texts of how to own and keep slaves and that no where in the biblical texts was there a disconnect of christianity from the promotion of slavery or that it is an immoral practice.
To say that the push back against the slave economy was only religious is disingenuous at best and to ignore the direct link of biblical passages to the promotion and excuse of maintaining the slave trade is religiously ignorant or to be willfully promoting a propaganda campaign of your own agenda.

 

[Damian]

Not sure if your list indicates your are supporting my position or not, but…
Abortion is wrong, I agree, but so is removing someone’s bodily autonomy as well; which is worse.
Contraception, Gay Marriage, and Women priests is a moral good and betterment for society. Secular society is dragging the religious organizations kicking and screaming into the current century they are apart of. Can think of a single issue that religion ever was ahead of secular groups on moral issues of society.

 

[GospelOfMatthew]

Human trafficking is slavery. This is very much an issue we still struggle with. We are also often times enslaved to sin, whether it be greed or lust or pride

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

The Catholic Church isn’t budging on those issues.

 

[HarryStotle]

What debt does a baby born as a slave owe? Why in Exodus 21 does it say that when a male Hebrew slave is released his wife and children that he acquired during that time would stay with their master? Why then would the blackmailed male slave have to agree to serve permanently instead of when the wife and child paid off their debts?

So your preference would be that the wife and children of the slave be “free” to fend for themselves since they were not part of the debt to be paid? I am a little skeptical that separating the baby born to a slave by giving him/her their freedom would be a wise or moral move.

Secondly, the implicit assumption in the text here is that the Hebrew male had married a non-Hebrew because if she had been Hebrew, the family would have gone free with the man.

Your use of the “blackmail” is interesting, although somewhat misleading.

A translation of the words “for life” might also be misleading since the Hebrew word is olam, meaning “a long time,” but also subject to the Jubilee year dispensation.

CF. The Hebrew word olam, here used, oft signifies not eternity, but only a long time. See Exodus 12:14.
https://biblehub.com/commentaries/poole/exodus/21.htm

 

[Damian]

It will once it starts becoming irrelevant to society. Reducing membership, reduced tithing, then poof new updates to its doctrine and interpretation to the texts. Every religion does this. That’s one reason why there are soo many spin offs of christianity and why there are more denominations of christianity than there are sentences in the bible.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

It will once it starts becoming irrelevant to society. Reducing membership, reduced tithing,

This already happened.

 

[ATraveller]

Secularism is the inclusiveness of every group, not only religious groups. The dismantlement of the slavery economy was a universal humanitarian movement to push back against the slavery economy that was being argued for through many means. One excuse for promoting the slave economy was direct passages within religious texts of how to own and keep slaves and that no where in the biblical texts was there a disconnect of christianity from the promotion of slavery or that it is an immoral practice.

Yes some justified slavery with the Bible but other also opposed slavery with the Bible. And I already mentioned 1 Tim 1:

the sexually immoral, men who practise homosexuality, enslavers , liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. - 1 Tim 1:10-11

To say that the push back against the slave economy was only religious is disingenuous at best and to ignore the direct link of biblical passages to the promotion and excuse of maintaining the slave trade is religiously ignorant or to be willfully promoting a propaganda campaign of your own agenda.

My poor wording would have implied that. I do acknowledge there were some non-religious people who backed the abolition movement, but at the end of the day, it was mostly done by religious leaders, motivated independently of the non-religious. I was responding to this claim from you:

Once secular community does the heavy lifting of solving moral dilemmas that the regional religion does not address or has actual direct links in the texts to promote the moral evil, the church only has a “revelation” or “new interpretation” when they see that their religion is either on the threat of being on the wrong side of this issue (longer than they needed to be) when everyone is caught up on it or the religion is becoming irrelevant in the society because secular society is solving these issues without the need of the church’s official endorsement and involvement in solving these issues.

Secular community implies non-religious people.
Also, many Christians, very devout ones for that matter, were doing the heavy work for the abolitionist movement.