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Source: (consider it) Thread: Kerygmania: The Bible and 'slavery'
cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
The answer is simple: because it is the best judgement of the majority of people (lawmakers, voters) that this particular evil cannot be fully eliminated from this society at this particular point in time. It's not that we don't want to; it's that we genuinely believe it unworkable at this time. So we regulate tobacco, but do not utterly ban it. Yet.

The American experience of Prohibition is another example. There the attempt was actually made to outlaw alcohol with the goal of removing the evils of alcoholism, drunkenness, etc. We all know how that turned out. As a result, we now regulate alcohol use but we do not ban it completely.

The problem with this argument is that blasphemy, adultery, converting your neighbours ass are no more amenable to being eliminated than slave ownership, yet they get a place.
Yes. But then there's a whole boatload of other things that are left untouched in the OT (patriarchy, driving out indigenous peoples, nationalism). Slavery shares a rightful place among them.

I think at the very least we have to say that biblical revelation is progressive. There are things that are allowed early on which are later condemned. It would have been nice to have been shown the entire playbook in the very beginning, but for whatever reason, that doesn't seem to be the way God works. Revelation unfolds over time. (Which of course makes room for the argument that revelation is still unfolding, which may impact some dead horse discussions...)

I may have to turn in my evangelical card for saying this, but I think there's some validity in saying as a general rubric that the the closer you get to God's ultimate self-revelation in Jesus (the incarnation) the more reliable or at least clear the biblical revelation becomes. Which makes a sort of "red letter Bible" sort of argument, but there you have it. Which is relevant here, since as mentioned before, the OT seems much more problematic than the NT on the issue of slavery.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
One of the things that struck me watching that video was the complete lack of anyone who wasn't both white and male. This seems remarkably stunted, particularly in a discussion about slavery and exploitation.

Quite possibly also the majority of the translators in that session were trained in the slipstream of the post-war liberation philosophies that permeated the academies – and seminaries – of our late modern epoch. There may have been an increased sensitivity to black history and a desire to front up about it.
That seems unlikely. People with "an increased sensitivity to black history" usually don't hold all-white conferences.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Lev. 25 is a key passage in the discussion. I couldn't cover it all off in my last post, but I was intrigued by the way the author laid out the eved line in v.39. You'll probably have seen that it is one of those places where the author has to qualify eved. Presumably using just that one term in the sentence wouldn't suffice for the concept the author wanted to get across. It's a strange construction. We have the verbal form (avad) and then the nominal twice, in construct. In effect, the author hits us with eved and its cognates in machine gun fashion (לֹא־תַעֲבֹד בּוֹ עֲבֹדַת עָבֶד).

I agree with you that this not mere 'work' to which a reference is being made. It's something stronger. But 'slave'? The difficulty is that there are instances of eved / avad in the texts that refer to senior officials in a country – without qualification.

Yes, it's like the same word can have different meanings depending on context! This seems to be both a) true for virtually all known forms of human language and b) the opposite of your claim that the every word has only one meaning and should be translated identically in all cases.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Perhaps here we might even have something that is stronger than 'slave'. “You shall not 'work' him with 'worker's work'” in a sense that he is not be dehumanised, he is not a worker for work's sake. Then we have the requirement that he be treated on a par with those who are remunerated.

That seems a torturous way to get out of an obvious redundancy that only occurs because of your insistence that all words have only one meaning. It also seems pretty dehumanizing to treat workers like monetary sums, which would seem to be what the passage is instructing if we go by your translation and exegesis. "Don't work your workers with worker's work, work them with money work." Which seems an incredibly torturous way to get around the obvious implication that there are paid and unpaid worker, and "unpaid workers" typically means "slaves".

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
On the foreigners in vv.44ff, again I would go to the two factors playing out here: firstly the social set up at the time based around the covenant worldview, and secondly the place of Israel as God's possession surrounded by nations in rebellion to God.

For the former we have the responsibilities associated with the 'Father's House', where the senior male (usually was male – but not always) had a responsibility to protect whoever resided under his wing.

This seems like the usual self-justification we always hear from slave owners and their apologists about how enslavement is really beneficial to the enslaved and a form of exploitation at all. Another classic of the genre:

quote:
We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

That's from Texas' "Declaration of the Causes of Secession", and yes, the italicized bits were emphasized in the original. At any rate, it's a commonplace conceit among slaveholders that slavery is actually beneficial to the enslaved so the assertion that senior males were "providing protection" rather than "benefiting from free labor" needs to be taken with a pillar of salt.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
The latter covers the approach taken by Israel's higher law courts when faced with the legal question of the status of those not from the community, but who were active in the community. Verse 44 refers generally to the other nations (the goyim) round about – workers and handmaids (who can also be free workers according to other texts in the bible), but vv.46-46 refer to a different class, the aliens (garim) who are displaced from the other nations and dependent on protection form Israelites. That probably explains the fact that they more permanent members of a 'Father's House' and to be considered as inheritance (i.e., not to be ejected just because a specific 'Father' dies – v.46 begins with the Hitpael perfect form of the verb nahal, the responsibility must transcend a generation).

We're not talking about voluntary immigrants or refugees. The passage clearly refers to buying foreigners. In other words, commercial slavery.

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
The problem with this argument is that blasphemy, adultery, converting your neighbours ass are no more amenable to being eliminated than slave ownership, yet they get a place.

Yes. But then there's a whole boatload of other things that are left untouched in the OT (patriarchy, driving out indigenous peoples, nationalism). Slavery shares a rightful place among them.
Are we talking about the same Old Testament? The OT I'm familiar with not only touches on patriarchy, driving out indigenous people, and nationalism, it endorses all three.

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Nick Tamen

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
What should we make of Paul's famous egalitarian “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” saying (Gal. 3:28, see also Col. 3:11)? I see this in contrast to the Roman Laws Paul's audiences were all too aware of. In Christ there was no Jew or Greek – compared to Rome where citizenship counted for everything. There was no slave or free – whereas in Rome there plainly were. No male or female – but obviously Roman men had the upper hand.

Where did Paul get this extraordinary principle from? I'd argue that he got it from the Jewish scriptures, the place he pulled so much backing for his teaching. Genesis 1-2 was a prime place to start with, providing as it does the principle of a common responsibility for man and woman to 'work' or 'steward' the land on God's behalf.

I think there may be additional background for what Paul says here—the three barakhot the Talmud says should be said on arising in the morning: "Blessed are you, O Lord God, Ruler of the Universe, who has not made me a gentile . . . who has not made me a slave . . . who has not made me a woman." Granted, the Talmud only dates from the second century C.E., but earlier versions of these barakhot had been floating around the Greek and Near Eastern world for centuries prior than.

This connection doesn't ignore understandings of slavery in the Roman Empire, or course. But it may give context to what Paul was saying, and to what he was countering.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
We're not talking about voluntary immigrants or refugees. The passage clearly refers to buying foreigners. In other words, commercial slavery.

It says acquiring, not buying. The usual method of acquiring slaves from among foreigners was raiding (which is why the word often translated 'kidnapper' in various NT naughty lists is probably being used to mean 'slave-trader'). On the other hand, when it says you may acquire slaves from among foreigners living among you, it probably means debt-slavery.
Not that raiding for slaves is especially more ethical than buying them, of course. And indeed, the passage might be referring to commercial trading. But we don't know; if we think we know it's because we're making assumptions about what we think the institution referred to is.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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cliffdweller
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Jack o' the Green:
The problem with this argument is that blasphemy, adultery, converting your neighbours ass are no more amenable to being eliminated than slave ownership, yet they get a place.

Yes. But then there's a whole boatload of other things that are left untouched in the OT (patriarchy, driving out indigenous peoples, nationalism). Slavery shares a rightful place among them.
Are we talking about the same Old Testament? The OT I'm familiar with not only touches on patriarchy, driving out indigenous people, and nationalism, it endorses all three.
Sorry for the confusing wording. In the context (responding to Jack's statement) I meant these are things present in the culture which were left "untouched" (i.e. not condemned) as opposed to the things Jack mentioned that were.

(fyi re Jack's post: I think the OT condemns coveting your neighbor's ass. Converting your neighbor's ass is perfectly acceptable).

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
People with "an increased sensitivity to black history" usually don't hold all-white conferences.

You can trust theologians to buck that trend.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
...your claim that the every word has only one meaning and should be translated identically in all cases.

I haven't argued that only one word should be used in a 1:1 relationship when translating a passage; I've argued that the English word 'slave' risks:
(a) a failure to do justice to the Hebrew / Aramaic (and Greek, for that matter) in the host language;
(b) an unconscious bias in some modern readers who read-in connotations that apply from a different context.

You need to explain why the authors qualify the eved word set so often when they want to refer to anything other than mere 'work'. That usage is telling.

My point is that in order to mitigate the risks, it is worth removing the risky word and replacing it with something else until two things happen:
(1) the context is investigated, so that a better mapping exercise can be performed between the host and receptor languages
(2) the issue of mis-mapped connotations can be addressed. This may mean clothing the risky word in the swaddling clothes of footnotes to explain its meaning in context, or it may mean ditching it until times and connotations changes.

To take Texas' "Declaration of the Causes of Secession" as applicable to the conditions of the ancient near east would be an example of the reading-in against which I am warning. The social conditions (and worldview) of the one context are different from the other. Just how would the typical white Texan have responded to a slave owner arming his slaves (as Abraham did with his avadim), or to a black man being appointed to a senior role in the state government (along the lines of Joseph or Pharaoh's officials), or to a runaway slave being protected and shielded from his owner (as the Jewish Law provided for)?

This just goes to show how necessary it is to justify each and every instance of such a word as 'slave' before it is used. It carries too many connotations and it leads to anachronisms.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
..."unpaid workers" typically means "slaves".

You will need to define “pay” carefully here. Protection in that environment includes room and board, and protection from creditors. We are talking about a duty of care in a wider sense, not a simple passing of coins at the end of a working day. It sounds as though you are promoting a view that these workers should be offloaded from the protecting environment, which would mean they are no longer able to survive. That's the implication of not treating them as well as those who were hired workers.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The passage clearly refers to buying foreigners. In other words, commercial slavery.

Possibly, but I'm not convinced. It doesn't clearly refer to buying; the term can refer to redeeming, or simply acquiring, without the specifics of the background to the acquisition. Certainly the LXX translators understood the term in the sense of the verb 'acquire' (κτάομαι) rather than 'buy' (ἀγοράζω). Given the scope of the legal judgements that are set out in Lev 25, the more likely reading is not buying as though one had gone to the shops to transact for meat, but acquiring where the background details of the case are not given, but where the judicial context clearly refers to the application of the Sabbath principle and rights of redemption. We're not on the same turf as 'commercial' in the sense that I think you mean.

[x-posted with Dafyd re: that last point]

[ 07. March 2016, 20:34: Message edited by: Nigel M ]

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
But we don't know; if we think we know it's because we're making assumptions about what we think the institution referred to is.

Educated assumptions, though. It is taking typical conditions of slavery at the time and applying them to the Hebrews and there is nothing to suggest that it doesn't fit.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Educated assumptions...

Of course assumptions should always be tested, which is what I am doing.

I did a quick scan of the literature and discovered that a few reference works kept cropping up in bibliographies. One of the earliest people to be engaged with is Isaac Mendelsohn, formerly Professor of Semitic Languages at Columbia University in New York. He had been publishing articles during the 1930s and 40s about slavery in the ancient near east and eventually brought his findings together into a book: Slavery In The Ancient Near East: A Comparative Study Of Slavery In Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, And Palestine From Middle Of The Third Millennium To The End Of The First Millennium (Oxford University Press, 1949). A dry run of that book appeared in condensed form in an article published in The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Dec. 1946), pp.74-88.

Dafyd pointed out a couple of times above that 'slavery' existed along a continuum, or spectrum, of social conditions. Mendelsohn's works demonstrate the point. He drew on the products of the ancient near east (not just the Jewish scriptures) and made the following classification: Prisoners of War, Foreign Slaves, Exposure of Infants and Kidnapping of Minors, Sale of Minors, Self-Sale, Adoption of Freeborn Children, Insolvency. I think both Dafyd and I could add to this list.

Given the prevalence of Mendelsohn's work in the bibliographies, I can't help but wonder if his work was seminal in seeding thoughts in the minds of students who would one day become the scholars tasked with translating the bible that the world needed to have the word 'slave' brought more to its attention in Versions (and not just in the English language, either).

I am pleased to report that in recent years a more nuanced approach is being taken to the issue of 'slavery'. Work has been done on the cultural nature of the “House” in near eastern society – that fundamental protective area of stewardship from the "Father's House" upwards – and how that was viewed in respect of the conditions associated with 'slaves'. The move in scholarship has been away from rigid economic (one 'buys' a 'slave') towards relational conditions. An example of this move in action is here.

This trend leads me to think that scholars engaged in this field will be training the next generation of budding translators, who, in turn, will apply the learning to the next generation of Versions. I predict a falling away of the English term 'slave' in future bibles!

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
But we don't know; if we think we know it's because we're making assumptions about what we think the institution referred to is.

Educated assumptions, though. It is taking typical conditions of slavery at the time and applying them to the Hebrews and there is nothing to suggest that it doesn't fit.
That of course begs a couple of questions.

Looking at the wikipedia entry on Babylonian law, I see one respect in which the Babylonian institution is less onerous than the Torah: Babylonian slaves are allowed to marry free women (and have free children). While that's not explicitly ruled out (as far as I can remember) in the Torah, it doesn't seem to fit with the spirit of the thing.
It seems to me that buying and selling a man who has a free wife and children, and who owns property, including other slaves, in his own right must be a rather more restricted transaction than buying or selling livestock.

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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Educated assumptions...

Of course assumptions should always be tested, which is what I am doing.

Without intending any insult, I do not think you are. How it appears to me is that you are attempting to reconcile a very modern view of Christian morality with the plain words of the bible.
I do not see a theological problem with accepting that not every word in the bible is directed by God and many instances were the opposite view is problematic.

--------------------
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Nigel M
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I'm not sure I have a handle on modern Christian mortality. Rather my concern is to seek the author's meaning in a text first and only after that to sort out morality and indeed any application. This is because I have found that the "plain words" of the bible tend to be English words with modern connotations attached, and that these do not always map to the plain words of the Hebrew / Aramaic / Greek originals.

It's that mismatch between what people think is in the (English or any other language) Bible, and what is really there, that makes something of an important difference to meaning and significance.

The only viable alternative to authorial meaning as a basis for interpretation is to rely on a reader-response variety of reading, but that fails to provide a valid basis for public interpretation and application. One brand of that reader-response reading is mediated unconsciously by the fact that we have texts in translation - English versions of the bible - and it is very easy to associate words therein with concepts from our heritage, worldview, mindsets, and so on. Sometimes it needs a deliberate act to break the dependence on those limits, and my suggestion of removing problem (English) words from a translated text for a while to see what the landscape then looks like is useful in forcing a reliance on the original context for guidance.

An additional advantage of focussing on authorial meaning is that it deals with publicly available data (archaeological, sociological, and linguistic) that anyone could do. It does not rely on viewing the text as inspired, inerrant, infallible, or any other 'in...' word. The text can be studied this way on the same turf by a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, an Agnostic, and anyone who does not see the bible as being directed by God. It's open for debate.

Of course, once that hard work around authorial intention has been done, then the Christian can turn to matters theological to apply the results appropriately. Sometimes that even happens in Kerygmania!

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lilBuddha
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Authorial intent is difficult across millennia.
For one, the record is often more scarce than presented and there is much left out because knowledge is assumed.
So you need to look at the world around a particular culture as well as the culture itself.
From their very own record, the Hebrews showed willingness to do many of the same nasty things everyone else was doing. Why should this issue be different?
Occam's razor shaves even orthodox beards.

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Hallellou, hallellou

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Lamb Chopped
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Oh, no, it doesn't. [Razz] [Snigger]

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Nigel M
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Authorial intention is indeed difficult, I agree. It requires hard work. So why should one discern the intent of the author?

The approach to communication that seeks to identify authorial intent is not accepted by all. A 'weak' form of opposition argues that the distance between then and now in the case of texts like the bible is too great to overcome: the cultural and linguistic differences are massive and an “ugly, broad ditch” (to borrow a phrase from Gotthold Lessing) lies in the way. There is an answer to this criticism, developed by Hans Georg Gadamer, based on the essentially human links we all have to the past through traditions.

A 'strong' form of opposition comes from those who argue that once a communication leaves an author's mouth or pen, it no longer lies in that author's domain or ownership; it passes over into the domain of the hearer or reader (any hearer or reader, not just the original intended audience) and becomes fair game for each and every understanding. On that view, any attempt to search for authorial intent is irrelevant at best, or a power play by those with vested interests at worst.

I think, though, that we need a controlling factor such as authorial intent for two reasons:-

[1] Common sense tells us that the author of a public communication is not content to give up his or her intellectual property rights (a modern analogy) to that communication. Examples abound of people who become irked when another mis-reads their message. A sense of injustice arises and the author feels obliged to correct the mistake. It happens often enough on the Ship! It's understandable; much depends from the author's point of view on being understood in the terms the author intended to be understood. No author likes to be blamed if others do something wrong on the basis of a misinterpretation of his or her words, and I guess that goes for God, too, never mind human authors.

[2] For the group of people commonly called Christians – as with any community operating on the basis of a written text – a form of regulation is needed if the community is to hang together. There is a need to verify interpretations by some method; otherwise, if anything goes, everything will go.

There are a number of contenders for the position of 'controlling factor.' One often argued in some Christian groups is: “I rely on the Holy Spirit to guide me into finding the truth when I read the bible.” Variations on that line include replacing the phrase “Holy Spirit” with “Pastor”, or “Holy Tradition”, or just “my church's tradition”, or “the commentary by [insert name].” “My gut feeling” could be another option here for some.

It's only my own opinion, but presently I find the authorial intention approach to be the best in a less than perfect world, though I am waiting for a better option to come along! Other approaches leave open, it seems to me, a gap in the process: that of validation. It is very difficult to validate an interpretation that relies purely on the claim that “The HS told me so.” More often than not, I would think, this is not an issue. It's usually an individual in the church who draws a benefit from interpreting a message on the basis of Spiritual guidance and this interpretation will apply only to that individual; it has no adverse impact on others in the community. However, there are times when an individual will seek to apply an interpretation that might impact adversely. One may be the leader of a church whose vision is so guided; one may believe that God has a word for another and that this word is binding; or one may, for example, believe on the basis of a biblical reading that blood transfusions are wrong and that the life of another is thereby put at risk. And so on.

Somehow we need a public method of verification (i.e. one that others can test as well). This means in practice suspending (for a time) discussion of what God, as divine author, might have meant / means. The process of validation is not truly public if non-(Christian) believers cannot also participate in that process for fear of the Christian persistently trumping the discussion with the God ace.

Can it be done (recognising an authorial intention)? We are definitely in a better position than our forebears when it comes to putting ourselves in the shoes of an author and audience of a text from the ancient near east. Surprisingly, I think we even better off then the church fathers, many of whom had only Greek philosophical traditions to draw on when it came to reading the Jewish texts. We have the benefit of research into the artefacts from the time, the anthropological insights from sociologists, and the linguistic steers from communication theorists and others.

I would say that the task of interpretation (I'm trying to avoid the 'hermeneutics' word!) is the identification of the purpose a writer (or speaker) had when s/he used the words s/he did in the way s/he used them. This is often equated to 'authorial intention.' It is not trying to get into the skin of the author, attempting to feel his or her psychology at any given point. It is about recognising that communication is an action – performed in the presentation of a text. Again, this is publicly available data and centres on the words in their co-text (the surrounding words) and context (the wider cultural setup that determines communication).

Once the hard work is done, though, one has a strong basis upon which to build the next stage – applying the intention to new situations. One can point back to verifiable, evidence-based, findings and can explain which interpretations are valid and which not. That can save people from acting on bad, or even ugly, interpretations; the sort of interpretations that lead to misguided behaviour.

The simplest answer is not always the best. It may be wrong. In fact, really, the simplest answer is the one the author intended; in the end that avoids assumptions.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I haven't argued that only one word should be used in a 1:1 relationship when translating a passage; I've argued that the English word 'slave' risks:
(a) a failure to do justice to the Hebrew / Aramaic (and Greek, for that matter) in the host language;
(b) an unconscious bias in some modern readers who read-in connotations that apply from a different context.

You need to explain why the authors qualify the eved word set so often when they want to refer to anything other than mere 'work'. That usage is telling.

My point is that in order to mitigate the risks, it is worth removing the risky word and replacing it with something else until two things happen:
(1) the context is investigated, so that a better mapping exercise can be performed between the host and receptor languages
(2) the issue of mis-mapped connotations can be addressed. This may mean clothing the risky word in the swaddling clothes of footnotes to explain its meaning in context, or it may mean ditching it until times and connotations changes.

This seems to be a "principle" that you're only willing to employ sporadically. For example, it could be noted that the institution we call "slavery" in ancient Egypt or Rome has no exact counterpart in any English-speaking slaveholding or slave trading culture. Your semantic argument would seem to hold that we shouldn't say Romans, Egyptians, Babylonians, or any of the other ancient cultures we typically regard as having "slaves" actually employed slavery at all but rather should be described using another, still English, term.

On the other hand I would argue that most people understand that general terms can sometimes cover a wide variety of cases. For example, it confuses precisely no one when Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II are referred to as "Queens", despite the fact that the former was an absolute* monarch and the latter a constitutional one. Likewise most people would get that the term "slave" covers a type of involuntary servitude where the enslaved is owned outright as property, and that the exact specifics such a situation entails may vary depending on time and place.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
To take Texas' "Declaration of the Causes of Secession" as applicable to the conditions of the ancient near east would be an example of the reading-in against which I am warning. The social conditions (and worldview) of the one context are different from the other.

And yet the same self-satisfied smug assertion of the "generosity" of slaveholders is common to both. Compare, for instance:

quote:
Originally posted by The Confederate State of Texas:
[T]he servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations . . .

with

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Protection in that environment includes room and board, and protection from creditors. We are talking about a duty of care in a wider sense, not a simple passing of coins at the end of a working day. It sounds as though you are promoting a view that these workers should be offloaded from the protecting environment, which would mean they are no longer able to survive.

The same general assertion that your slaves are better off enslaved. I'm not sure why we should give more credence to your assertions about a form of slavery you don't practice or have direct experience of than we should give to the Texan slaveholders' assertions of their own benevolence.

It should be noted that virtually every slaveholding system incorporates some kind of "duty of care". The slave is the outright property of her owner, so the owner is responsible for providing food, clothing, shelter, etc. Compare with serfdom, another form of involuntary servitude. Technically a serf is not "owned"; the serf's master simply owns the right to the serf's labor. There are upsides (the serf can marry at will and doesn't have to worry about his family being sold off) and downsides (the serf is responsible for his own food and shelter).

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
You will need to define “pay” carefully here. Protection in that environment includes room and board, and protection from creditors. We are talking about a duty of care in a wider sense, not a simple passing of coins at the end of a working day. It sounds as though you are promoting a view that these workers should be offloaded from the protecting environment, which would mean they are no longer able to survive. That's the implication of not treating them as well as those who were hired workers.

Except that hired workers are actually offloaded with the passing of coins. As indeed are the indentured fellow Israelites to whom the passage instructing treatment.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Given the scope of the legal judgements that are set out in Lev 25, the more likely reading is not buying as though one had gone to the shops to transact for meat, but acquiring where the background details of the case are not given, but where the judicial context clearly refers to the application of the Sabbath principle and rights of redemption. We're not on the same turf as 'commercial' in the sense that I think you mean.

Actually Leviticus 25:44-46 pretty clearly does not refer to "the application of the Sabbath principle and rights of redemption". That was reserved for fellow Israelites serving a fixed term of indenture (Lev 25:39-43). Well, male Israelites anyway. No Year of Jubilee if you're a woman.

At any rate, non-Israelite slaves were slaves for life (or at least Israelites were allowed to make them slaves for life), something Israelites were explicitly forbidden to inflict upon each other.

This was actually a fairly common problem in ancient slaveholding cultures. If human beings have commercial value (slavery) and human beings can run up debts, it fairly quickly occurs to some bright individual that creditors can make good on bad debts by selling off recalcitrant debtors. While this may solve the creditor's immediate problem it's intensely destructive to a culture as a whole to enslave large numbers of previously free citizens. This was the driving force behind the reforms of Solon in Athens, the Sicinius mutiny in Rome, and I suspect it's the background against which the Israelites came up with the system of indenture and Jubilee. The Athenians and Romans simply declared that no Athenian or Roman citizen could be enslaved for debt (or any other reason). The Israelites seem to have come up with a system of "temporary semi-slavery". As described in the OT, it could be thought of as essentially "leasing" a slave for six year. The indentured individual was technically property but the person for whom he worked was more a "lessor" rather than an "owner" and had certain restrictions on how he could treat his leased property.

In all cases these rules and restrictions did not apply to non-[Athenians / Romans / Israelites].

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
A 'strong' form of opposition comes from those who argue that once a communication leaves an author's mouth or pen, it no longer lies in that author's domain or ownership; it passes over into the domain of the hearer or reader (any hearer or reader, not just the original intended audience) and becomes fair game for each and every understanding.

Given that the author(s) of the text in question are long dead, the only access we have to their intent other than reading their words. I'm not sure how you can derive the intent of long dead authors without reading what they wrote, which necessarily requires readers. So how is it possible to avoid parsing authorial intent through reader's understanding?


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*Or close enough.

[ 08. March 2016, 19:42: Message edited by: Crœsos ]

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
For example, it could be noted that the institution we call "slavery" in ancient Egypt or Rome has no exact counterpart in any English-speaking slaveholding or slave trading culture. Your semantic argument would seem to hold that we shouldn't say Romans, Egyptians, Babylonians, or any of the other ancient cultures we typically regard as having "slaves" actually employed slavery at all but rather should be described using another, still English, term.

I would add that in the thus far undisputed chattel slavery of the Americas, some slaves had various amounts of liberty. In pre-US New Orleans, slaves could even have partially separate lives and earn their own monies. They could even buy their own freedom. This was true even in the more restrictive US. Were then they not true slaves?
This is all appears to be sophistry to deny the uncomfortable bits of the bible whilst refraining from allowing other bits being questioned.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Compare with serfdom, another form of involuntary servitude. Technically a serf is not "owned"; the serf's master simply owns the right to the serf's labor. There are upsides (the serf can marry at will and doesn't have to worry about his family being sold off) and downsides (the serf is responsible for his own food and shelter).

So, even though a slave is a slave is a slave, if a slave doesn't have to worry about their family being sold off then they're a serf.
As I argued earlier, the various Biblical laws concerning marriage of slaves imply that as long as the man remains a slave he has no need to worry about his family being sold off without him.

(I am doubtful that serfs universally had the right to marry without the permission of their lords. The right to marry without permission is largely reserved for people (men) who are their own head of household.)

quote:
That was reserved for fellow Israelites serving a fixed term of indenture ). Well, male Israelites anyway. No Year of Jubilee if you're a woman.
Deuteronomy 15:12-17 (well, 17b) states that the conditions of release are equivalent. As does Exodus 21:7-11 if applied to women who don't marry into their master's family. (Not that we regard involuntary contraction of marriage with much favour any more, but I think that was pretty much the lot of any woman slave or free.)

(I write as if Deuteronomy and Exodus are compatible law codes addressed to the same social situation, which of course they may not be.)

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Likewise most people would get that the term "slave" covers a type of involuntary servitude where the enslaved is owned outright as property, and that the exact specifics such a situation entails may vary depending on time and place.

<snip>

Compare with serfdom, another form of involuntary servitude. Technically a serf is not "owned"; the serf's master simply owns the right to the serf's labor. There are upsides (the serf can marry at will and doesn't have to worry about his family being sold off) and downsides (the serf is responsible for his own food and shelter).

So, even though a slave is a slave is a slave, if a slave doesn't have to worry about their family being sold off then they're a serf.
No, a slave is property while a serf is not. That's the key difference between the two different forms of involuntary servitude. A slave's family can be sold off because they are also property. A serf's cannot because neither he nor his family are property.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
As I argued earlier, the various Biblical laws concerning marriage of slaves imply that as long as the man remains a slave he has no need to worry about his family being sold off without him.

That only applies to the form of indenture the Israelites practiced on each other which, in theory at least, seems closer to serfdom than slavery. The outright slaves from foreign nations had no such protections, or at least none mentioned in scripture (coupled with a lot of passages instructing Israelites not to treat their fellow Israelite bondservants the way they treated their slaves).

[ 08. March 2016, 21:09: Message edited by: Crœsos ]

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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
No, a slave is property while a serf is not. That's the key difference between the two different forms of involuntary servitude. A slave's family can be sold off because they are also property. A serf's cannot because neither he nor his family are property.

It would be clearer to say that a serf is not property because he cannot be sold off without his family. This avoids the implication that 'property' is some natural category whose instantiation is invariant across cultures and legal systems (*).

(Incidentally, the plot of Gogol's Dead Souls depends upon the idea that serfs in Russia could be bought and sold. I assume they couldn't be separated from their families.)

quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
As I argued earlier, the various Biblical laws concerning marriage of slaves imply that as long as the man remains a slave he has no need to worry about his family being sold off without him.

That only applies to the form of indenture the Israelites practiced on each other which, in theory at least, seems closer to serfdom than slavery. The outright slaves from foreign nations had no such protections, or at least none mentioned in scripture (coupled with a lot of passages instructing Israelites not to treat their fellow Israelite bondservants the way they treated their slaves).
The problem here is that it requires two distinct institutions, one applying to Israelites and one to foreigners, that are nevertheless referred to by the same word. That makes passages where the difference isn't explicitly stated ambiguous. For example, the Exodus 21:7-11 passage doesn't tell us whether it refers to Israelites or to resident aliens. If there are two distinct institutions then one would expect it to specify whether it applies to bondswomen or to slaves or both.
The conclusion is that there's only one institution, whose Israelite members enjoy additional rights where explicitly stated. The right not to separated from one's family is presumed, not stated.

(*) The protection of which from government taxation might be considered a candidate natural right.

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agingjb
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This may be irrelevant.

I've been looking up various (English) translations of Philemon verse 19 (AV/KJV has: "Not now as a servant, but above a servant,").

"Servant" is used from Wycliffe, Tyndale, KJV, Douay-Rheims, through to RSV;

"Slave is used in many (but by no means all) later translations, including Moffatt, Phillips, Knox, New and Revised English Bible.

I find the change, if not actually significant, worth explaining.

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quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
This may be irrelevant.

I've been looking up various (English) translations of Philemon verse 19 (AV/KJV has: "Not now as a servant, but above a servant,").

"Servant" is used from Wycliffe, Tyndale, KJV, Douay-Rheims, through to RSV;

"Slave is used in many (but by no means all) later translations, including Moffatt, Phillips, Knox, New and Revised English Bible.

I find the change, if not actually significant, worth explaining.

Especially given the context-- where Paul is pleading with Philemon to "release" Onesimus. The fact that he has to make it a request and bring on what reads like a pretty high pressure campaign sure sounds like Onesimus is "bound" in some way. Sounds like slavery to me.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Sounds like slavery to me.

It is bleeding obvious. All argument to the contrary require a stretch, twist and squint to "see".

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agingjb
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So, why "servant" in the 16th Century and "slave" in the 20th? The English word "slave" did exist.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
So, why "servant" in the 16th Century and "slave" in the 20th? The English word "slave" did exist.

For the same reason people here are trying to interpret away slavery in the bible now.
It is at odds with they way they wish to view the bible.

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Consider what happened, between the 16th and the 20th centuries. Slavery moved from being like hailstorms, a vaguely bad thing if it happens to you, to a genuine deluxe sin. Christians could no longer, in conscience, kidnap black people in Africa and ship them to Cuba for profit. Another century or two and they could no longer even keep slaves themselves. Those who insisted on doing so had to spin off into their own denominations (Southern Baptists, Southern Methodists, etc.) to justify themselves. A war was fought.
No quantity of Old Testament quoting or chopping logic allows you, now, to get out of this. When the odd Tea Party member gets up on his hind legs and assures us that black people really preferred to be slaves, the scorn is justly overwhelming.
And that is why the choice of words has changed. Because we as Christians changed.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
So, why "servant" in the 16th Century and "slave" in the 20th? The English word "slave" did exist.

For the same reason people here are trying to interpret away slavery in the bible now.
It is at odds with they way they wish to view the bible.

I am struggling to see why the translators of the King James Bible should have used a euphemism for slavery. The sixteenth century and seventeenth centuries didn't have quite the moral objection to it that we do now.

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lilBuddha
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Slavery has, in most cultures, a negative connotation when applied to oneself or one's own kind.
Regardless the reason for the various translations,* the most reasonable interpretation is that the ancient Hebrews had slaves.
There is nothing to suggest that they had any great moral standard above the norm for their world which would cause them to to refrain.
The wording regarding foreigners certainly seems to indicate slavery. At least without making unrealistic assumptions.
The very fact that they use language to exclude their own emphasises this, not the opposite.
The only problem arises if one insists that every phrase is intended by God to be there. If that is the case, then many, many other contradictions and problems arise.

*IIRC, the King James has quite a number of contested translations, regardless of intent.

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agingjb
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As far as I can see no-one varied the translation "servant" until Moffatt in 1913.

I'm sure that Onesimus was a slave in the sense of the Roman world, and of antiquity generally.

Clearly my question is not regarded as useful here.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
... it confuses precisely no one when Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II are referred to as "Queens", despite the fact that the former was an absolute* monarch and the latter a constitutional one.

People do not confuse the term “Queen” in those two contexts precisely because you have qualified the term (one Queen the 'first', the other the second; one constitutional, one not). You had to do that or the term would not have been understood, or would have remained at a vague high level: a female ruler, but which one? Which type? Good, bad; autocratic or not?

I made the same point about the way the Hebrew authors used the term ebed and its cognates. If it meant anything other than a rather neutral term 'work' or 'stewardship', then it required qualification. I provided a few examples of this, e.g., its use in the paradisical story of the pre-rebellion Eden, the officials of Pharaoh, the apparent reluctance of translators to remain consistent when it came to translating the Hebrew term (if it refers to people in the God-community, then 'servant' would be appropriate, but if it refers to people outside, then OK, that's fine, 'Slave' will do!) and so on. I am willing to trawl trough the entire OT if necessary to further prove the point, but that would take some time.

I appreciate the fact that you are trying to draw parallels between modern justifications for slavery and the environment of the ancient near east and I am not arguing that there was no slavery (understood in the modern sense) in that region (we haven't touched on war booty, for example). What I am saying is that, when the context is investigated, a simple “this” (the modern context) is “that” (the ancient one) does not map. Essentially this is about definition. When a typical modern reader reads the English word 'slave', he or she is likely to pull on the understanding gained in history lessons at school and to do so unconsciously. He or she remembers being told about the slave trade (a UK angle), or the N. American experience. What then happens is the equation: “Ah! 'Slave' = forcible removal against my will from my community, shackles, de-humanising treatment, placement in an entirely different and hostile community, hard work in difficult conditions until I die...”

Which is preferable? To parse authorial intent through that reader's understanding unchecked? Or to let the author speak on his or her own terms? If we let our modern lenses determine our interpretations, then we are simply holding a mirror up in front of the text when we read.

I would agree with you that the Texan experience would not truly reflect a beneficial outcome for those enslaved. As a text, the Declaration probably acts as a veneer, papering over the cracks and hiding the true nature of the experience. However, to superimpose that context without qualification on the experience of avadim (however translated) in the OT is to miss an important factor, one I referred to already, that to ignore the plight of a debtor in Iron Age Israel (and across the near east) is to condemn him to death. Taking that person in under the 'Father's House' arrangement is a difference of quality compared to “forcible removal against my will from my community...”

On the subject of authorial intention and how to go about studying it in the light of the reader, this is one of my favourite subjects and I could wax lyrical about it. Accordingly it might be for another thread, if anyone is interested. This thread has, I think, taken a step in highlighting the issue that caused the debate around authorial intention in the first place: that readers are not infallible, that people do have an investment in texts, and that an approach is therefore needed that secures a return on that investment taking into account the fallibility.

Can I also check now that we only have Leviticus 25:44 left as an argument that the Bible supports slavery in modern terms? Is it conceded that the other texts do not support it? If so, then I will focus on that to show how it does need to be seen in the light of the surrounding co-text dealing with redemption and Sabbath.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
I've been looking up various (English) translations of Philemon verse 19 (AV/KJV has: "Not now as a servant, but above a servant,").

"Servant" is used from Wycliffe, Tyndale, KJV, Douay-Rheims, through to RSV;

"Slave is used in many (but by no means all) later translations, including Moffatt, Phillips, Knox, New and Revised English Bible.

I find the change, if not actually significant, worth explaining.

I agree, it does need explaining. Why have translators shifted their semantic perspective?

The text you quote is useful from my point of view for a couple of reasons:

1. It further demonstrates the shift in language use over recent decades, despite the fact that slavery as an institution was understood and accepted by many for hundreds of years when English bible versions were being produced.

2. It also demonstrates further theologically that for the biblical authors, citizenship of God's Kingdom meant no slavery. People were to be treated as partners, not as dehumanised chattel. The bible does not support or condone slavery.

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lilBuddha
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Why would that be conceded? You are convinced because you wish to be. Were this a court case the preponderance of evidence would support the case that those verses are about slavery. It has less to do with modern interpretation than examining the ancient world for what it was.

ETA: This post was in response to two posts above.
And addressing point 2 of the x-post: Rubbish.

[ 10. March 2016, 07:17: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]

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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
You are convinced because you wish to be.

Snap!
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Were this a court case the preponderance of evidence would support the case that those verses are about slavery.

Show me the evidence that the modern meaning of the term 'slavery' as I defined it is contained in the verses we have been looking at. I have provided counter evidence.

[ 10. March 2016, 07:19: Message edited by: Nigel M ]

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lilBuddha
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Crœsos And I have both posted examples as to why those passages describe slavery and you want to NTS it out of existence. I showed you examples of how Triangle trade slavery could be loose to the point of resembling what is described in the bible. Or is that not modern enough?

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Which brings me back to the question I asked: Is Lev. 25:44 the only text left for your case? I ask it because your arguments appear to rest entirely on that verse.
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lilBuddha
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It is in Deuteronomy as well as Leviticus. Why are you trying to limit it to one verse? Are you going to try to interpretive dance that verse away as well?
Regardless of the creative interpretation or supposed use of one word, it does not explain away the plain description of the text.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It is in Deuteronomy as well as Leviticus. Why are you trying to limit it to one verse? Are you going to try to interpretive dance that verse away as well?
Regardless of the creative interpretation or supposed use of one word, it does not explain away the plain description of the text.

Alright, you've convinced me. The cat is black. Anyone who says the cat is not black must be saying it is white. Talk of shades of grey is just attempting to interpretive dance to the claim that the cat is white, when the plain description is that the cat is not white, that is, black.
Only if someone has ulterior motives could they possibly want to introduce creative interpretation ideas like shades of grey.

(To reiterate previous posts, I do not think the Torah is directly written by God, nor that the institution we are discussing is ethically defensible except in a relative sense.)

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lilBuddha
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I don't think Nigel is arguing the cat is grey, he is arguing that it is a mouse. That what the ancient Hebrews had was likely not as harsh as average modern slavery is very possible.
That it could not be described as slavery does not compute.

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Pooks
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This thread reminded me of a church service that my other half and I attended a long time ago. We had a visiting speaker who came to preach on the topic of the power of the Holy Spirit. He began with the Greek word 'dunamis' which is used to describe the power of the Holy Spirit and told us this is the same word from which we get 'Dynamite'. He then liken the power of the Holy Spirit with the power of dynamite and described the power in a very dramatic fashion including the sound effect "BOOM!" when the dynamite goes off as God speaks and the Spirit works. It was extremely entertaining and I am sure many of us really enjoyed the talk that Sunday morning because there was a bit of back slapping and smiling faces all around afterward.

As my other half and I were on our way home from the church, we started thinking and talking about what was said that morning. We began to wonder, was the preacher right to say that the power of the Holy Spirit is just like the power of dynamite that we have come to know from watching TV, simply because the root of the word was the same? Given his dramatic descriptions of how the Spirit's power manifest itself, I think it was a classic example of a reader reading into a word and giving it meaning that it was never meant to have. Never mind the fact that dynamite as we know it was not known in those parts of the world then, our preacher also never noted the difference in function and nature between the two: that one is sent not only to create, but also to comfort and guide, while the other is made for destruction. In short, there is a complete failure to take into account how the writer might understand that word 'dunamis' and its attributes when he used the word to describe the HS. Just because people later use the word to name something powerful doesn't necessarily make them alike in anyway whatsoever.

I know this has nothing to do with slavery in the Bible and much of the Texas declaration is way over my head, but I think there is a parallel here in terms of how words are used and understood, which is the point that Nigel is trying to make I guess. But this is a tangent, so I'll be quiet now and let you guys carry on.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
No, a slave is property while a serf is not. That's the key difference between the two different forms of involuntary servitude. A slave's family can be sold off because they are also property. A serf's cannot because neither he nor his family are property.

It would be clearer to say that a serf is not property because he cannot be sold off without his family. This avoids the implication that 'property' is some natural category whose instantiation is invariant across cultures and legal systems.

(Incidentally, the plot of Gogol's Dead Souls depends upon the idea that serfs in Russia could be bought and sold. I assume they couldn't be separated from their families.)

Nope, a slave is bodily the property of his or her owner. A serf owns his or her body but owes that body's labor to a master. That's the definitional distinction between the terms.

Most typically a serf was bound (legally, not literally) to a specific piece of land which prevented his sale, unless the land itself was also sold. Russian serfdom probably skates closer to the line of outright slavery than other examples. I suspect because of the way it was propagated. Peter the Great abolished slavery in Russia by simply decreeing that all slaves (bodily owned by their masters) were now serfs (who owed labor to their former owners).

There were actually two types of Russian serfs. The first was tied to a plot of land, as in other serf systems. The other were "landless serfs", who could be traded between masters. I suspect it's serfs of this latter type that Gogol was describing.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The problem here is that it requires two distinct institutions, one applying to Israelites and one to foreigners, that are nevertheless referred to by the same word. That makes passages where the difference isn't explicitly stated ambiguous. For example, the Exodus 21:7-11 passage doesn't tell us whether it refers to Israelites or to resident aliens. If there are two distinct institutions then one would expect it to specify whether it applies to bondswomen or to slaves or both.

Which it actually does. It follows a section (Exodus 21:1-6) that explicitly states that it's discussing "Hebrew servants", and even refers back to that section ("she is not to go free as male servants do" [NIV], where the only male servants who are "free to go" are Israelite ones).

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
... it confuses precisely no one when Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II are referred to as "Queens", despite the fact that the former was an absolute monarch and the latter a constitutional one.

People do not confuse the term “Queen” in those two contexts precisely because you have qualified the term (one Queen the 'first', the other the second; one constitutional, one not). You had to do that or the term would not have been understood, or would have remained at a vague high level: a female ruler, but which one? Which type? Good, bad; autocratic or not?
Your "the first is an absolute monarch but the second is a constitution one" rule seems to fall apart pretty quickly. William II was just as much an absolute monarch as William I. There doesn't seem to be anything in the term "king" or "queen" to differentiate the two without additional context or historical knowledge, yet that doesn't seem to stop people from using the term, nor does anyone really seem to get bent out of shape about the usage, insisting that instead we use the term "female hereditary [absolute / constitutional] ruler" instead of "queen" in the interests of greater clarity. People can and do accept that the same word can mean different things in different contexts.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I made the same point about the way the Hebrew authors used the term ebed and its cognates. If it meant anything other than a rather neutral term 'work' or 'stewardship', then it required qualification.

And yet you reject such qualifications when they appear at Biblically inconvenient places, like the distinction between hired workers and the class of workers you refuse to believe were slaves.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Essentially this is about definition. When a typical modern reader reads the English word 'slave', he or she is likely to pull on the understanding gained in history lessons at school and to do so unconsciously. He or she remembers being told about the slave trade (a UK angle), or the N. American experience. What then happens is the equation: “Ah! 'Slave' = forcible removal against my will from my community, shackles, de-humanising treatment, placement in an entirely different and hostile community, hard work in difficult conditions until I die...”

Well, lifelong servitude is one of the conditions inflicted upon the Israelite's foreign slaves, as well as forcible removal in some cases, and the instruction not to rule over indentured Israelites "ruthlessly" implies that it is okay to be ruthless with your foreign slaves.

The larger problem with your suggestion is that it's just as much a deceptive bit of propaganda as the supposed "problem" it theoretically fixes. To a modern reader who has lived his or her whole life in a free labor system, the English term "worker" pretty automatically brings to mind a free laborer, what the NIV translates as "hired workers" in that passage of Leviticus. Since this is obviously not the case simply translating all instances of eved as "worker" seems even more problematic than using context to determine what kind of worker is being referred to.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I appreciate the fact that you are trying to draw parallels between modern justifications for slavery and the environment of the ancient near east . . .

Actually I'm trying to draw parallels between the way slaveholders always try to portray themselves as kindly and benevolent and your portrayal of Biblical slaveholders as kindly and benevolent. From Aristotle's ramblings about "natural slaves" the harsh racial theories of the Confederacy, apologists for slavery have always insisted on the benevolence of their particular slaveholding practices (and therefore the benevolence of themselves). I'm asking why we should accept your claim that your assertions of benevolent forced labor is the one exception to this obviously self-serving tendency?

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I would agree with you that the Texan experience would not truly reflect a beneficial outcome for those enslaved. As a text, the Declaration probably acts as a veneer, papering over the cracks and hiding the true nature of the experience. However, to superimpose that context without qualification on the experience of avadim (however translated) in the OT is to miss an important factor, one I referred to already, that to ignore the plight of a debtor in Iron Age Israel (and across the near east) is to condemn him to death.

Right, the Texas Declaration of the Causes of Secession was written by self-interested slaveholders to "paper[] over the cracks and hid[e] the true nature of" slavery, while the Pentateuch was . . . written by self-interested slaveholders and is therefore a certainly reliable account of how benevolent such a system was! [Roll Eyes]

If you're going to parse "authorial intent", how does "justifying an existing status quo that gives the author sufficient leisure time to be an author" factor in?

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Taking that person in under the 'Father's House' arrangement is a difference of quality compared to “forcible removal against my will from my community...”

. . . except when it wasn't.

I'm also not sure about your assertion that a typical English speaker was necessarily ignorant of the fact that historically a lot of slaves were born to that status rather than "forcibly removed from their community". That seems like neither a universal assumption everyone would make, nor necessary to the definition of slavery.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Can I also check now that we only have Leviticus 25:44 left as an argument that the Bible supports slavery in modern terms? Is it conceded that the other texts do not support it?

Yes you can check, and no, it is not conceded. Deuteronomy's instructions for slave-taking via war is also a fairly obvious mention. There are others, but you're the one who wanted to make this case. Why are we supposed to be doing your research for you?

[ 10. March 2016, 16:04: Message edited by: Crœsos ]

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
There doesn't seem to be anything in the term "king" or "queen" to differentiate the two without additional context or historical knowledge, yet that doesn't seem to stop people from using the term... People can and do accept that the same word can mean different things in different contexts.

A person going around muttering "Queen, queen, queen, queen" is likely to be reciprocated with little more than strange looks. It needed clarification in your example in order to carry meaning.

I don't think in any event that the example works against the usage of eved and its cognates. We've still got to take into account the way the word is used in Hebrew in its contexts, such as Gen. 2:15 where Adam takes care of Eden - 'works' it. This is compared to the post-rebellion oppressive toil (Gen. 3:17), where Hebrew has a word it does not use in respect of 'slave' work anywhere else.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
If you're going to parse "authorial intent", how does "justifying an existing status quo that gives the author sufficient leisure time to be an author" factor in?

No more and no less, apparently, than a reader with sufficient leisure time can justify anything. Power plays can work both ways. I rather think, though, that the OT contains sufficient examples of counter-power authors in action (prophets, for example). Also, legislators and authors with an interest in copying law had to counter complaints from power. See, for example, the Deuteronomic equivalent of Ex. 21:2-6 and Lev 25 (in Dt. 15:16-18) where the authorial word is against those with power: "Don't consider it a hardship when you let him [your eved] free, because for six years he has served you worth twice the wage of a hired worker." Power to the workers, sort of thing.

I recognise that many points are being made on the basis of of Leviticus 25, so I may as well turn to that now.

The typical English Version of recent decades translates Lev. 25:44 along these lines:
quote:
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.
I'll be arguing here that this is not a good translation.

Leviticus 25 forms part of a series of deliverables from God, via Moses, to Israel in the book of Leviticus. Each topic area is headed by a statement along the lines of “The LORD said to Moses...”. For example:
Chapter 11 on clean and unclean animals
Chapter 12 on post-birth purification
Chapter 13 on skin infection
14:1 on regulations pertaining to infections
14:33 on infected houses
15:1 on male bodily discharges

...and so on including 25:1 and beyond. These statements helpfully define the beginning and end of each section, something the person who was responsible for allocating chapters to the text noticed, by and large.

Each of these sections starts with a topic header (after the initial “the LORD said...”). For example (NET Version used here):
11:3 “You may eat any among the animals that has a divided hoof (the hooves are completely split in two) and that also chews the cud.”
12:2 “When a woman produces offspring and bears a male child, she will be unclean seven days, as she is unclean during the days of her menstruation.”
13:2 “When someone has a swelling or a scab or a bright spot on the skin of his body that may become a diseased infection, he must be brought to Aaron the priest or one of his sons, the priests.”

...and so on, including 25:2 - “When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land must observe a Sabbath to the Lord.”

The remainder of each section goes into more detail, perhaps explaining the process to follow, or dealing with exceptions. That detail is dependent on the topic header. The subject matter in each section is not divorced from the topic, it is an extrapolation of it.

There is a peak to this whole narrative part of Leviticus. In the middle of the flow of “the LORD said...” sections lies chapter 19, containing some of the principles we now call the 10 commandments. The first part of this chapter seems to contain contains material that harks back more to the preceding sections, whereas the second part tends to looks ahead. Some of the material in all of these sections appears to be case law, judgements from higher courts.

The point to note is that the material in chapter 25 – all of it – is governed by the topic header and also by chapter 19. For chapter 25, this is about the Sabbath principle, and how that is to be applied in certain situations, particularly in regard to redemption (for both land and people). The idea of redemption flows from the fact that although Israel 'possesses' the land, they do so on a stewardship basis; ultimately the land is owned by God (vv. 23f, “The land must not be sold without reclaim because the land belongs to me, for you are foreigners and residents with me. In all your landed property you must provide for the right of redemption of the land”).

Verse 44 has to be considered in that light, it can't be left hanging in mid-air on its lonesome. With verse 45, it has a link back to verse 6, where the land's Sabbath produce is food for all. A similar list of recipients occurs in verse 6 as occurs in vv. 44ff, here taken from NET again:
quote:
“You may have the Sabbath produce of the land to eat—you, your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker, the resident foreigner who stays with you.”
Some other English versions use the same terminology. There is an inconsistency in translation. “(Male) servant” is the noun eved, the same noun that in v.44 is handed out as “(male) slave”.

My argument isn't only about consistency (though that is a subject in itself), it is also that it should not be translated 'slave' at all; both texts in the same section refer to the general class of worker. There is no contextual reason for calling them slaves. An eved is an eved, unless the term is qualified. If we were to trace the way a set of law court judgements could have run on the basis of the section, it would run like this – I'll start from v.35 to keep it short:

Issue: The law says Israelites are stewards of the land, but in a case where an Israelite falls into unredeemable debt, what is the creditor's responsibility?
Judgement: The creditor must support him according the same laws that apply for the protection of aliens. Otherwise the debtor would die.

Issue: So when such an Israelite comes under a creditor's protection, what is the in-house working expectation?
Judgement: The debtor must not be worked onerously. He must be treated on a par with day labourers* and also with aliens under the creditor's protection. He must be subject to the Sabbath principle on Jubilee terms so that he can return to his God-given stewardship role.

Issue: So that covers the Israelite debtor, but does this mean Israelites must only secure the in-house work of fellow-Israelites who are in debt?
Judgement: No, Israelites are permitted to acquire in-house workers from the nations round about.

That was vv.44-45. There is no explanation of how the foreign workers are acquired and the only background we can therefore apply is that from the context of the section in chapter 25. Because debtors are to be treated on a par with day workers and protected aliens, they are not to be treated cruelly (vv. 40-43). That principle applies to the foreign workers of v.44, because they are connected to the protected aliens in v.45 and back to vv. 40-43. The passage in context is not to be read: “Treat fellow Israelites well, but as for foreigners you can oppress them” but rather “You have been treating fellow Israelites badly; this has to stop. From now on they are covered by the laws that already exist protecting day workers and aliens.”

Bearing in mind that eved (and cognates) has to be seen in the light of usage across the OT – e.g. it is not oppressive (Eden), it is not necessarily menial (Pharaoh's officials) – and add that to the usage in Lev. 25 as outlined above, and there really is a case to answer against the assumption that slavery is in view here.


* 'Hired worker' is a day labourer. Not bound to anyone but dependent on receiving his daily wage at the conclusion of a day's work. He does not live with the 'Father', he is not part of the Father's House. 'Journeyman' might have been a good enough translation for this person up until the early part of the last century in the UK. This is a different category (and a different word) to a worker in need of in-house support and protection. Day workers had protection under the law, e.g. Lev. 19:13 states that the day wages were to be paid on the day, not held back.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
No, a slave is property while a serf is not. That's the key difference between the two different forms of involuntary servitude. A slave's family can be sold off because they are also property. A serf's cannot because neither he nor his family are property.

It would be clearer to say that a serf is not property because he cannot be sold off without his family. This avoids the implication that 'property' is some natural category whose instantiation is invariant across cultures and legal systems.

Nope, a slave is bodily the property of his or her owner. A serf owns his or her body but owes that body's labor to a master. That's the definitional distinction between the terms.
Yes. The point is, it's a definition, not a description. Suppose an anthropologist wants to decide whether a particular labour institution in another culture is or isn't slavery, or a translator wants to find the right word to translate their word into. The legal code of the culture might be so helpful as to spell out that the person concerned is property, and it might spell out that the concept of property is close enough to our concept. But otherwise, the anthropologist has to decide whether the person is or is not property based on exactly what rights the master and the person have in relation to each other and the wider society.

(Saying I know they're slaves and therefore they must be treated as property is not valid as epistemology.)

quote:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The problem here is that it requires two distinct institutions, one applying to Israelites and one to foreigners, that are nevertheless referred to by the same word. That makes passages where the difference isn't explicitly stated ambiguous. For example, the Exodus 21:7-11 passage doesn't tell us whether it refers to Israelites or to resident aliens. If there are two distinct institutions then one would expect it to specify whether it applies to bondswomen or to slaves or both.

Which it actually does. It follows a section (Exodus 21:1-6) that explicitly states that it's discussing "Hebrew servants", and even refers back to that section ("she is not to go free as male servants do" [NIV], where the only male servants who are "free to go" are Israelite ones).
The Torah code does switch subject abruptly. Taking it that one passage is linked to the previous is a hermeneutical choice.
In any case, that was only the one passage that jumped out at me. For example, Exodus 21:20-21(charming)(*), Exodus 21:26-27, Deuteronomy 23:15-16.

quote:
People can and do accept that the same word can mean different things in different contexts.
King William I and William IV are different contexts, being several centuries apart. There's little danger of anyone being confused. On the other hand, there's a bit of a problem where the same word could regularly mean two different things in exactly the same context.

(*) Modern translations use the word 'property' here. The KJV uses 'money' as does the Vulgate. I think the Septuagint likewise, though my Greek is too poor to be sure. I have no idea about the Hebrew. As I say above, it's not a given that our concept of 'property' fully applies.

[Edited to insert links to verses]

[ 10. March 2016, 21:50: Message edited by: Mamacita ]

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Eliab
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Not to say that you mightn't want to call the Biblical institution 'slavery' for some purposes. Still, I think that people who want to concentrate on the absolute abomination of chattel slavery will draw the line between 'slavery' and 'other unfree labour' in such a way that the Biblical institution is at least on the border and I'd say probably over it.

I agree that someone might legitimately define "slavery" in a particular way for some academic, technical or rhetorical purpose, but you appear (unless I'm misunderstanding you) to be making the "Can the putative slave's marriage be overruled?" question definitive in a way that does not reflect the ordinary, non-academic, use of the English word.

I agree that the question may well be very revealing about the status of the person under consideration, but no more so than a lot of other questions, and probably there is no such question that absolutely delineates everything we usually call slavery from everything we do not.

You refer to Exodus 21:20-21 in your last post. I think that is at least as revealing a provision as anything about marriage.

English translations of verse 21 seem to be fairly evenly split between reading the verse as saying if a slave is beaten and incapacitated for a day or so before recovering, that's not a punishable offence (which is pretty horrible, but that's slavery for you), and reading it as saying that if he lingers on for a day or two after a beating, and then presumably dies, that's not a culpable homicide (which is still worse). I don't read Hebrew, so have to assume that the original text is ambiguous on the point. The context seems to indicate the latter, though, as the contrast seems not to be between fatal and non-fatal injuries, but between a slave dying directly, "under the hand of" his attacker, and dying some time later (in which case intention and causation are harder to infer).

Even on the kinder and gentler interpretation, though, the law permits an owner to physically injure a slave (almost) to the point of death, and declares that he thereby does nothing worthy of punishment, specifically because the slave is his property. The harsher interpretation extends that permission even to some cases where the slave actually dies.

That is, I think, more than enough to show Nigel M's use of language like "Father", "protector" and "benefactor" as the disingenuous nonsense that it is. Contracts for mutual benefit do not generally require provision to be made about how far one party can go in beating the other to death. What is being regulated (and condoned) here is, in ordinary English, quite obviously slavery.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
The point to note is that the material in chapter 25 – all of it – is governed by the topic header and also by chapter 19. For chapter 25, this is about the Sabbath principle, and how that is to be applied in certain situations, particularly in regard to redemption (for both land and people). The idea of redemption flows from the fact that although Israel 'possesses' the land, they do so on a stewardship basis; ultimately the land is owned by God (vv. 23f, “The land must not be sold without reclaim because the land belongs to me, for you are foreigners and residents with me. In all your landed property you must provide for the right of redemption of the land”).

Verse 44 has to be considered in that light, it can't be left hanging in mid-air on its lonesome. With verse 45, it has a link back to verse 6, where the land's Sabbath produce is food for all. A similar list of recipients occurs in verse 6 as occurs in vv. 44ff, here taken from NET again:
quote:
“You may have the Sabbath produce of the land to eat—you, your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker, the resident foreigner who stays with you.”
Some other English versions use the same terminology. There is an inconsistency in translation. “(Male) servant” is the noun eved, the same noun that in v.44 is handed out as “(male) slave”.

<snip>

Issue: So that covers the Israelite debtor, but does this mean Israelites must only secure the in-house work of fellow-Israelites who are in debt?
Judgement: No, Israelites are permitted to acquire in-house workers from the nations round about.

That was vv.44-45. There is no explanation of how the foreign workers are acquired and the only background we can therefore apply is that from the context of the section in chapter 25. Because debtors are to be treated on a par with day workers and protected aliens, they are not to be treated cruelly (vv. 40-43). That principle applies to the foreign workers of v.44, because they are connected to the protected aliens in v.45 and back to vv. 40-43.

This is where your analysis breaks down. The passage very clearly states that foreign workers are not to be treated like indentured Iraelites. Indentured Israelites are free to go after six years of servitude. Ebed acquired from either resident aliens or foreign lands are explicitly not. They can be "slaves for life" [NIV] or "enslave[d] . . . perpetually" [NET], so clearly the "Sabbath principle" of redemption does not apply to them. The Hebrew term used is `owlam, which can technically be translated as "for the rest of eternity", but I think we can safely assume that, as with most forms of involuntary servitude, the term of service actually expires when the slave does. The foreign-acquired ebed are also classified as 'achuzzah, or property/possessions. This is followed by a warning not to rule (radah) over fellow Israelites "harshly" (perek), implying that perpetual servitude as property was, in fact, considered kind of harsh. Given what else we know of the social principles set up in the Torah, the "ruling" bit seems to be at least as offensive to the authors as the "harsh" bit. This is why the term of indenture for Israelites was a fixed period. It's also pretty well impossible to avoid ruling over someone (harshly or otherwise) who is your property for life.

So the system that covers ebed of foreign origin involves:
  • Perpetual involuntary servitude
  • Legal status as property
  • As Eliab notes, rules codified elsewhere about how severely you're allowed to beat your ebed

If I had to put together a quick thumbnail definition of slavery, I think that would cover most of important points. In other words, if the above system doesn't qualify as "slavery", the term has no meaning.

All Hebrew translations cribbed shamelessly from here.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
That is, I think, more than enough to show Nigel M's use of language like "Father", "protector" and "benefactor" as the disingenuous nonsense that it is. Contracts for mutual benefit do not generally require provision to be made about how far one party can go in beating the other to death. What is being regulated (and condoned) here is, in ordinary English, quite obviously slavery.

I think, Eliab, that you will have to provide evidence to counter the point that the biblical writings are written by human authors in a particular culture and time, and that therefore the reader needs to understand the historical context underlying the text in order to understand it. I expect that punishment beatings were just as common then in Israel as they were elsewhere across the ancient near east (ANE), but beatings are not an indicator of slavery. There is nothing obvious at all about it at all.

I thought this was understood, but just in case...

The term “Father” was a common term across the ANE above and beyond mere biological relationships. It was used in concert with “Son” to define a covenant relationship between a senior member of that relationship and a junior. Kings addressed their overlords (high kings or emperors) as “Father”. High Kings would address each other as “Brother”. This is not controversial – examples abound across the literature of the ANE, including one of an indignant high king (Urhi-Teshub, a Hittite emperor) who rebuked Adad-Nirari of Assyria for addressing him as “My Brother” in a letter. The appropriate address given the relative seniority should have been “Father”.* This Father-Son terminology (and the responsibilities associated with it) It is therefore entirely appropriate to use when talking about the relationship between an in-house worker and the one overseeing the extended family in the 'house'.

The worldview that prevailed across the ancient near east was dominated by a covenant mindset. As a worldview it is a basic way of interpreting things and acts often unconsciously. It is presupposed in the literature, but if anything goes wrong it gets an airing. Covenant is the anchor for stability – for peace – in that society and the basis for loyalty (the word “love” is the usual English translation of that word) or rebellion (the word “sin” being the common English word for that).

The expectations that apply for those living with that worldview is that loyalty runs in both directions. The junior owed tribute or service (whether taxes, corvee labour, military service when required, and so on), and the senior owed protection back. Examples abound again from across the ANE literature, such as in the Amarna archive where a junior ruler in Canaan protests to his Egyptian overlord that he needs protection against attackers. We have examples in the Psalms, too, where loyal members of God's community protest that they have fulfilled their side of the covenant bargain; they has been righteous and therefore cannot understand why God does not come to their aid when needed. They do not use the language of apology, they protest. It is therefore entirely appropriate to use the language of protection when talking about the relationship between an in-house worker and the one overseeing the extended family in the 'house'.

To argue that we should take the biblical texts out of that covenant worldview context and read them as though the context did not apply is somewhat illogical. I struggle to see how you can justify it, though I see you try on the basis that “ordinary English” is enough.

This idea that there is a plain meaning, or plain reading, or ordinary English obviously needs tackling, as it has been aired before. So...

I would have thought that it was obvious that the “ordinary English” of a bible does not come to us un-mediated. It arrives on our desk via assorted critical techniques and translators. These translators have to make judgment calls on each and every word they opt to use.

If we hang Lev. 25:44 up all on its lonesome in the terms of many English Versions, we get:
quote:
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.
Now how does the idea that we are talking about people who have been bought, taken [/i]against their will[/i] and held against their will in perpetuity come out of that, if not for the fact that translators have chosen to use the words 'buy' and 'slave' in that verse? The plain meaning is dependent on those words.

If, however, we translate the same verse along these lines:
quote:
With regard to your male and female workers who are your responsibility, you are permitted to acquire such workers from the nations around you.
What is the plain meaning now?

I've shown that Leviticus is a structured text, not a haphazard collection of individual sayings that can be pulled out as proof texts. Taking Lev. 25:44 on its own is like ISIL fundamentalists taking a verse from the Qur'an, waving it aloft, jabbing a finger at it and saying “There it is! It says it in black and white, it's the plain meaning of the text and supports the way we live.” Then those who seek to read the text in its context are rejected as being liberal progressives who are wriggling their way out of the plain meaning. The “plain meaning” is sometimes a dangerous reading.

I have set out the usages of the Hebrew word ebed from within the prevalent worldview and questioned the consistency of some translators in the options chosen when mapping that term across to an English equivalent. I raised the risk that the use of the 'slave' terminology, while understood by experts in translation, might not be so understood by all English readers.

If there is an argument that says this is an inappropriate method, we need to hear it.



* In Bryce, Trevor. Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age, London/New York: Routledge, pp.76f

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
If we hang Lev. 25:44 up all on its lonesome in the terms of many English Versions, we get:
quote:
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.
Now how does the idea that we are talking about people who have been bought, taken against their will and held against their will in perpetuity come out of that, if not for the fact that translators have chosen to use the words 'buy' and 'slave' in that verse? The plain meaning is dependent on those words.

If, however, we translate the same verse along these lines:
quote:
With regard to your male and female workers who are your responsibility, you are permitted to acquire such workers from the nations around you.
What is the plain meaning now?
Deceptively altered. The word qanah is best translated as "acquire" with strong implications of "buy". I don't think there's an instance where anyone has translated as "have responsibility for", though if you'd like to make a citation I'd be glad to examine it. The bit about the term being "in perpetuity" comes from Lev. 25:45-46, as I explained in my last post. You should appreciate that. It doesn't leave Lev. 25:44 "all on its lonesome".

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Nigel M
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Crœsos, actually the clause permitting “perpetual ownership” applies to the alien groups (v.45) only. Verse 44 is silent on the application to the eved from the nations round about Israel. This is, I think, probably because the alien was a stateless sojourner whereas the foreign national had citizenship elsewhere. The latter had a place to go to if released, the former didn't. The Sabbath rule had an application to the alien (and foreign worker) in that they partook of the Sabbath food, but by definition aliens did not have land to go back to after 6 years; they were devoid of that responsibility. To send them out would be to condemn them to a position where they no longer had any protection – no food, no produce.

The 'harshness of rule' (a treading down ruthlessly, crushing) is repeated across this mini-section. We've got it in v.53, v.46, and v.43. Potentially it also applies in the multiple use of eved and its cognates in v.39. I see why you link these to the “perpetual ownership” idea; the links are:-
vv.39f = Do not over work your fellow citizen...let him go at the Jubilee
vv.41-43 = Do not crush the Israelites...let them go back to their allocated land
vv.47-53 = Do not crush your fellow citizen...let him go when redeemed or at Jubilee

In other words, the legal ruling limits long-term responsibility. It makes sense, then, to see the use in v.46 along the same lines: Do not crush your fellow citizen...though a non-Israelite alien is not subject to the same release schedule.

This is the sense of the text that I see. A crushing type of work is one that, for an Israelite, would be one that deprives him of his land responsibility. He is a member of a tribe that had been allocated land to use and he 'owns' it more in the sense of it belonging ultimately to God and therefore the man has to own and manage his bit of land in accordance with God's wishes. In doing so, he had security. The alien, though, was not subject to this arrangement. He had fled from another state and was not in a position to return.

So I agree with you that the crushing rule was linked to work that had no time limit, but I see the sense of crushing to apply to the deprivation of land control, not to the factor of perpetual work itself.

This seems to me to make sense of the flow of this text – one section in a series of legal rulings containing case judgements that apply those higher principles (such as Sabbath).

I covered my thought on beatings in a response to Eliab above. I don't think that punishment beatings on their own signify slavery. Sparing not the rod seems to have been a wider activity.

Back to the translation point – the other factor in play. The inconsistency in translation appears again in v.55. It seems that translators baulk at the idea of translating eved as 'slave' when it comes to Israelites – preferring the term 'servant' – even when in the same section they go for 'slave' for anyone else. The same inconsistency applies to the Greek word doulos in the NT. Verse 42 was the closest example – “For they [Israel] are my servants (eved in plural form), whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves (ebed again). I could understand if we were talking about different contexts, as with Pharaohs officials, where “official” suits the context in translation better than “slave”, but in the same verse? The translational approach leaves a route open to doubt – hence in no small part the current thread. It was suggested to me offline that it would be useful to track down the translation team editors for a few of the more recent English Versions, with the aim of finding out the motivation behind the choices made. It would certainly be interesting, but time may not be an ally here. In any event, it shows that one cannot simply accept at face value (a plain meaning) phrases in use in our English Versions.


P.S. Just seen your last post. As I noted at the top of this post, the perpetual property clause applies to the aliens in v.45, not to the foreign workers in v.44

P.P.S. I think, actually, that although the passages we have looked at in more detail do not support 'slavery' as a concept, a stronger argument lies with the war booty passages, such as the one in Deuteronomy. Hopefully we can get around to that soon.

P.P.P.S. I'll stop here before I think of a P.P.P.P.S.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Crœsos, actually the clause permitting “perpetual ownership” applies to the alien groups (v.45) only. Verse 44 is silent on the application to the eved from the nations round about Israel.

Doesn't that violate your supposed principle that eved should treated or translated the same wherever possible? There's nothing explicitly stating that eved from resident aliens (towshab) are treated any differently than eved from foreign lands (gowy), and the fact that the adjacent verses are bridged with וְ (a Hebrew character roughly meaning "and" or "also") would seem to indicate that these two groups are to be considered together rather than separately. The second half of the v.46 does explicitly forbid certain treatment of Iraelites (ben Yisra'el). It takes an incredible amount of convolutions to treat the two halves of the same verse as unrelated to each other. Add in the fact that Leviticus seems to be pretty good at assigning lengths of time to servitude ("until the year of Jubilee" for Israelite ebed, "forever" for foreign ebed) it would be a curious omission if ebed from foreign lands were to be given the same term of servitude as Iraelites but have no mention made of the fact. It makes much more sense to read the lifelong term of servitude as applying to both.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Back to the translation point – the other factor in play. The inconsistency in translation appears again in v.55. It seems that translators baulk at the idea of translating eved as 'slave' when it comes to Israelites – preferring the term 'servant' – even when in the same section they go for 'slave' for anyone else. The same inconsistency applies to the Greek word doulos in the NT. Verse 42 was the closest example – “For they [Israel] are my servants (eved in plural form), whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves (ebed again). I could understand if we were talking about different contexts, as with Pharaohs officials, where “official” suits the context in translation better than “slave”, but in the same verse?

The conditions of Israelite servitude are different than those the Israelites inflicted on others to a degree where the latter is considered "slavery" while the former is better described a "servitude". I can see the literary reason behind being consistent (indentured Israelite = "servant", enslaved foreigner = "slave") in that regard.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
P.P.S. I think, actually, that although the passages we have looked at in more detail do not support 'slavery' as a concept, a stronger argument lies with the war booty passages, such as the one in Deuteronomy. Hopefully we can get around to that soon.

So you've said, but you've not given any coherent explanation as to why a state of lifelong involuntary servitude doesn't count as "slavery".

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Eliab
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I think, Eliab, that you will have to provide evidence to counter the point that the biblical writings are written by human authors in a particular culture and time, and that therefore the reader needs to understand the historical context underlying the text in order to understand it.

Why would I need to provide evidence of that? It's no part of my argument.

quote:
I expect that punishment beatings were just as common then in Israel as they were elsewhere across the ancient near east
You could be right. Of course, the same could be said of slavery, but you seem to be maintaining that they were a happy exception to that one.

quote:
but beatings are not an indicator of slavery.
Maybe. Of course that's an untestable hypothesis because we don't have a description of punishment beatings from the same sort of culture with which to compare it ...

Oh, wait ...

quote:
When people have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. If the guilty person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make them lie down and have them flogged in his presence with the number of lashes the crime deserves, but the judge must not impose more than forty lashes. (Deuteronomy 25:1-3)
So that means that a punishment beating is inflicted only after a hearing before one or more at least nominally impartial judges, at which both sides are represented, that it ought to be proportionate to the gravity of the offense, and that it is to be performed under close supervision. And the severity of the beating is limited to no more than forty blows. Why?

Because...

quote:
If the guilty party is flogged more than that, your fellow Israelite will be degraded in your eyes.
There seems to be a refreshing recognition there of the fact that being subjected to vulnerability, pain and fear in public is something that many people find degrading, so the limit is there to give the criminal at least a sporting chance of bearing his punishment with some dignity.

I don't know about you, but I reckon that if I was being helplessly beaten with rod, I'd reach the point of being humiliated with suffering some considerable time before I was knocked into a two day coma. And that seems to be the assumption here - the limit is there to stop the punishment before the point of degradation, not to prevent life-threatening injury.

Let's contrast that with what a benefactor is allowed to do to his in-house worker. He can beat him at will, without needing to justify himself before a judge, with no reference to the degree of culpability that the worker may have, and without any requirement to give the fellow creature under his protection any sort of hearing. There are limits, though - he can't protect him so benevolently that the man actually dies under hand. That would be going a shade too far. But if the worker's attachment to his covenant relationship is sufficiently strong that he chooses to linger for a day or two at death's door, before reluctantly resigning from grateful and filial service, that's alright. No harm, no foul. Well, some harm, but really only to the Father in the relationship, who is deeply hurt in the pocket by his over-application of paternal concern.

quote:
There is nothing obvious at all about it at all.
You think?

quote:
The term “Father” was a common term across the ANE above and beyond mere biological relationships. It was used in concert with “Son” to define a covenant relationship between a senior member of that relationship and a junior. [...] It is therefore entirely appropriate to use when talking about the relationship between an in-house worker and the one overseeing the extended family in the 'house'.
That's one interpretation.

Another is that if you put me in a room with someone who has the power and legal right to beat me to the point of death, and who wants me to call him 'Daddy'...

I don't doubt that slave owners throughout history have been addressed in the usual terms that their culture reserves for showing a high degree of deference and respect. It doesn't take that much imagination to speculate that there might just be a reason for that.

quote:
To argue that we should take the biblical texts out of that covenant worldview context and read them as though the context did not apply is somewhat illogical.
Something on which we agree.

quote:
I struggle to see how you can justify it, though I see you try on the basis that “ordinary English” is enough.
No - wrong. We look at the context first. We have a class of people who can be bought and sold, forced to work for another for life (exceptions made on ethnic grounds) without pay, and subject to harsh physical punishment, at least to the point where their life is endangered, at will and without due process.

Then we consider whether there is a word in English, whose ordinary English meaning is broad enough to cover that sort of social and economic status. Most modern translators seem to go for "slave". I can sort-of see their point.

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Richard Dawkins

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Not to say that you mightn't want to call the Biblical institution 'slavery' for some purposes. Still, I think that people who want to concentrate on the absolute abomination of chattel slavery will draw the line between 'slavery' and 'other unfree labour' in such a way that the Biblical institution is at least on the border and I'd say probably over it.

I agree that someone might legitimately define "slavery" in a particular way for some academic, technical or rhetorical purpose, but you appear (unless I'm misunderstanding you) to be making the "Can the putative slave's marriage be overruled?" question definitive in a way that does not reflect the ordinary, non-academic, use of the English word.
The ordinary non-academic use of the English word is apt to be used for metaphorical or rhetorical effect. And if a modern charity whose purpose was anti-slavery found a group of Old Testament revivalists who'd set up a society living by Biblical law, and the society decided to campaign against that, it would be inappropriate to object that the institution didn't fall under the charity's remit; just as it would be inappropriate if the charity were campaigning against modern serfdom or other forms of forced labour. The Biblical institution is I think only ethically defensible by comparison with what everyone else was doing at the time.
Nevertheless, as there thankfully isn't any modern application going on as far as I'm aware, I think a semi-academic discussion is appropriate.

Roman law notoriously granted the head of the household the right to kill anyone in the household with impunity, slave or not. I don't think anyone would describe an adult eldest son as a slave, but nevertheless, they had fewer legal rights in this respect than the foreigner or debtor in this passage. (A similar remark applies to stoning disobedient children.) I assume the purpose of the law is a crude attempt to rule out intentional killings.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
...It's no part of my argument.

You rather left yourself open to it by failing to notice how I have been using the context of the time and language use in support of my arguments!

On beatings, there is no indication that a beating was limited to slavery. The indications are that this could happen in any house, or even in the countryside, hence the wider ranging judgements on compensation. The fact that beatings occur is not an indication on its own that we are dealing with slavery. You can check if you like, but I am pretty sure I haven't used the term “benefactor” in my arguments. “Father”, yes; “Protector”, yes; these were terms in use at the time. If you understand the term “benefactor” to mean “Redeemer”, then that's fine and I would go with it, but the impression you are giving is that there could be no beneficial outcome of an arrangement whereby a redeemer could secure the protection of another person. You really can't conclude from the fact that there where there were beatings, there must be slavery. Other factors will have to be used.

This plays out on a larger scale and, as I have pointed out, seems to be reflected in the choices translators have made. Why should the term 'slave' be fine when the biblical context, both OT and NT, refers to non-believers (Israelites, Christians), but not fine when referring to the status of believers in relation to their God? Why should Paul be a 'servant' of God, and not a 'slave? The reason seems to me to be that we read see slavery as brutal, so we tone down the conversation and talk about 'servant-hood' instead.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
We look at the context first. We have a class of people who can be bought and sold, forced to work for another for life (exceptions made on ethnic grounds) without pay, and subject to harsh physical punishment, at least to the point where their life is endangered, at will and without due process.

Bought and sold? Again, be careful of the language use in the context here. Forced to work? As opposed to being cast out and dying of starvation. Without pay? Again you are in danger importing a modern focus on monetary exchange to the exclusion of other factors. Punishment / beatings at will is not an indicator of slavery on its own. Due process? We don't know how matters were regulated from case to case. Perhaps some masters were drunken abusers (there are plenty of runaways attested to in the ANE literature), but there must have been an expectation that there were norms, or there would have been no need for judicial intervention. One biblical author at least felt it appropriate to talk of God in terms of one who disciplines his children (Deut. 8:5, where the term is covers the use of beating with a whip or rod). Are they therefore 'slaves'? I'd be happy to adopt the language of slavery if translators were consistent on this point, but it really does seem as though readers are not able to imagine a situation where 'slave' terminology can be anything but negative. I agree with them, and hence this thread.


Crœsos:
I don't think that the grammatical construction of vv.44-46 can work that way. The verses are indeed linked in that they are backgrounded from the mainline narrative. It's difficult to diagram it here, given the formatting available, but the text gives us a series of instances where a main line is introduced by the particle ki followed by a verb. Given that we are essentially dealing with a record of legal rulings in much of Leviticus, I think an appropriate rendering of the particle would be something like,”In the case of...”

We find a series of these up to v.44, and they resume again in v.47. Using indents to indicate the hierarchy in the text it could look like this:

v.35 In the case of an Israelite who can no longer pay his debts to you...
….......Do this, don't do that
v.39 In the case of an Israelite who offsets his debts by coming under your control...
….......Do this, do not do that
v.47 In the case of an Israelite who offsets his debts by coming under the control of an alien...
….......etc.

Within that flow vv.44-46 fit as a rider to what has gone before and act as an 'indented' (to keep with the above construction) set of phrases. Verse 44 has a subject phrase – the foreign nations – that acts as the referent to a following pronoun – from them.

“As for the male and female workers that may be with you from the nations around about, from them you may acquire...”

The subject changes for vv.45f, though. Now the subject is the alien (or temporary resident, sojourner...) and this acts as the referent for the following pronouns. Verse 45 does follow from v.44 in respect of the verb to acquire, but the attributes that follow the subject phrase follow more naturally from the new subject.

“You have also acquired from the aliens residing with you...from their families...they have fathered...they must be to you as a possession...you must pass them on as an inheritance...”

The difference between 'may' and 'must' here is my rendition of the difference between the imperfect and perfect forms of the verbs in vv.44-46. Once protected, they must remain protected because they have no land to go back to (that's the coherent argument, based on the context, as to why lifelong servitude for aliens who are taken into the house is not slavery as commonly understood).

This is why I think v.44 is too thin to take the constructions that have been placed on it. It is short on background – no explanation of who these foreigners are or how they were acquired, and no consequent explanation of how they are to be treated. The sole reason, as I tried to explain earlier, that this verse is where it is, is more likely to be as a result of the judicial rulings that were being recorded in Leviticus 25. I wouldn’t want to say it was a random throw-away remark by the author, but it is a secondary ruling. It assumes the rulings beforehand (that Israelites were entitled to their title, as it were, i.e., to be set free to return to their land), it fits better with the explanation that a case or question had then arisen in the light of that ruling about the status of the already existing workers from abroad and whether they it was actually permissible to acquire them, to which the ruling was: Yes, that's fine. The verse really can't take any more weight than that, it seems to me.

I see that my use of eved and a 1:1 translation is still an issue. I need to reinforce that I am not arguing for a 1:1 word translation from the Hebrew to English. I am arguing that in the case of the term 'slave' that there is too much reading-in of concepts from our culture. My recommendation is that when this happens it really helps to remove the red-flag word, analyse the context, and then decide. In some cases a given English word really does not fit. Lev. 25:44 is a good test case, which is why I offered the alternative reading earlier when the verse is taken on its own. It forces a reader to stop, think about why particular words are being used, and hopefully to dig around the context, by which I mean more than just the co-text, I also mean the worldviews that underscore the texts themselves.

I am also not convinced that the conditions of Israelite servitude are different than those the Israelites inflicted on others to a degree where the latter is considered "slavery". The condition of an Israelite in need does seem to be decently controlled. But, such an Israelite is also compared favourably to the aliens, who are also decently controlled in law. This does imply that the lot of an alien is not bad. They are protected, yet they too are avadim.

This is why I have challenged the reading of Lev. 25:44. It seems to me that the only reason it was produced in evidence as a support for slavery was the inclusion of the word 'slave' in the English translations of that verse. Hence my concern over the translation choices and the reading-in that can result.

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