Why didn't Jesus outright denounce slavery?

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By roman times? slavery did exist what you say it’s true but there where more types

Men who where captured in battle where turned in to slaves of course the Romans didn’t treat their slaves like 18th century slavers In the Caribbean but still.

A Roman could punish/ torture his slave if he committed and offense or he was witness to something and didn’t tell
 
I like a good alternate history sci fi read as much as the next guy, except for alternate reality Bible exercises.
 
Im sorry yes it was the old testament. Are you saying that we can ignore those? If we can then i dont know why you posted them. I thought you posted them so we could see how we should treat slaves. And im not sure that beating someone is not a sin just as long as they dont die.
 
TheLittleLady said:
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Barnesy:
Yes i read all of them. Ex: 20 “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod and he dies [a]at his hand, he shall [b]be punished.
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Yet, Exodus is not part of the New Testament.
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Yes im sorry. I made a mistake.
 
“What if Jesus did not become Man until 1754 or until 1896 or until 2020” are all alternate history speculation. I do not find those exercises to be useful, because Jesus became Man exactly at the perfect moment in time.
 
TheLittleLady said:
“What if Jesus did not become Man until 1754 or until 1896 or until 2020” are all alternate history speculation. I do not find those exercises to be useful, because Jesus became Man exactly at the perfect moment in time.
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A lot of christians tell me that right and wrong are not relative so if some thing was wrong a long time ago then it will still be wrong today. So if the bible says some thing was ok when it was written then it must be ok today. Thats all im saying. So it doesnt matter when the bible was written. But maybe the old testament doesnt count.
 
Are you an Atheist? 💖
If so, from the Atheist world view what makes something wrong?

Just because God allowed something and had regulations concerning it doesn’t mean it is what God wanted.

Matthew 19:3-9 Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE)​

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’?[a] 6 So they are no longer two but one.[b] What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?” 8 He said to them, “For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity,[c] and marries another, commits adultery; and he who marries a divorced woman, commits adultery.”[d][e]

So God allowed divorce for Israel because of the hardness of their hearts. Perhaps these people wouldn’t have taken too kindly to no slavery.
 
Guest1 said:
Are you an Atheist? 💖
If so, from the Atheist world view what makes something wrong?

Just because God allowed something and had regulations concerning it doesn’t mean it is what God wanted.
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If we found some one was keeping slaves and we said that look you can beat them as long as they dont die then people would say we were condoning what they were doing. I think if we found some one keeping slaves then wed say dont do it. What would you say if he said it was ok in the bible to beat them?? Do you say that it might have been ok then but its not ok now?
 
Barnesy said:
A lot of christians tell me that right and wrong are not relative so if some thing was wrong a long time ago then it will still be wrong today. So if the bible says some thing was ok when it was written then it must be ok today. Thats all im saying. So it doesnt matter when the bible was written. But maybe the old testament doesnt count.
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Not exactly everything. For example the dietary laws in the old Testament.
Christians can eat pork now. 🐖 remember Protestants and Catholics are different. If that’s the Christians you mean. 💖
 
Guest1 said:
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Barnesy:
A lot of christians tell me that right and wrong are not relative so if some thing was wrong a long time ago then it will still be wrong today. So if the bible says some thing was ok when it was written then it must be ok today. Thats all im saying. So it doesnt matter when the bible was written. But maybe the old testament doesnt count.
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Not exactly everything. For example the dietary laws in the old Testament.
Christians can eat pork now. 🐖 remember Protestants and Catholics are different. If that’s the Christians you mean. 💖
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So slavery was ok then but not now.
 
@Phatmass1
Thank you. I’m not trying to dissuade people from believing in God but I feel it’s important that they know what God, the Bible, and the Church says about the topic. Few things sadden me more than when I see others dismiss these passages (or try to make them mean the opposite of what they say) simply because it doesn’t fit what they want the Bible to say.

@Viki63
Yes, there are many things that God was silent on in the Bible that he disapproves of. The problem is slavery is certainly not one of them. If a town gave a series of instructions on how to assault a woman without punishment (e.g. It has to be a foreign woman. It can’t be on a Sunday. You can’t knock out an eye.) then that town isn’t against assaulting women.

And I strongly disagree with your assessment on how God left it to humanity on the details on how to treat one’s neighbor. He said your neighbor could be purchased. They could be bred to serve from birth to death. They could be killed in most cases and beaten at will. The only ambiguity comes from people who are trying to find an out to what God explicitly said.

@repentant2
Assuming that it were possible for even one type of slavery to be good, would you say the slavery as outlined in the Bible is good?

@rfournier103
By “slavery was simply a fact of life in the ancient Roman world” do you mean that neighboring cultures practiced it? If so, does that mean that the Hebrews had no choice to also engage in it. Does Leviticus 20:23 say to not follow the practices of neighboring nations? Did God not give his people certain practices that others didn’t follow (like honoring the Sabbath), and tell them not to do certain things that others did?

@mrsdizzyd
I’m curious what you consider “just slavery”. God the Father says buying a neighbor and making him a slave for life is justifiable. God the Father says that a child born of slave being a slave for life is just. Ge said that a male Hebrew slave who paid off his debt and blackmailed back into slavery to see his family is just. Do you agree?

@TheLittleLady
I mentioned upthread that the choice of terminology is not really an issue. If the word in those passages was some unidentifiable word, we would then look at the context of those passages to understand that word. We know that the term describes a person who could be bought without having committed. He or she could be born into it. He or she could be beaten at will. The person, male or female, adult or child, could be killed. If that person died slowly there was no punishment, and if that person died quickly the punishment for killing him or her was significantly less than killing a free person.

No, unfortunately, the slave/servant question is moot. Whatever term is used describes a practices that should be deplored in all instances and all times.

@Guest1
Apologies to @Barnesy as I don’t want to step on his toes, but the issue here with saying that which is good or bad changes with the times is it’s moral relativism. You can’t go an hour or two on Catholic radio or TV without someone denouncing moral relativism, yet it seems to be the very first defense when the topic of Biblical slavery arises.
 
I have heard the saying that “the debtor is slave to the creditor.” And it is true. During some fairly recent periods of U.S. history, some Europeans sold themselves into indentured servitude to ships’ captains in order to pay for passage to the US. When they arrived at the destination, the captain auctioned those passengers to local businessmen to get reimbursed. The passengers then became indentured servants to their master for a fixed number of years.

We no longer practice that. Or do we? How many students with exorbitant student loans become effectively indentured servants until the loans are paid off?

Of course, everyone knows that our own century is morally superior to all prior centuries.
 
I am in complete agreement with you that indentured servitude was horrid. It certainly doesn’t justify slavery as described in the Bible.

One part of your post where we are on different paths is in comparing owing money on student loans and being an indentured servant (or worse, a slave). An indentured servant was forced to serve at the whim of a particular person as he saw fit. A person with heavy student loan debt (of which I once was one) is not tied to any one person. He or she can acquire the money needed in any way that person sees fit. That means being able to change jobs and not be forced to work for a specific employer. There is no physical assault for not being able to work and there are safety protections in work that were not available for those who were indentured. There are consequences today for not being able to pay any debt (not just student loans), but there are no debtors’ prisons.

So while I wouldn’t want to be a person in the present day with heavy student debt, I’d choose it over being an indentured servant then.

But again this is moral relativism, which Catholics are strongly discourage from engaging in. Slavery is a moral wrong, especially when considering some of the factors I and others have mentioned so far that can harm or degrade slaves.
 
Well, the indentured servants I was referring to entered into their contract of servitude voluntarily for a fixed number of years. At the time, for example in Louisiana, there was not much difference between indentured servants and slaves, except the slave’s term of service had no ending point. The law prohibited serious mistreatment in both cases. However, if an indentured servant became sick or disabled and unable to work, the law allowed his master to sever the contract and set him free, putting him out to manage for himself. But an actual slave who became disabled could not be set free, and the master was obligated to take care of him for life.

An interesting book detailing some actual instances of this is the book “The Lost German Slave Girl,” by John Bailey.

As for student loans, they cannot generally be discharged in bankruptcy, and they become your master for a certain number of years.
 
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Again, I agree that indentured servitude was horrible. Do you believe this is pertinent to the topic at hand, Jesus not denouncing slavery in the Bible? Remember that for what flaws man has God in his persons does not have that excuse.

When was God planning on telling people that slavery was wrong (after telling people that it could be done without punishment)? God was crystal clear that not honoring the Sabbath was wrong, yet he was fine to let the last words he spoke on slavery to be approving of it.

And as I said in my last post, having student loans is day and night compared to indentured servitude or to slavery as described in the Bible. It’s not even remotely close.
 
From a purely rationalist perspective, negative questions like “why didn’t” are unanswerable because they rely on arguments from absence.

These arguments are fallacious unless you can demonstrate a limited answer set and eliminate all possibilities except for one. For example;

This basket contains fruit
There are either apples or oranges in the basket
There are no apples.
Thus we exclude apples to find that the basket contains oranges.

To your original question on Jesus and slavery, we can’t do that.

To make the water even more muddy, I would argue that Jesus of Nazareth accepted slavery as a societal institution. But that’s another thread.
 
Apparently Jesus’ mission was not to cure every existing or potential social ill, but to offer himself as a sacrifice that we might obtain eternal life.
 
JimG said:
At the time, for example in Louisiana, there was not much difference between indentured servants and slaves, except the slave’s term of service had no ending point.
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Did you say not much difference?? If one of them meant you had to work for a few years and the other meant that you had to work until you died then i dont see that any one can compare each of those two at all. Do you know that indentured meant that you got a wage or some benefit like paying some money you owed?? Slaves didnt get any of that. And you said that slaves are not much different?? And your wife is a slave and if you have children then they are slaves! Do servants have to give their children to the people they work for??
 
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