Slavery

[Malleus]

Hi there, Malleus here, long time reader, first time complainer. I am wondering, is the so called moral high ground that various religious groups seem to take warranted, having just read a section of the ten commandments, I came upon a passage thus:

(1) Then God spoke all these words: (2) I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; (3) you shall have no other gods before me. (4) You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (5) You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, (6) but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. (7) You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. (8) Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. (9) Six days you shall labor and do all your work. (10) But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. (11) For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. (12) Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (13) You shall not murder. (14) You shall not commit adultery. (15) You shall not steal. (16) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. (17) You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
Exodus 20:1-17

As you can see, it first talks of how god has removed the followers from the house of slavery, yet seems to make it clear in the bolded sections that it is fine and dandy to own slaves. Opinions???

Question: Is the Bible a piece of Hate literature proposing double standards and endorsing slavery?

[Righteous Indignation]

God may have given us the ability to communicate with each other (or not, as the case may be), but to say that a word has a set meaning 'now and forever' is simply a denial of the way languages work. For example, the word 'nice' used to mean foolish or trivial, not 'good'. And the reason words change in their definitions has nothing to do with God, it has to do with the conventions on which people in the same language community agree.

'Slave' was originally a word reserved for thralls in Rome who were primarily of Slavic descent. Eventually it came to be used for all manner of servants - including prisoners-of-war, indentured servants, tenant farmers and eventually the victims of the American system of chattel slavery.

Scripture may have been inspired by God, but not to think of a religious text as a product of its times is not to take it seriously. And somehow, I don't think that the people referred to as 'slaves' in the Hebrew scriptures were people of Slavic descent who were held as domestic servants.

Did God not know, when he was writing the Bible or when he was translating it, that we would be having this conversation? Are you saying that God is not talking to us today? That it was not written for us. That the Bible is not ageless. Or, are you saying that the Bible was not written by God? That it is not inerrant.

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."

Exodus 21:20-21 NIV

You say the Bible concept of slavery is different than how we understand it today. Let’s see: they have to do whatever we tell them, we can force them to be circumcised, we can beat them silly, we can sell their children, and we can make them have sex with us. That pretty much fits my definition of slavery. How has the concept of slavery changed?

[MagusYanam]

Did God not know, when he was writing the Bible or when he was translating it, that we would be having this conversation? Are you saying that God is not talking to us today? That it was not written for us. That the Bible is not ageless. Or, are you saying that the Bible was not written by God? That it is not inerrant.

Way to go, Righteous Indignation! While you overstated it a bit, that is exactly what I said. The Bible was not written by God, it was written by the ancient Hebrews, compiled by Jewish priests and debated into its current canon by Greek theologians; as such it is a product of its times and of many generations of writing, translation, interpretation and reinterpretation. My stance is that God inspired Holy Scripture, God did not write it or even dictate it. That doesn't make Holy Scripture any less holy, though.

You say the Bible concept of slavery is different than how we understand it today. Let’s see: they have to do whatever we tell them, we can force them to be circumcised, we can beat them silly, we can sell their children, and we can make them have sex with us. That pretty much fits my definition of slavery. How has the concept of slavery changed?

Back in Hebrew times, a (wo)man might become a slave if s/he committed a crime against a rich family, or if s/he was captured in war. Debt slavery was also common. But the Hebrews had nothing as rapacious or vicious as the chattel slavery practiced by European expansionist powers starting around 1500.

Of course, maltreatment of prisoners-of-war and debt slavery are morally reprehensible, for the reasons you provided. But you have to admit that there is a bit of a level distinction between debt slavery (abhorrent as it is) and kidnapping entire villages, cramming them aboard ships, starving them, beating them and eventually selling them and condemning all of their descendants to a race-based system of slavery.

[Anti-guy]

Huh, I'm surprised noone here knew this... But the use of the word slavery in the Bible really meant no more than the word "employer" used today... Despite situations where they were unwilling working... In extreme cases of slavery such as in Egypt, it was pointed out [obviously]. The word wasn't tainted until... Well you know...

To the above poster, it's obvious it was dictated by someone everlasting, otherwise it would have consistency between the different writters considering their differences in educational backgrounds and life spans. Not to mention copies of the scriptures that were found and compared only differed via grammatical structure.

[McCulloch]

Huh, I'm surprised noone here knew this... But the use of the word slavery in the Bible really meant no more than the word "employer" used today... Despite situations where they were unwilling working... In extreme cases of slavery such as in Egypt, it was pointed out [obviously]. The word wasn't tainted until... Well you know...

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

This is God's perspective on employment!?

[MagusYanam]

To the above poster, it's obvious it was dictated by someone everlasting, otherwise it would have consistency between the different writters considering their differences in educational backgrounds and life spans. Not to mention copies of the scriptures that were found and compared only differed via grammatical structure.

Wait - because the Bible is inconsistent in its grammatical structure (not to mention intensely varying in its author voice, subject matter and style), it had to be dictated by God?

In fact, it remains fairly clear that some books are actually conflations of the works of several different authors. In Genesis, as pretty much all Bible scholars now accept, there are four distinct author voices (at least). In the books of Samuel, it appears that there was both a monarchist voice (one who cheered the coronation of Saul) and an anti-monarchist (one who predicted the monarchy would bring only sorrow upon Israel). I still hold these works to be holy and I still hold that they were inspired by the working of the Holy Spirit upon the authors, but I don't deny that human beings with individual aesthetics and opinions and styles had written these texts. It's part of what adds beauty to Scripture.

That's the way the Hebrew priests who organised the scriptures and the Greek theologians who decided the canon seemed to see it. They were looking for the sign of the Holy Spirit in the writing, something inspiring the writing that was speaking not only to the authors, but through them. It wasn't until the Calvinists 1200 years later that one encountered the ideas of scriptural inerrancy and divine dictation.

In fact, it remains fairly clear that some books are actually conflations of the works of several different authors. In Genesis, as pretty much all Bible scholars now accept, there are four distinct author voices (at least). In the books of Samuel, it appears that there was both a monarchist voice (one who cheered the coronation of Saul) and an anti-monarchist (one who predicted the monarchy would bring only sorrow upon Israel).

[MagusYanam]

Huh, I'm surprised noone here knew this... But the use of the word slavery in the Bible really meant no more than the word "employer" used today... Despite situations where they were unwilling working... In extreme cases of slavery such as in Egypt, it was pointed out [obviously]. The word wasn't tainted until... Well you know...

Well, there does seem to be a little bit of a problem with this thesis, given that Jesus in several parables discussed 'slaves' and 'masters' (or sometimes 'servants' and 'masters'), using Greek terms different from those he used when discussing 'employees' and 'employers'. I don't think the kind of 'slavery' they had back in the day is the kind of slavery we imagine today, but at the same time it's fairly clear that slavery and employment were two different things. (They probably overlapped in some areas, though.)

[Anti-guy]

I never didn't think books weren't written by several people, but you also need take heed to the fact that life spans were considerably longer during that time so people were able to witness more.

Being beat was apart of the culture, I'm assuming. Slaves also were taken care of with food and shelter. And NOT treated like animals. Being beaten is also widely considered a form of dicipline.

Today there is still forms of corruption in the work force such as the issue of part-time labor being used more than full-time to help companies avoid the payment of benefits. Getting away with not giving lunches during 8 hr shifts... These are just two and their not even as serious as others.

Remember kids were to be killed for talking evil of their parents... Today kids run all over their parents with minimum consequences. Alot of things had cultural issues in application, which is why it differs so much today.

[Greatest I Am]

Buitd a demographic pyramid.
Any shape will do. Now lets say it has 10 levels.
Let's say that God sits in the top level,level1
Level 2=the elit
Level 3= the next best
etc
Level 10 we call slaves.
We can play with the names of the levels but theu always exist., are always labeled and are always populated.
We are all in this system together, to create it but also alone in our position within it. We are all slaves within this sysrem in the sense that although we can move within it, we can never get out of it. We are sll traped
We can call those at the bottom slave or working poor or untouchables or whatever you like but no name change changes the fact that those stuck at the bottom are still there and there position is there as long as the pyramid holds it shape.
Plato had the same problem with democracy. Try as he would he could not find a way to end slavery. I'm not sure if he realized that he was a slave within his system
but he chose to die , not seing any think to do to change the statusquo.

We can only conclude from this that although we are in the various levels of the pyramid we are still slaved to it or it falls.

[Righteous Indignation]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Do these words mean nothing? Our forefathers, the brave men of the Continental Congress, risked their very lives by signing onto these words in 1776. Yet, every man signed. I believe there are some here who would have abstained. There are some here who believe that a man can be born a slave by God’s choosing. There are some here that believe that some men have no right to life, liberty or happiness. There are some here who believe it is not our concern if a slave is beaten or raped such is God’s will. I say no; it is not God who creates inequality and injustice; it is man!

[MagusYanam]

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Do these words mean nothing? Our forefathers, the brave men of the Continental Congress, risked their very lives by signing onto these words in 1776. Yet, every man signed. I believe there are some here who would have abstained. There are some here who believe that a man can be born a slave by God’s choosing. There are some here that believe that some men have no right to life, liberty or happiness. There are some here who believe it is not our concern if a slave is beaten or raped such is God’s will. I say no; it is not God who creates inequality and injustice; it is man!

Perhaps some of the men of the Continental Congress did risk their lives in signing it, but not their own slaves, I suppose. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave-owners who perhaps would have been less hypocritical if they had written that 'all white Protestant men of property over the age of twenty-one are created equal', as was the stipulation in the Constitution in its original form. After all, it was Britain which offered any slaves that fought for them their freedom, and Britain had already begun the process of legal abolition of slavery while we were still refusing to talk about the issue.

I agree that God did not create inequality and injustice. God also did not create war and violence and strife among people. Yet people continually abuse each other, exploit each other and exact vengeance in turn. It seems to be a part of the human condition.

I would remind people here that Mosaic law was extremely worldly. The Old Testament wrote 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', but this was seen as radical in an era of tribal warfare, where a slight on one side could escalate into a brutal blood-feud. Likewise, Moses was addressing people who were accustomed to taking and enslaving prisoners. Being rather reformist at this point when his popularity was not so high as it might have been, he acquiesced to the 'common sense' of his time and merely made it so that a family could not kill or maim its prisoners or debt slaves.