Biblical Slavery - How Could A Loving God Condone It?

[Maximilian]

Wrong. You ignored my point about mine in my first reply then babble citations with no link to the biblical context. Try again son

The only thing wrong with me is you . . . talking to me. . .

 

[sooda]

Slavery in Judaism - Jewish Virtual Library

Jewish Concepts: Slavery. The Hebrew term for slave, eved, is a direct derivation from the Hebrew verb la'avöd ("to work"), thus, the slave in Jewish law is really only a worker or servant. The eved differs from the hired worker ( sakhir) in three respects: he receives no wages for his work; he is a member of his master's household; and,...

Slavery in Judaism

 

[Augustus]

Because scripture was used to employ oppression and suffering. The Bible was very much a part in the construction of various societies and used to implement European interests.

The following is to help you and others that have no academic knowledge on the Quranic language nor the context of its verses so this is a simple article to help you:

Why are you so forgiving to Islamic slavery? Seems a bit inconsistent that you often go out of your way to mitigate it and paint it as more benevolent than it actually was.

In fact, slavery was never endorsed by Islamic texts; rather it was something inherited from pre-Islamic cultures (pre-600s) that needed to be voluntarily and gradually weeded out of society through manumission, which was highly encouraged (Chapters 24:32-33 & 16:71). Islamic texts list a plethora of avenues to free slaves, as it was seen as a highly virtuous act. It’s difficult to find any references on how to make slaves out of people; rather the focus is always on ending slavery."

Freeing slaves was virtuous in many cultures, that doesn't mean they were really abolitionists in waiting.

To say slavery was not endorsed by Islam is the most gross form of historical revisionism imaginable. Prisoners of war were war booty granted to believers by God and were their rightful reward, this was the orthodox position.

With a progressive interpretation of Islamic Law, you could make a case that ending slavery would be desirable, but pretending that this was the 7th C normative perspective is somewhat far fetched.

Even many modern Islamic arguments on slavery rely on the fact that there is no Caliph to legitimise jihad, so there are no legitimate slaves anymore. Not that slavery is always wrong and morally repugnant.

 

[sooda]

Why are you so forgiving to Islamic slavery? Seems a bit inconsistent that you often go out of your way to mitigate it and paint it as more benevolent than it actually was.



Freeing slaves was virtuous in many cultures, that doesn't mean they were really abolitionists in waiting.

To say slavery was not endorsed by Islam is the most gross form of historical revisionism imaginable. Prisoners of war were war booty granted to believers by God and were their rightful reward, this was the orthodox position.

With a progressive interpretation of Islamic Law, you could make a case that ending slavery would be desirable, but pretending that this was the 7th C normative perspective is somewhat far fetched.

Even many modern Islamic arguments on slavery rely on the fact that there is no Caliph to legitimise jihad, so there are no legitimate slaves anymore. Not that slavery is always wrong and morally repugnant.

Jesus didn't forbid slavery either.. but Islam is very specific about the treatment of slaves and the obligations of fathers to offspring born of slave women.

When I was a kid we had a slave who worked for us as a houseboy. His name was Mubarak and he was from Sudan. In 1952 Ibn Saud died and ended slavery.. meaning all slaves were freed.. with a caveat that the slaves had a ten year window if they chose to stay with their masters to earn money for their futures.

Mubarak was earning money to put away for the time he would be free.

 

[Epic Beard Man]

Why are you so forgiving to Islamic slavery? Seems a bit inconsistent that you often go out of your way to mitigate it and paint it as more benevolent than it actually was.

There is no such thing as "Islamic slavery" and no, I'm not giving passes to Arabs who indulged in slave trading. I never gave a pass.

 

[dybmh]

Slavery in Judaism - Jewish Virtual Library

Jewish Concepts: Slavery. The Hebrew term for slave, eved, is a direct derivation from the Hebrew verb la'avöd ("to work"), thus, the slave in Jewish law is really only a worker or servant. The eved differs from the hired worker ( sakhir) in three respects: he receives no wages for his work; he is a member of his master's household; and,...

Slavery in Judaism

Bingo! Going back to the Hebrew... Point of fact: Both Noah and King David are described as an "eved". Neither Noah nor King David were slaves.

The nation of Israel was born from the exodus of harsh slavery. It's hard to believe because of all the detailed rules, but personal freedom is a very important value in Judaism.

 

[Augustus]

There is no such thing as "Islamic slavery"

"Slavery in Islamic societies and as justified in Islamic law and cultures" if it bypasses your need to be purposely obtuse and pedantic.

and no, I'm not giving passes to Arabs who indulged in slave trading. I never gave a pass.

Never said 'pass', just that you just are go out of your way to mitigate it when compared to slavery practiced by Christians/Europeans, especially in regard to religious justification (despite there being far mores substantial justifications in Islamic scriptures).

What you just approvingly quoted to 'educate' people would be like saying the views of the Evangelical Christian abolitionist movement were the only legitimate Christian position on slavery and anyone who said otherwise was just an ignorant bigot.

 

[Augustus]

Jesus didn't forbid slavery either.. but Islam is very specific about the treatment of slaves and the obligations of fathers to offspring born of slave women.

Slavery has been ubiquitous throughout human society and has taken many forms. Some slaves even achieved great power and wealth, others suffered terribly. It is a complex issue and historical ways of thinking were very different to modern ones.

In discussion like these it tends to become a point scoring issue where people cherry-pick what they like to show how much better their 'side' is compared to others who were the real baddies.

As such it is usually about their present identity than the realities of the past.

 

[sooda]

"Slavery in Islamic societies and as justified in Islamic law and cultures" if it bypasses your need to be purposely obtuse and pedantic.



Never said 'pass', just that you just are go out of your way to mitigate it when compared to slavery practiced by Christians/Europeans, especially in regard to religious justification (despite there being far mores substantial justifications in Islamic scriptures).

What you just approvingly quoted to 'educate' people would be like saying the views of the Evangelical Christian abolitionist movement were the only legitimate Christian position on slavery and anyone who said otherwise was just an ignorant bigot.

Slavery in the New World was nothing like slavery in the Arab world. Perhaps because they couldn't feed large numbers of slaves nor did they have huge plantations that required lots of laborers

 

[Epic Beard Man]

"Never said 'pass'.

I know you didn't that's a phrase I use.

just that you just are go out of your way to mitigate it when compared to slavery practiced by Christians/Europeans, especially in regard to religious justification.

Because I'm an American and discussions in relation to slavery I comment on has to do with what goes on here in the United States. As much as I would like to talk about slavery and the African Diaspora, my mentioning of the colonial European propagation of slavery is largely done to connect its influences here and how it affects marginalized groups here, a group to which I belong.

 

[dybmh]

How? The fundamental message of the Bible is the sanctification of God's name, Jehovah, along with the vindication of his sovereignty. Everything, everything in its pages centres around this basic truth. (Matthew 6:9)

Your comments in this thread regarding Islam and Catholism are expressly discouraged by the verses i provided.

However, you have your own list of verses which you claim support your comments in this thread.

Therefore you are cherry picking verses that support your comments and you are ignoring the verses that oppose your comments.

If you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, then the verses i provided and the verses you provided are both right.

Regarding Sanctification of God's name. I think your comments drag God's name right into the gutter.

 

[Shad]

Slavery in the New World was nothing like slavery in the Arab world. Perhaps because they couldn't feed large numbers of slaves nor did they have huge plantations that required lots of laborers

The Ottomans enslaved millions and was a hub for the slave trade between North and South

 

[BilliardsBall]

Spiritual blindness? Lol, what on earth is that? The contrary of natural hallucinations?

Is that the new defense against God indulging in slavery and genocide in the Bible? Running out of arguments, arent we?

Ciao

- viole

Your statement is moot, God does neither in the Bible.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

No kidnapping means no people to sell as forced labor means no slavery.

No kidnapping would mean no kidnapping, not no slavery. if you wanted a slave, you didn't need to go kidnap one yourself. You could buy one, perhaps from a neighbor, or from professional slavers. They might be kidnappers, but you aren't.

Besides, kidnapping seems pretty commonplace in the scriptures - you know, spoils of war and all of that. Look at Deuteronomy 21, which explains the proper treatment of captives: "When you go out to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, and you take them captive ..."

Numbers 30 tells us, "All their cities in the places where they lived, and all their encampments, they burned with fire, and took all the spoil and all the plunder, both of man and of beast. Then they brought the captives and the plunder and the spoil to Moses, and to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the people of Israel, at the camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho"

That sounds like kidnapping to me.

And carrying away any individual against their will was kidnapping which was strictly proscribed in ancient Israel under pain of death.

Do you suppose that the soldiers that captured and removed the people in the scriptures above were executed for it, perhaps by Moses or Eleazar? I don't.

The reality of life then wasn't the sanitized vision you offer, where nobody is kidnapped and nobody is enslaved. It still isn't now. I think that that is generally understood by all except those with a reason to not understand it.

All your assertions betray your particular mindset, your presumptions as to what you feel slavery to be, the way you imagine these were dealt with as well as what you feel slaves were thought of as by their society.

And you don't think that this applies to you?

You offer a sanitized version of slavery that removes the slavery - ."your presumptions as to what you feel slavery to be." You continue to ignore actual slavery, which is not voluntary servitude. It is the treatment of human beings as property against their wills, stripping them of their freedom and dignity, stealing their labor, physically and psychologically abusing them, and selling off their families if the slaver so chooses. That's slavery, and that is what is not forbidden in the Christian Bible, which many here have identified for you as a major moral failing.

I've mentioned elsewhere that if one wants to understand the Bible, one needs to go to an unbeliever for an unwashed evaluation. You, a true believer, simply cannot allow the fact to stand that the god you worship and consider absolutely good would ban eating shellfish and mixing fabrics, but not owning people. I have no such need. I don't have any incentive to sanitize the scriptures and restore its god's reputation, so it's easy for me to tell you that the scriptures failed on this one.

This moral failure by modern standards is best understood as snapshot in time in man's moral development, when such ideas as forbidding slavery were in their infancy, and that no god had any hand in that, especially not a god that we are told is and always has been morally perfect. We simply don't find evidence of this god or its perfect, absolute, timeless moral code. This chapter in man's moral evolution has his fingerprints all over it.

The fundamental message of the Bible is the sanctification of God's name, Jehovah, along with the vindication of his sovereignty.

Disagree. The fundamental message of the Bible is to submit and obey. That's what we see over and over. God has commanded you, Disobedience is rebellion and punished with suffering. Obedience is rewarded with everlasting ecstasy. You must repent. The rest is just trimming. Sure, love one another and help the needy, but that won't save you from the everlasting flame. Only obedience and submission to the perceived will of God can do that.

One of the commonest criticisms of atheists by the faithful is that we are in rebellion against God so that we can live sinful lives in defiance of God's law. We are chastised for substituting our own wills for that which the Bible orders, often being told that we are trying to be gods ourselves. Our ordinary, peaceful, well-meaning lives of working to provide for our families and make our communities and the world a slightly better place is described in terms of defiance. That gives you a pretty good idea of what they see the central message of Christianity to be.

Have you seen how scripture depicts unbelief and unbelievers? It's pretty unflattering. We're grouped in there with adulterers and whoremongers for the crime of unbelief. None of us is to be trusted, none of us does good ever.

Accordingly, consider your fatuous claims dismissed.

I assume that you will dismiss not just unsupported claims, but also compelling arguments whenever they contradict your faith-based beliefs. You didn't arrive at those positions via reason applied to evidence, and you can't be budged from them by it. Typically, a faith-based confirmation bias is created to protect the believer from reality that contradicts his faith-based belief. Consider how you are handling the issue of biblical slavery. You've decided by faith that it didn't occur, and nothing can move you from that.

Ask yourself, if you are mistaken about slavery, what could any of us provide to convince you of it? If you are honest, you will recognize that nothing can do that, because even incontrovertable evidence wouldn't be believed by you, like the creationists who keep telling us that they have never seen any evidence in support of evolution - that the whole theory is based on assumption and supposition. Are they blind? No. They're looking through a faith-based confirmation bias, which is why it's also pointless bringing such people more than just what is believed.

For that reason, the reason and evidence based thinker making an existential claim has no burden of proof with a faith-based thinker, since convincing another person requires that they decide what is true about the world using reason applied to evidence, and make a good faith effort to understand the argument presented. If that's not how you decide what is true, there is no value in making the argument, and therefore no duty to do so.

I provided you my opinion about the life of Jesus as described in the gospels. That is sufficient. I don't believe that the supernatural events ascribed to Jesus actually occurred, making that material mythological. I called it that, you challenged me on the claim, I merely repeated it, and you dismissed the claim for lack of an attendant evidence or argument. I'm good with that.

This is not to say that all of your thinking is faith-based and immune to reason and evidence, or that such an approach can never be successful with you - just where you believe by faith. What's your position on anthropogenic global warming? If you accept that it is a real thing, you probably came to that position applying reason to evidence. If we have a difference of opinion about the facts, we have a way to resolve it - dialectic, or the cooperative effort of people to determine what is true by tracing back to their point of departure and trying to identify why they went in different direction with the possibility that one will see a mistake in his own reasoning and correct it.

Or perhaps they parted ways because of different values rather than different facts - perhaps a discussion about abortion - in which case, they might not agree on matters, but they can probably agree that if they held the value that the other holds, they might come to the same conclusion.

But if you see anthropogenic global warming as a Chinese hoax or a scam by Al Gore to make money, you almost certainly came to that position by faith and by ignoring a lot of evidence, so it is pretty pointless to start providing data on sea level, temperature trends, CO2 ppm counts, extreme weather severity and frequency trends, etc.. As I said before, it's not how such people came to their present positions, and it won't budge them from it. If one asks you to prove your point, you won't be able to, and not for lack of evidence that would convince a critical thinker. If I were to mention in passing that the earth is facing significant threats from anthropogenic global warming, and a climate denier asked me to prove it, the sooner I realized the folly of trying, the better.

 

[viole]

Your statement is moot, God does neither in the Bible.

Of course He does. Didn’t He order, among other things, the slaying of entire people, including women and children? And is that is not genocyde?

You moral giver would have a major problem with humans rights associations today, believe me.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

Property? My son, my wife or my father are mine. Does that make them my property?

It depends.

Property (Oxford Dictionaries):

1) A thing or things belonging to someone; possessions collectively.
1.2) propertiesShares or investments in property.
1.3) The right to the possession, use, or disposal of something; ownership.

Which one is applicable to members of your family?

Ciao

- viole

 

[BilliardsBall]

John 8:44 informs us that "there is no truth in [Satan the Devil]. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

Yet "the fear of Jehovah is to hate evil." Because of this "I hate arrogant pride, evil conduct, and perverse speech." -Proverbs 8:13

Even Christ Jesus himself "loved justice and hated evil." (Hebrews 1:9)

So maybe these who insist on preaching this canard do so because they're Satan's ministers? (2 Corinthians 11:14, 15)

By George, I think you've got it? Who is the liar? The antichrist?

 

[viole]

"That which can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Accordingly, consider your fatuous claims dismissed.


Believe it or not, you can start questioning your claims of an absolute, incontrovertible truth. It's all up to you. I admit it's not an easy path but it's possible because many before you have succeeded.

Kidnapping:
to seize and detain or carry away by unlawful force or fraud and often with a demand for ransom (MerrianWebster)

Slavery:
the state of a person who is a chattel Of another (Same source)

Obviously two very different things. You can be kidnpped without being a slave, for instance.

You guys are getting so desperate to need to redefine the meaning of words.

And this does not solve your Leviticus problem that prescribes how to buy slaves, turn them to property, and pass them to kids as a inheritance item.

Honestly, I will be embarassed if someone found out that I hold that book as inspiration of my morals.

Ciao

- viole

 

[Augustus]

Slavery in the New World was nothing like slavery in the Arab world. Perhaps because they couldn't feed large numbers of slaves nor did they have huge plantations that required lots of laborers

Slavery in the New World was certainly different than that in the classical/late antique world, although the lot of a slave in the salt or copper mines might have been somewhat comparable.

There were more domestic slaves and concubines in the Islamic word than industrial ones though.

 

[Maximilian]

That sounds like kidnapping to me.

Only if God Almighty does not have the absolute authority to punish the evil.

Are you challenging his authority?