Why are there slaves in the Bible

[rose321]

In the first place: checking various translations, the word used is not always slave. It is servant. The distinction seems to get blurry when modern translations deal with Scriptur

Respectfully opinion only when pondering upon what one has stated. We are called to be his servants of Our Lord and Master. Moses was called his servant, priest are call to serve, are his servants, we are all called to serve, becoming his servants is mention many times in OT. His servants have the priviledge of sharing in His Household, our Heritance, His family, children?
Many times the word servant is used through out the whole OT to many to list even and then there is >>agree modern translation over time?

Mark 10: 45 " For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom to many".

Thank you for expressings ones opinion on such also!
Those’s who accept His Word as Truth, having Faith in, Believing in His Spoken Word>>> are His Loving Faithful Servants within His Household, are called to serve within the Family for the Good of All.

Those who live in sin, become >slaves< to>>held in bondage of their own transgressions, unjust and unrighteous deeds and toward others, maybe? Peace

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Hey, folks! Sorry it’s taken so long to respond back to your posts.

Part of the Bible is Jewish law, and part of it is moral law. We keep the moral law-- “Love God”/“Don’t bear false witness”/“Don’t covet”/“Don’t commit adultery”/“Honor your parents”/etc-- and we discard the cultural law-- “don’t mix fibers”/“don’t eat shellfish”/“if a brother dies, the next brother needs to marry his brother’s widow to give her children in his dead brother’s name”/etc.

Slavery is not a moral issue? “Don’t beat another person”, “Don’t kill another person”, “Don’t purchase another person”, “Don’t blackmail a person into serving well past the extent of his debt” are just a few of the moral tenets that slavery apologists have to contend with (or ignore). Does it not twinge at your conscience to defend the harmful side of what should be very easy moral questions?

Why do we think slavery disappeared? In all the surviving writings that we have left over from ancient Classical sources— Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Germanic, Indus Valley, Chinese, Babylonian, Assyrian, whatever— point to one scrap of writing that has a slave daydreaming about a mythical land of freedom, where all men are equal and slavery is nonexistent. Or perhaps a piece of writing that has someone who was born free, and sinks into slavery through misfortune, and the guy says, “I would rather die than descend into slavery!”

Writing at that time was very rare, and certainly slaves (unless they were scribes) wouldn’t know how to write. You might as well ask why we don’t have videotapes of slaves from two millennia ago talking about freedom.

The point is, that slavery was taken for granted as a normal part of life by the pagan world, and it wasn’t until you get Christianity, with its radical concept of “we are all children of God” and “love your neighbor as yourself” that people start getting uncomfortable with enslaving their fellows. And after Christianity gets this foothold into people’s consciousness, that’s when it starts to unravel, because until then, it’s just a natural part of economics.

Why did God the Father have to wait thousands of years for the second person of himself to arrive on Earth to say one bad word about slavery? When did Christianity start? How does that time compare to when slavery was abolished in Christian countries? Why did the Church do nothing in a vast majority of time to end slavery (including issuing papal bulls explicitly allowing for it)? If being against slavery is such a major facet of Christianity why were there so many Christians who either participated in it and/or endorsed it? If it’s such “a natural part of economics” then why did some nations not enslave others even back then?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

So, for example, you have Paul’s Epistle to Philemon.

Let’s stop here for a second. First you say that because we don’t have writings of slaves yearning to free is that everyone was just ok with slavery (which I’ve shown is a flawed conclusion), now just two paragraphs later you bring up a slave who ran away from his master. Surely this shows that at least some slaves wished to escape slavery. It’s obvious on its very face when we acknowledge that slaves could be beaten (possibly to death), something people in general want very much to avoid.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council endorsed several previous councils and synods as law, including the Council of Gangra. Understand that the Church considers the Ecumenical Councils true on matters of faith and morals, so there is significant weight when it does something like endorse another council. In the Council of Gangra it says that anyone trying to convince a slave to leave his or her master under the pretense of faith is to be considered anathema (excommunicated). It doesn’t differentiate how that slave became a slave or even if he or she were born into slavery and was regularly beaten bloody. Convincing a slave to escape his or her sometimes tortuous position was forbidden by the Church. On top of that we can check out this aricle from catholic.com which says that if a council uses the phrase “let him be anathema” (which this one does) then it is probably infallible. So we have a post-Jesus council that is considered true regarding faith and morals endorsing slavery with language associated with slavery.
This raises a few questions:

1. Can we officially stop trying to use moral relativism to forgive the endorsement of slavery?
2. Why would there have to be rules against slaves escaping or pushing to have slaves escape if everyone was so fine with the practice?

What was the whole point of this Epistle? Onesimus is a slave, who ran away and possibly stole money from Philemon on the way out.

Whoa, let’s stop here as well. Where does it say that Onesimus stole money when escaping Philemon? Let’s not add to scripture. Paul throws it out as a possibility that Onesimus may owe Philemon something, but that certainly doesn’t mean he definitely did owe a darn thing, and it most certainly doesn’t mean he definitely resorted to theft.

Does Paul keep Onesimus, and go, “Yay, freedom! Stick with me, Onesimus! Be free in Christ!”

The world could use more Harriet Tubmans and less Pauls in this regard.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

No. Instead, he writes a letter for Onesimus to take back to Philemon. And does he throw his weight around, knowing that Philemon is a leader in the Colossian church? “Philemon! I’m going to tell you what to do, and you better listen to me, because this is PAUL talking, and Onesimus told me how terribly you treated him, so you better reform!” No. He calls himself “a prisoner for Jesus Christ” and calls Philemon “a fellow laborer” and “brother”, and he asks him to receive Onesimus back as a “brother beloved” and if Onesimus owes anything, to please charge the debt to Paul.

Just because Paul saw nothing wrong with the practice of slavery doesn’t mean it’s a good practice nor that God was right in laying out instructions to his people on how to increase the amount of slavery in the world (as well as the abject cruelty that very often comes with it).

Slavery is the norm for the time and the culture, but Paul never says “slavery is good” or “slavery is bad”. He just knows that slavery is a very human thing, and a very temporal thing.

When God told a people who for the previous 21 generations had not owned slaves in the middle of the desert how to obtain, rape, blackmail, beat, and manslaughter slaves it also became a God thing.

As far as it being a temporal thing, God is concerned about many temporal things. Murder is a temnporal thing, as is everything we do on Earth (good or bad). One can simultaneously work toward honoring God while at the same time be kind to their fellow man. God has an exception for slaveowners in that he calls them property and allows inhumanity upon them in most cases. It’s when God does something on Earth that would be evil if a human did it that believers tell non-believers to ignore the Earthly realm and only concern themselves with the next life.

And Paul was all about discarding the temporal in favor of the eternal.

Again it’s not a choice. One can easily be good temprally and eternally.

The legal relationship between Philemon and Onesimus wasn’t important: what was important were the state of their souls.

One common fiction pro-slavery Christians state is the difference between Biblical slavery and so-called “chattel slavery”. Replace “Philemon” and “Onesimus” with “19th century slaveowner” and “19th centruy slave”. It’s unpalatable to ignore one set of suffering and endorse the other.

Onesimus should not rob Philemon of something that was rightfully his, and should work in humility, obedience, and grace. Philemon, on his part, should not be vengeful-- because an escaped slave could often expect death upon capture-- but should cultivate forgiveness, reconciliation, and even friendship and familial love.

As a Catholic you should know that sometimes what is a legal right is not a moral right.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The two should not be divided, regardless of their relative legal/social/economic positions, but should be united in Christ.

I know I’ve stated this twice already, but I want to make it abundantly clear since this is another excuse used by pro-slavery Christians. One does not have to choose between being good on Earth and working towards a good afterlife.

So the thing about Christianity is that you exist within the civil structures of your culture, but you try to live as a citizen of heaven. And in the process, society gets transformed, once you have enough people doing that. But the point isn’t to transform society into a specific political animal that looks a certain way, or to force other people to do and say as you do. The point is to recognize that the details of your existence on earth are very, very, very brief, compared to your eternity, and so whether you passed your days as a king or as a slave doesn’t matter-- because merely being a king or a slave won’t guarantee you heaven.

“…within the civil structures of your culture”? God literally created the civil structures that the Hebrews were to follow while they were in the desert without slaves. If the civil structures are to be blamed, then blame God.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The first link covered a lot of the same reasoning we’ve seen before, where even though God gave detailed instructions on starting up slavery after 430 years and never ever denounced it, since Jesus said to be nice to each other that we’re to ignore all that.

The second link from New Advent I broke down with various problems I saw:

1. It talks about the Jews coming from a play where there was slavery. I rightly pointed out that for 430 years they had no slaves and were slaves themselves. We don’t do things just because our ancestors did them in 1588. And as I already noted the Hebrews were in the middle of the desert when God told them the rules for slaves.
2. It uses the term Mosaic law, which I find is often used in defending slavery to make people think the rules came from Moses and not directly from the word of God.
3. It says the law was merciful to the slave and has the gall to reference Exodus 21 as an example of said mercy. This is the same chapter which says slaves can be beaten with a rod, that it’s ok if a slave gets beaten to death in most cases, and shows how a male Hebrew slave can be blackmailed into serving past his 7 year term by witholding his family as blackmail. That’s not mercy.
4. It says “the slave was not an object of contempt” but twice in the Bible calls people property – objects that could be passed down from generation to generation like a pair of sandals.
5. It talks in the first paragraph it talks about the slave and the free man as being equally subject to God, but even if the claim that Christians are called to accept society and not change it weren’t a complete fiction, at the very least call wrong that which is wrong. It does not.
6. The second paragraph makes it seem as though it were only pagan masters who were cruel to their slaves, when this is simply not the case.
7. It talks about Christianity as being somewhat unique in that it gave the sacraments to both the slave and freeman, but we see the same thing with slaves in the U.S. in the 19th century.
8. It’s taken as a positive that Christian cemetaries held both slaves and freemen. What would have been a far more positive would have been a call by God to try and limit the increased speed that those slaves were reaching those cemetaries.
9. “Primite Christianity did not attack slavery directly, but it acted as though slavery did not exist.” This is utter nonsense. If primitive Christianity saw a problem with slavery it would have at least said a word about ending it. No, this is an excuse – and a poor one at that – to explain why Christianity was deep into the practice of slavery well well well well after the fact.
   (continued in next post)

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

1. The article boasts about several councils giving minor benefits to slaves (like not serving on Sundays, so the beatings have to be doubled up the day before). An interesting one are several councils of Toledo. Now I happen to already be familiar with the Fourth Council of Toledo from previous slavery threads on CAF. The article proudly proclaims, “prohibition of Jews to possess Christian slaves”. The Church has long been against Christians being enslaved but was for a long time not against non-Christians being enslaved. If one was truly against slavery then one would be against any person being enslaved, not just ones outside of your circle. Still let’s actually look at what the Fourth Council of Toledo actually says about slaves:

“66. By the decree of the most glorious prince this sacred council ordered that Jews should not be allowed to have Christian slaves nor to buy Christian slaves, nor to obtain them by the kindness of any one; for it is not right that the members of Christ should serve the ministers of Anti-Christ. But if henceforward Jews presume to have Christian slaves or handmaidens they shall be taken from their domination and shall go free.”

Is this a takedown on the practice of slavery? Absolutely not. The problem the people of the council had was that “the members of Christ” were serving “the ministers of Anti-Christ”, i.e. the Jews. It’s not about slavery but good ol’ anti-semitism. Maybe the authors of the New Advent article hoped people wouldn’t actually read the texts of the councils.

As a bonus the council also speaks of other things related to slavery. It says men freed by the Church must continue their patronage to the Church for the remainder of their lives. In other words they were indebted to them forever – never truly free. Also it says that all property and inheritance a freed slave has or receives can’t be passed on to anyone else and belongs to the Church. Imagine a cop freeing kidnapped woman and then the courts declaring that all she owns is to go to the cop when the woman dies, and not to her family. One final thing the 4th Council of Toledo mentions is that a freed slave can’t accuse or testify against the Church. It doesn’t say falsely accuse or testify, just flat-out can’t accuse or testify. Even if the accusation or testimony is true.

1. It briefly brings up “that, in 1537, Paul III forbade the enslavement of the Indians”. What this is referring to is the papal bull of Sublimis Dei. And the article is correct in that the bull forbade the enslavement of the peoples in the New World. It’s not a coincidence that the article leaves out that Paul rescinded the executing brief on that bull (thus making it useless) at the request of the Spanish. You can’t claim credit for putting something that you retract soon after.
2. The article doesn’t mention bulls such as Creator Omnium, Sicut Dudum, Regimini Gregis, and Dum Diversas where the Church approved of slavery.

Since you have linked to this article because you feel its contents provide ample evidence that God was against slavery, can I expect a response regarding this post where I dismantle the points the article brings up?

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

God removes those from slavery bondage out of Egypt?
God removes those held in slavery, bondage in Babylon?
Jesus, John Baptist, Apostles did they not grow up in the OT?

If the Bible is to be believed, then yes.

Jesus did He not teach,preach, what was lacking>>All are to be Equal here on Earth?

He said they would all be equal in Heaven. He said all men on Earth were equal in needing to worship him. God does call slaves property and allows cruelty to be enacted on them that he doesn’t allow for non-slaves.

Instead what does God>> say about slavery and how one can enslave another, maybe God gives us instruction to know?

There’s no maybe about God giving instructions on how to enslave another. He gives very specific instructions on how to withhold the family of a non-purchased, male, Hebrew slave who had paid his debt. God told his people to use this blackmail to have the male Hebrew slave announce that he loves his family and to have his ear pierced by an awl to serve until the day he dies. Yep. Very specific instructions to know.

What does God say about slavery?
Ten Commandments >given by God>>>>No Ten Commandment Law>>> says this Commandment Law>>> only applies for Woman or slave to obey, but man does not have to obey, does it?

Just because some laws apply to all people doesn’t mean every law by that time and culture were for all people.

Let’s take Reconstruction South in the U.S. Even after states signed off on the 13th amendment many of them passed “Black Codes” (including vagrancy laws that specifically targeted black people). If you looked at the laws of a particular state a vast majority of them applied to all its citizens, but that doesn’t change the fact that there were laws targeting a select group of people unfairly. The same is true with your example. If you want to say all 10 commandments applied to all people, then sure. It in no way negates the rules layed out in the first books of the Bible which has God clearly endorsing and detailing how one was to get and use slaves.

His Ten Commandments are to be distributed to provide>>> “Equality Rights, Freedom and Protection for All” His Creation.

Your use of quotes here confuses me. I don’t see where that phrase is quoted from.

God does rebuke, preach, teach about the Lawlessones thou, right?
But God forces no one to obey them or live by them does He?

It’s not about whether a random person obey’s God’s laws or not. It’s about God telling those people who do follow his law that slavery is tooootally fine.

I chooses not to answer your question on slavery, but rather let>>>> God answer it >>>>By asking>>>What does God say about slavery or how God defines and what He considers is slavery, bondage, etc?

I’ve multiple times pointed out what God says about slavery (He’s for it.)

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Why does Jesus rebuke the Scribes, Priests, Pharisees, Sadducees>> in Matthew 23,?
Your questions asked about Jesus teaching on slavery?
How does one enslave others?>> Does Jesus give us the answers?
Woe Matthew 23: 13-22?
Woe Matthew 23: 23-24?
Woe Matthew 23: 25-26?
Woe Matthew 23 -27-28?
Woe Matthew 23: 29-36?

It’s all about hypocrisy, about being concerned more about appearances than fixing true problems, about pointing at the flaws of others instead of ourselves. All good things, but none of these have anything about slavery. If you’re trying to make a point about Matthew 23 and slavery then let’s hear it.

What does God say about slavery?
<<<Love thy Neighbor as you Love your self? If one makes another their slave, are they>>> Loving their Neighbor as they Love themselves? All are Equal according to His Greatest Commandment right?

Not right. God says to love one another and God says one can beat a slave to death so long as they don’t die the same day because they are property. That’s a contradiction using God’s own words.

Jesus teaching, preaching on>>Honest days work for a Honest days pay?
Exodus 20:15,

It’s not stealing if you work your property. It’s not stealing if you can pass down slaves to family members like a pair of sandals or a hammer.

Deut 24: 14-15,

The Bible specifically references “hired worker” which is different than a slave.

Lev. 19:13

Again, the Bible specifically specifically references “hired worker”. Buying a human being and working them to the bone is not the same as hiring a worker.

Matthew 24: 45-51 Titled>>The Faithful and Unfaithful Slaves?

My goodness. It says if a slave is put in charge while the master is away then it would be bad if the slave in charge beat the other slaves. It’s completely fine for the master to beat said slaves.

WE>> being ALL His Creation >>> WE are All Equal>>>>We are ALL called to Serve our Creator>>Our Master >> We are >All His Labors in His Earthly Garden>>> We are ALL called to be His Gardeners, are we not?

I’ve been over this so many times now.

Right in the beginning>> Genesis> 1:28

It says for humans to subdue the Earth. It says not one word about humans subduing other humans.

Did St Peter not say? Do not bow to me, for I too am just a man, and Elder among Elders?>>

Peace

Niceties and flowery language by a human doesn’t supersede the meticulously laid out criteria for partaking in slavery as laid out by God himself.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Mike_from_NJ:

The only mention Jesus makes regarding the practice of slavery is Luke 12:47-48. In it he says that slaves are to be beaten for doing wrong, but should be beaten less (but still beaten) if the slave didn’t know what he or she was doing was wrong. That is certainly not a rebuke of slavery.

Context makes a difference, Mike.
In the first place: checking various translations, the word used is not always slave. It is servant. The distinction seems to get blurry when modern translations deal with Scripture.

It’s not so much the specific word as it is the acts that can be done on the person. If we replace every instance of servant or slave with the word “rowsdower” then therre would still be a problem with what God calls for with regards to a rowsdower (e.g. beating). I’d be ranting and raving in a thread called “Why are there rowsdowers in the Bible?”

Here is one translation of the parable of the unmerciful servant that uses the word slave to describe the unmerciful servant himself, a man who owed his master an enormous fortune. He couldn’t have been penniless or the story makes no sense.
Further someone else owed a debt to the unmerciful servant, who had the authority to punish his own debtor.

If you want to say that for this passage that I referenced that Jesus was referring to a servant and not a slave then it only helps Jesus’ position on slavery slightly. It still refers to the servant as being beaten. Also if true it would mean Jesus was silent on the matter of slavery – although that’s not really the case since God the Father and Jesus are both God and he heartily endorsed the practice.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

If the second place: if you look at the rest of the passage, Jesus is not really teaching the crowd about how masters should treat their slaves.
He is teaching about how God will reward His servants, meaning all of us. He does this by making an analogy, using existing conditions among those to whom He speaks. He is not saying: “Okay masters, it’s okay to beat your servants.” He is saying: “God will reward the good and faithful, and punish the disobedient and unfaithful. So be God’s good and faithful servant.”

I completely agree with you that the thrust of the parable in Luke 12:47-48 is not at all about how to treat slaves. If we take the other two parables you mentioned (the murdered son in the vineyard, and Lazarus and the rich man) Jesus is relating a tale to make a point. Rare is a tale that doesn’t feature someone doing something wrong, so I’m definitely not saying the inclusion of wrongdoing automatically means an endorsement of it. But if you look at the passage in Luke it’s different as he’s using the beating to describe proper justice – determining what is the proper punishment for an act and whether knowledge that the act is wrong lessens that punishment. In the vineyard parable the bad act is the killing of the son. In the Lazarus parable the bad act was the rich man not sharing his wealth and the appropriate punishment was him being tormented in Hades. In the parable at the end of Luke the bad act was the slave/servant beating other slaves/servants and getting drunk, and the appropriate punishment was a beating.

You mentioned using language that people would be familiar with. Way, way back when I spent a few summers working in a resort town and there was a particular piece of equipment that would regularly go out of whack. A week in and one of the maintenance guys told me occasionally I would have to “smack it, like a woman who gets out of line,” followed by a Skoal-ridden smile. I’d heard him tell others that in my time there. When it was my turn to train any of the new guys I could very well have used the same terminology, the same analogy, but I didn’t and I heartily expect you would not have done so either.

You taught me earlier that I was guilty of sloppy thinking with regard to this issue. I still thank you for that. But in this case you need to look at the whole chapter, or at least the passages that surround the verse you quoted.

You’re right that I can’t use that passage alone to say Jesus endorsed slavery. As I said before if Jesus was making mention of servants instead of slaves (which I don’t believe to be the case) then Jesus’ position goes from endorsement to silence. And unless we start engaging in Marcionism that puts us in a bind.

May God bless and keep you,

And to you as well!

 

[twf]

The passage you refer to in Luke 12 is a parable and has nothing to do with actual slavery in human society. In that particular parable, we are all servants and the Master is Christ judging us in the afterlife according to our works. Christ doesn’t actually comment on slavery in any practice sense one way or the other anywhere in the Gospels.
As I’ve said in another thread, I would personally understand the Exodus account to be a somewhat allegorical account of a much more complex historical reality. Israel’s origins were likely more complex and would have included people who did indeed already own slaves.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

The passage you refer to in Luke 12 is a parable and has nothing to do with actual slavery in human society. In that particular parable, we are all servants and the Master is Christ judging us in the afterlife according to our works. Christ doesn’t actually comment on slavery in any practice sense one way or the other anywhere in the Gospels.

As I said in my response to Zaccheus, I understand the thrust of the parable was not about slavery, but it treats the beating of slaves as a just thing (which therefore means the owning of slave is also just). If you want to say it’s not endorsement of slavery that’s fine. I disagree, but it’s not necessarily enough on its own to hang the endorsement. The fact that another person of the Godhead was absolutely on board with it is much more damning (pardon the phrasing).

As I’ve said in another thread, I would personally understand the Exodus account to be a somewhat allegorical account of a much more complex historical reality. Israel’s origins were likely more complex and would have included people who did indeed already own slaves.

As far as saying Exodus is “somewhat allegorical” and that there were Hebrews who already owned slaves then the Bible is false about being in captivity for 430 years. Even for apologetics which is riddled with assorted retreat positions, this is a massive retreat position. And even if it is allegorical, then it still puts Yahweh in the very awkward position of endorsing literal slavery (since it’s in the context of a whole series of literal rules and practices that they had to follow). You can’t just declare something allegorical at will, not provide a reasoning behind it, and most importantly you can’t just discard those parts of the story that are utterly embarrassing even on an allegorical level.

 

[midori]

Slavery is not a moral issue? “Don’t beat another person”, “Don’t kill another person”, “Don’t purchase another person”, “Don’t blackmail a person into serving well past the extent of his debt” are just a few of the moral tenets that slavery apologists have to contend with (or ignore). Does it not twinge at your conscience to defend the harmful side of what should be very easy moral questions?

Slavery wasn’t viewed as a moral issue. Slavery was viewed as an economic issue. “This person owes me more money than he can ever pay in his life. Therefore, he and his family will be sold to cover his debts.” Slavery could be risen from-- and sunk to. It frequently wasn’t a permanent state of life in the ancient world; it depended on the economic situation of a person at a moment in time.

Writing at that time was very rare, and certainly slaves (unless they were scribes) wouldn’t know how to write. You might as well ask why we don’t have videotapes of slaves from two millennia ago talking about freedom.

What are you talking about? In Egypt, for example, many of the illiterate upper-class depended on scribal slaves to do their reading and writing for them. In Greece-- did you ever read Xenophon’s Oeconomicus? It’s a dialogue between Socrates and Ischomachus, talking about how to run an estate. The stewards-- the carpenters-- the laborers-- they were all more likely to be slaves than not. When Ischomachus talks about how to manage the people under him, he talks about explains how he goes out of his way to reward his competent slaves by treating them as free-born men, rewarding them not just with riches and wealth, but with honor and respect-- which was even more valuable. Slavery in the ancient world wasn’t limited to just drudge work-- there were numerous very skilled people who were slaves.

Getting back to your point about “writing was very rare”-- what are you talking about there, also? We have more stuff lying around than we’ve bothered translating! If you’re just talking about, say, “Hellenistic/pre-Hellenistic works of literary merit”, you can go to the Loeb Library, start working your way through, and when you’ve finished, you can get back with me.

Honest question-- how many works have you read on that list? More than ten? Ten or less? Five or less? Two or less? I’ve read enough to be able to not project my values onto the reality that existed, say, 2,100+ years ago. Because I know that my values are influenced by things that happened 2,000 years ago. Rather than wringing my hands over oh-noes-how-could-the-ancient-people-be-so-heartless-and-have-such-an-immoral-culture-- economic slavery! infanticide! war! pedophilia!, I pay more attention to doing what I can to help people today avoid those same pitfalls. Because they haven’t gone away with time. They still exist in the world around us.

 

[midori]

Why did God the Father have to wait thousands of years for the second person of himself to arrive on Earth to say one bad word about slavery? When did Christianity start? How does that time compare to when slavery was abolished in Christian countries? Why did the Church do nothing in a vast majority of time to end slavery (including issuing papal bulls explicitly allowing for it)? If being against slavery is such a major facet of Christianity why were there so many Christians who either participated in it and/or endorsed it? If it’s such “a natural part of economics” then why did some nations not enslave others even back then?

God works inside of time. He moves from something like “an eye for an eye”-- which limits vengeance to keep it proportional, rather than, say, razing a city because someone raped your sister, if you remember that Bible story-- and moves from there to “turn the other cheek”. He’s gone from “you won’t make permanent slaves out of your neighbor-- free your Hebrew slaves in the jubilee year” to “everyone’s your neighbor.”

Name an ancient civilization that had no slaves? I’m genuinely curious.

 

[midori]

Let’s stop here for a second. First you say that because we don’t have writings of slaves yearning to free is that everyone was just ok with slavery (which I’ve shown is a flawed conclusion), now just two paragraphs later you bring up a slave who ran away from his master.

You’re putting words in my mouth. What did I originally say?

In all the surviving writings that we have left over from ancient Classical sources— Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Germanic, Indus Valley, Chinese, Babylonian, Assyrian, whatever— point to one scrap of writing that has a slave daydreaming about a mythical land of freedom, where all men are equal and slavery is nonexistent. Or perhaps a piece of writing that has someone who was born free, and sinks into slavery through misfortune, and the guy says, “I would rather die than descend into slavery!”

Of course people didn’t like it. It wasn’t a nice thing. But it was their reality. And the alternative was death. So you had choices: you could cooperate and go through the minimum motions; you could rebel and risk death; you could work hard and rise above your situation. You’ve always got a spectrum of reaction to adversity.

The Oeconomicus talks about slaves who break their chains and are always running away, just like people nowadays run away from their obligations to pay their credit cards. But nowadays, if you rack up a bill you can’t pay, you don’t turn into Mastercard’s slave, or Visa’s slave, or American Express’ slave. But that didn’t used to be the case… if you owed more money than you could pay, you’d be sold off so that the guy you owed money to would be compensated.

If you’re upside-down on your mortgage, and you decide to walk away from your house, you can trash your credit, but there’s nothing really stopping you. But if you borrowed money to buy a farm, and you turned out to be a lousy farmer, or there was a drought, or whatever, there was a good chance the lender would get your farm as well as your family.

Likewise, if your country was conquered by an invader, you’d be sold off as a prize of war… and you wouldn’t necessarily be happy that you were a slave in a foreign country, but there would be the comfort that you wouldn’t be massacred. It’s not a fun choice… but it was the choice thousands of people had to deal with.

 

[midori]

Where does it say that Onesimus stole money when escaping Philemon?

It’s a scholarly hypothesis. You’re familiar with those, right? You run into them when you’re reading commentary. You look at whether it’s a reasonable interpretation or not, and if it is, you absorb it into the back of your head, and if it isn’t, you forget about it.

Ellicott- (18) If he hath wronged thee.–Properly, If he wronged thee, evidently referring to the time of Onesimus’ escape. “If he oweth thee ought” is similarly, in all probability, an allusion to some theft at the same time, couched in a hypothetical form, but implying no doubt as to the fact.

Pulpit - Owes thee anything. As a matter of moral right at the bar of conscience. For in a secular court the slave could be neither debtor nor creditor, properly speaking, as against his master. This offence was probably embezzlement or purloining while in service. A, C, D*, F, G, א read (elloga), reckon it to me.

Gill’s Exposition - or oweth thee ought; by embezzling his master’s goods, robbing him of his money, and running away from his service:

Jamieson-Faussett-Brown - 18. Greek, “But it (thou art not inclined to ‘receive him’ because) he hath wronged thee”; a milder term than “robbed thee.” Onesimus seems to have confessed some such act to Paul.

Matthew-Henry- 1:15-22 When we speak of the nature of any sin or offence against God, the evil of it is not to be lessened; but in a penitent sinner, as God covers it, so must we. Such changed characters often become a blessing to all among whom they reside. Christianity does not do away our duties to others, but directs to the right doing of them. True penitents will be open in owning their faults, as doubtless Onesimus had been to Paul, upon his being awakened and brought to repentance; especially in cases of injury done to others. The communion of saints does not destroy distinction of property. This passage is an instance of that being imputed to one, which is contracted by another; and of one becoming answerable for another, by a voluntary engagement, that he might be freed from the punishment due to his crimes, according to the doctrine that Christ of his own will bore the punishment of our sins, that we might receive the reward of his righteousness.

 

[midori]

The world could use more Harriet Tubmans and less Pauls in this regard.

For sure! But you can’t have your Harriet Tubmans in history until you get your Pauls to get your foundation work done, so that the Harriet Tubmans have a context in which to operate.

Suppose you lived in the ancient world. Suppose you had enough money to live on, and then a little extra. Would you go through your neighbors, and pay off their debts for them? What would be your motivation to do that? You’d have no motivation, because their debt is their business, not yours. If they got in over their heads and borrowed more than they owed, they had to deal with the consequences.

Now, look at today. We have charity-towards-our-neighbor as being a solid foundational principle of Christianity. If you have extra money, do you help your neighbors out by paying down their credit card debt? Contributing towards their rent if they’re facing eviction? Helping them buy a car they’re not capable of affording themselves so that they can have a better job, but they can’t afford rent + a car payment on their current wages, and they can’t get a better job without a car? If not— why not? Is it because their budget is their business?

It’s the same sort of thought process in the ancient world. Which is why the Harriet Tubmans didn’t exist back then… just like there aren’t a whole lot of angels out there who will pay your credit card debt on your behalf nowadays.

 

[midori]

One common fiction pro-slavery Christians state is the difference between Biblical slavery and so-called “chattel slavery”. Replace “Philemon” and “Onesimus” with “19th century slaveowner” and “19th centruy slave”. It’s unpalatable to ignore one set of suffering and endorse the other.

So you’re seriously saying you have no ability to distinguish between “generational, racial-based slavery” and an economic condition that was frequently temporary? That you’re not able to tell the difference between the Greek slave serving as a land steward, the Egyptian slave serving as a scribe, and the 19th c. slave working in the cotton fields? Yes, there were certainly ancient slaves who worked in the fields as well. But the point is, I’m recognizing that slavery was a spectrum of society. And there were lots of ways to fall into it. And there were ways to get out of it. Unlike modern slavery.

But I’ll also tell you— even though slavery today is technically abolished, there are still people around us today who, even though technically free, are even less free than slaves. Those are the people I’m concerned about, because those are the ones I can make a difference with. In addition, you do realize that there’s an estimated 46 million slaves on the planet at this moment? Use your energy to make a difference with them.

 

[pocaracas]

All right, I know the answer. The Bible reports the facts. That does not mean it approves of the reported facts.

That forgets about the start of the bible, doesn’t it?
Adam and Eve are created, put in a garden, have direct contact with the creator and are expelled for knowing too much… or something like that.
Their offspring go on to produce all the population on Earth.
Time goes by, almost everyone forgets about this god fellow and start enslaving their… cousins(?)
Looking at the genealogies, there weren’t that many generations for them to be much different than cousins, was there?

Anyway, by then the deed was done and the god-inspired work decided to codify how to lawfully address the slaves.
And they didn’t just forget about god, they made up other gods. This was a much worse crime than slavery, considering how it made it into the main 10 laws.

bah… all the story is mostly an attempt at codifying the society in existence at that time and place.
The Hebrew priesthood adopted those rules into their holy text probably because the people obeyed them and they were a bit more permanent than the rulers.
It was not a bad thing, for the time, as I imagine it brought some stability to the law of the land.

The unbelievable thing is that people nowadays still accept that book as “divine inspiration”.