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Source: (consider it) Thread: Kerygmania: The Bible and 'slavery'
lilBuddha
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Originally posted by Nigel M.:

quote:
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.

What a load of rubbish!
I bought you and, Ooops, I cannot let you go for your own good. Sorry about that.
If the Hebrews are so concerned about foreigners, why the parable of the Good Samaritan?
Again, there is no evidence that they are morally superior to the average culture in the region. Plenty of of evidence that they were not.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
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.

No they weren't. Or at least the verse instructing Israelites to treat indentured fellow Israelites as if they were hired workers (sakiyr) or temporary residents (towshab) refers to neither of these as ebed or any of its cognates. Given its use elsewhere it was possible to be towshab without also being ebed and it seems almost certain from context that the towshab in Lev. 25:40 were not ebed. Since the rules that towshab could be made ebed are given later (Lev. 25:45-46) both common sense literary construction (if something is going to be relevant to a text, mention it before it becomes relevant, not five verses later) and your own theory of sequential judicial rulings (if a verse occurs later it's likely an later-occurring addendum to a previous ruling, which would mean that the rule that towshab could be eved occurred after the ruling that indentured Israelites should be treated like sakiyr and towshab) argue against the notion that the towshab in Lev. 25:40 were also ebed.

It's this kind of loose mendacity in pursuit of an ideologically preferred outcome that I can't take seriously as an argument. We see an argument similarly flawed by ideology in your assertion that ebed from foreign lands are free to go in the Jubilee year while resident alien ebed are perpetual slaves. You base this on the passage which specifies that resident aliens may eat the produce of the fallow lands during the Jubilee, thus including them in the "Sabbath principle and rights of redemption". This requires ignoring the fact that "temporary resident who live among you" (towshab guwr) and people of "the nations around you" (gowy cabiyb) are two different and etymologically unrelated terms. Only the former (towshab) are explicitly included in the verse you cite as the reason bondservants are released, yet we are later told explicitly that towshab are not released from servitude ever. And yet you have the mendacity to claim that foreign-born slaves are set free after six years based on a verse that fairly clearly doesn't include people from foreign lands.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
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.

Actually the support for rendering ebed as "slave" in that case is their status as property (or "possessions" if you prefer that rendering of 'achuzzah) and the perpetual nature of their forced servitude. I don't think it's a stretch as to why a condition of perpetual involuntary servitude would be classified as "slavery" while a temporary imposition of similar conditions (but not the same conditions) might be translated as "servant". Unless one were being deliberately obtuse.

As before, all Hebrew terms and translations from here.

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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Moo

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Host hat on

quote:
Originally posted by Croesos
It's this kind of loose mendacity in pursuit of an ideologically preferred outcome that I can't take seriously as an argument.

You are coming very close to a C3 violation here. You are supposed to address yourself to the argument, not to the possible motivation of another poster.

Don't do it again.

Host hat off

Moo

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If the Hebrews are so concerned about foreigners, why the parable of the Good Samaritan?

I can't believe that you would condone letting aliens go out into the unknown where they had no land and no means of support. Sounds rather harsh to let them die like that. And just in case I wasn't clear, there is a distinction in the biblical texts between 'alien' (temporary resident, sojourner) and foreigner.

That rather sudden leap across testaments and genres to the Good Samaritan parable could make readers rather giddy. I don't know where to start on that one.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
No they weren't. Or at least the verse instructing Israelites to treat indentured fellow Israelites as if they were hired workers (sakiyr) or temporary residents (towshab) refers to neither of these as ebed or any of its cognates. Given its use elsewhere it was possible to be towshab without also being ebed and it seems almost certain from context that the towshab in Lev. 25:40 were not ebed. Since the rules that towshab could be made ebed are given later (Lev. 25:45-46) both common sense literary construction (if something is going to be relevant to a text, mention it before it becomes relevant, not five verses later)...

The grammatical construction of this mini-section runs from v.41 (the introductory particle there) to v 47 (and the introductory particle there), as I demonstrated earlier. That is the context and it includes ebed. Apart from this section, the Levitical laws (and other texts in the Torah) made it plain that the laws applied equally to native and alien - including the Sabbath, and punishments applied equally to both. For example:

Lev. 19:33f
When an alien resides with you in your land, you must not oppress him. The alien who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself...

Lev 18:26
You yourselves must obey my statutes and my regulations and must not do any of these abominations, both the native citizen and the alien in your midst

The motivation for this being that Israel had been an alien in Egypt. This commonality makes it very hard to believe that an Israelite could be an ebed while the alien could not.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
We see an argument similarly flawed by ideology in your assertion that ebed from foreign lands are free to go in the Jubilee year while resident alien ebed are perpetual slaves.

Have a read again and see if you find where I say the Jubilee Law applied to foreigners. The overall text (even going wider than Lev. 25) makes a provision of commonality in respect of the native Israelite and the alien, but the scope of v.44 – mentioning foreigners – is too thin by way of background to say what was applicable. My point was that if a foreigner was released (not when), he or she did have a home to go to outside of Israel. The alien didn't.

It doesn't look as though we are going to agree about the forced servitude aspect, having batted it about for a bit now. I see the text as saying that if an Israelite was to acquire an alien as a worker (the use of the imperfect mode of the verb implies something not guaranteed), then the Israelite must do so in the knowledge that he has a lasting obligation to look after that alien (switch to the perfect mode) and to do so lastingly.

As I said, I think you are on stronger ground with the war booty episodes, but I am happy to discuss the Levitical texts further if desired.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If the Hebrews are so concerned about foreigners, why the parable of the Good Samaritan?

I can't believe that you would condone letting aliens go out into the unknown where they had no land and no means of support. Sounds rather harsh to let them die like that. And just in case I wasn't clear, there is a distinction in the biblical texts between 'alien' (temporary resident, sojourner) and foreigner.

That rather sudden leap across testaments and genres to the Good Samaritan parable could make readers rather giddy. I don't know where to start on that one.

[Killing me]
I had thought your posts merely misguided, but that is ridiculous. If cannot honestly understand why this post is completely not defendable, there may be no point in reasoning with you.

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I had thought your posts merely misguided, but that is ridiculous. If cannot honestly understand why this post is completely not defendable, there may be no point in reasoning with you.

Enlighten us all, lilBuddha; I'm sure we are all agog to see what the parable has to do with Lev. 25.
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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
The motivation for this being that Israel had been an alien in Egypt. This commonality makes it very hard to believe that an Israelite could be an ebed while the alien could not.

I never claimed that a resident alien (towshab) couldn't be ebed, just that those two terms aren't equivalent and that pairing towshab with sakiyr (hired laborer), who was also not ebed, indicates that towshab should be read generally in Lev. 25:40 rather than, as you're arguing, as a towshab who is also ebed.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Have a read again and see if you find where I say the Jubilee Law applied to foreigners. The overall text (even going wider than Lev. 25) makes a provision of commonality in respect of the native Israelite and the alien, but the scope of v.44 – mentioning foreigners – is too thin by way of background to say what was applicable.

My point is that your assertion that "[t]The overall text . . . makes a provision of commonality in respect of the native Israelite and the alien" is obviously false in this case. Israelites are treated one way (free to go after six years of involuntary servitude) while aliens are treated another (property for the remainder of their lives). If commonality of law is indeed a principle of the Torah (which I find dubious) then this is an obvious and explicitly stated exception.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
It doesn't look as though we are going to agree about the forced servitude aspect, having batted it about for a bit now. I see the text as saying that if an Israelite was to acquire an alien as a worker (the use of the imperfect mode of the verb implies something not guaranteed), then the Israelite must do so in the knowledge that he has a lasting obligation to look after that alien (switch to the perfect mode) and to do so lastingly.

And this differs from every other system we call "slavery" how? I've already cited one of the founding documents of the Confederacy concerning how beneficial that system was to those held in bondage. Slavery always requires owners to look after slaves, for the very simple reason that it deprives the slave of the means of looking after himself.

I think a lot of this dispute comes from your lack of understanding (or warped understanding) of what slavery (no scare quotes) entails. It's not about treating your workers cruelly (though slavery is always implicitly a violent institution) since non-slaves can also be treated cruelly. It's not about being a big meanie.

So I once again ask the question you've been avoiding for most of this discussion: why doesn't a system of lifelong involuntary servitude and classification as "property" count as slavery?

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LeRoc

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quote:
Crœsos: I never claimed that a resident alien (towshab) couldn't be ebed
I tried to ebe one a while ago but it didn't work.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I had thought your posts merely misguided, but that is ridiculous. If cannot honestly understand why this post is completely not defendable, there may be no point in reasoning with you.

Enlighten us all, lilBuddha; I'm sure we are all agog to see what the parable has to do with Lev. 25.
Why do you insist on limiting the conversation to one section?
I'm talking about the numerous texts which refer to slavery.
How does the Good Samaritan figure in? If the the concept of treating foreigners well was so ingrained this early on, why would there be need for such a parable by the time of Jesus?

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Why do you insist on limiting the conversation to one section?
I'm talking about the numerous texts which refer to slavery.
How does the Good Samaritan figure in? If the the concept of treating foreigners well was so ingrained this early on, why would there be need for such a parable by the time of Jesus?

I doubt that foreigners or aliens were always treated well in Israel. If they were, there would be no need for a text – let alone a legal text that was copied and transmitted down the years – that demanded considerate treatment and required a motivational clause in support, that Israel was once an alien in Egypt.

We are dealing with specific texts because if we don't, readers will be condemned to make sweeping statements based on presuppositions that have been untested. Theological fundamentalists are often accused of doing that, but theological liberals are not immune either. You are making quite a lot of sweeping statements; they do need to be tested.

We are dealing with Lev. 25:44 mainly because that text was produced to be studied, but also partly because in your post on the other thread (linked to from the OP here) you specifically asked: “Also, please explain Leviticus 25:44.” Even on this thread you responded to Lamb Chopped with: “I would like to see the references and context.”

The parable of the good Samaritan was given by Jesus in response to the question: Who is my neighbour? The person who asked that question was forced to admit at the conclusion of the parable that the neighbour was neither the priest nor the Levite – the supposed mediators of God’s Kingdom – but the character from Samaria.

A Samaritan doesn't seem to fit into the categories defined in Lev.25, at least from the point of view of the audience of the parable at the time. He wasn't viewed as a foreigner as such, nor was he an alien (he had his own land). He wasn't really an Israelite, either; he was something worse – a heretic.

So I have to press you again: What does the parable have to do with Lev. 25?

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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I never claimed that a resident alien (towshab) couldn't be ebed, just that those two terms aren't equivalent and that pairing towshab with sakiyr (hired laborer), who was also not ebed, indicates that towshab should be read generally in Lev. 25:40 rather than, as you're arguing, as a towshab who is also ebed.

The first line in my earlier post should have read: “The grammatical construction of this mini-section runs from v.39 (the introductory particle there) to v 47 (and the introductory particle there), as I demonstrated earlier.” My mistake when I typed “v.41” at that point.

The thing is, in v.40 the text runs: “As a hired worker (= sakir), as an alien (= toshav) that may be with you, until the year of Jubilee he may work with you.”

That phrase “with you” doesn't refer to the non-Israelites generally across the land. It refers to that class that had come into service in a house. It is asking the Israelites to take a fellow citizen into service (with you) in the same way that an alien or hired worker is in service (also with you).

Taking that “with you” phrase there and also in the context of the whole mini-section helpfully delimited linguistically by the particle ki + verb means we can't really hive off the understanding that this judgement is dealing with Israelites as workers from aliens as workers.
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
So I once again ask the question you've been avoiding for most of this discussion: why doesn't a system of lifelong involuntary servitude and classification as "property" count as slavery?

I haven't been avoiding it, I've been engaged in tackling the textual issues up to now and could only give passing references to this.

I think the underlying presumption has to be that lifelong servitude is better than the alternative for a destitute alien: that of being cast out into a world where he had no means of support. He had no land to go to (I mentioned this a few time earlier). This is the reason the bible urges Israel to treat aliens well. It is not as though the texts say, “Take aliens as servants as much as you like – don't bother about their considerations in the matter.” The Israelites were being motivated by the fact that they had once been aliens in Egypt and the narrative take on that experience in the book of Exodus was not positive. Why add this motivation if the aim was to permit slavery? Lifelong servitude was aimed to be a protection and those taking aliens into their household were being warned that once in, always in; the Father could not wantonly abandon his responsibilities to the destitute alien. The covenant worldview drives this here, too.

I see little that is involuntary about this arrangement. I'm sure that for the typical destitute alien Plan A would not have been to become dependent on another. Ideally he would have done fine on his own account in Israel. Plan C, though, is to die. Faced with that option, Plan B is a better alternative and who is to say that he would not voluntarily have chosen that as the option?

Being owned as property can apply, I agree. Clearly the noun achuzzah used in the Hebrew scriptures applies to non-material entities (land, burial sites, house, towns / cities, the entire earth, and so on). In Lev 25:45-46 the same term is applied to the alien.

The question I could only point to so far in passing, though, is what is meant by the term in question (the achuzzah noun). This is used about 66 times in the OT, predominately referring to the land that had been promised to the patriarchs. This was given as a place of security to be owned in the sense of stewarded, because the land ultimately belonged to God. There is a difference of quality between this understanding and that of an unlimited, total, ownership. I counted no fewer than 25 instances of the noun in Lev. 25, a chapter that is keen to protect this understanding of land as property on behalf of God. Use of it is regulated by the Sabbath principle and the land ultimately belongs to God (25:23 - “...the land is mine...”).

Now another understanding of owned property could be in sight in respect of the alien in chapter 25. I would suggest, though, given the flow and context of the regulations in that chapter, and the concern for the alien, that the more likely interpretation is one that accords with the understanding of land as given above.

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lilBuddha
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:

We are dealing with specific texts because if we don't, readers will be condemned to make sweeping statements based on presuppositions that have been untested. Theological fundamentalists are often accused of doing that, but theological liberals are not immune either. You are making quite a lot of sweeping statements; they do need to be tested.

I am making one, basic statement supported by the text, context and basic anthropology. You are proof texting, supporting your argument by contended translation, ignoring the plain, contextual reading of the text and anthropology.


quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:

We are dealing with Lev. 25:44 mainly because that text was produced to be studied, but also partly because in your post on the other thread (linked to from the OP here) you specifically asked: “Also, please explain Leviticus 25:44.” Even on this thread you responded to Lamb Chopped with: “I would like to see the references and context.”

And part of the context are the other verses in the bible which also illustrate slavery.
quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:

A Samaritan doesn't seem to fit into the categories defined in Lev.25, at least from the point of view of the audience of the parable at the time. He wasn't viewed as a foreigner as such, nor was he an alien (he had his own land). He wasn't really an Israelite, either; he was something worse – a heretic.

So I have to press you again: What does the parable have to do with Lev. 25?

Samaritans were despised. Jesus was saying their neighbours were even such as that. In other words, treat all with care and respect, something at odds with the texts under discussion here.

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Eliab
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
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!

You seem to me rather to be ignoring the context of what the OT laws say about how 'slaves' were treated. For example, you are arguing with lilBuddha that the servitude for life imposed on foreigners was really a sort of kindness, or at least a necessity, because those people simply could not be released, as they had no means of support.

That might be plausible until you look at the context - which is that the OT laws make provisions plainly contrary to your alleged principle. Slaves who have been permanently injured by brutal treatment, and slave women who have been dishonoured by forcibly married and then repudiated, have to be released - as compensation for treatment outside the prescribed limits of socially-acceptable brutality. That is, if it was true that slaves were too vulnerable to be set free, the legislators of the Bible either did not know, or did not care about, that fact when they provided for the release of the badly-treated slaves who must have been most especially at risk.

It seems to me that if you look at context, there's nothing in the text to suggest that person-owning was genuinely benevolent. It was known to be a relationship from which the person-owned would be grateful for release. You can make your argument only by ignoring that.

The one issue where (as far as I can see) you genuinely are reading in context is the whole "covenant thinking" issue. I think I am responding to that similarly to lilBuddha and Croesus (they can correct me if I'm mistaken) - it's not so much that we disagree with your points, it's that we don't find that a particularly surprising or important observation.

Why not? Well, slave-owners from war-like cultures regarded slave-owning as being a fair reward for victory. Slave-owners from philosophical cultures saw it as an expression of natural law. Slave-owners from racist cultures justified it in terms of racial superiority. Slave-owners from nationalistic cultures claimed that it was necessary for the good of the state. Slave-owners from Christian cultures defended it as having been approved by the Christian God*. We really wouldn't be that surprised if covenant-minded Israelites saw slavery in terms of a mutually-beneficial covenant between unequal parties. Of course they did! All slave-owners see slavery in whatever terms they are comfortable with. We think that they were all wrong, and largely** self-serving.

The English word "slavery" is wide enough to cover the practice of owning human beings and forcing them to work for you under any and all of those pretexts. You seem to be arguing that covenant-thinking is a special case: that involuntary servitude seen in those terms shouldn't be called slavery. I don't see that at all. Slavery, under whatever alleged justification, is still slavery. The institution described in the OT is comfortably within the normal range of meaning for that word.

(*These categories can overlap.)

(**I may differ from Croesus a little here - I don't think it is entirely self-serving. I'm open to the idea that the way saw slavery affected the ways in which they regulated it. The fact that (on one reading of the text) Hebrew slaves had to be released after a term, and foreigners didn't, probably does owe a lot to the idea that the Hebrew was a co-heir of the covenant, and the foreigner wasn't. And that did soften the institution of slavery, against the interests of the owners, at least as far as Hebrews were concerned.)

quote:
On beatings, there is no indication that a beating was limited to slavery. [...] 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.
You mean, like the provision that there are circumstances in which you can cause a person's death by beating, and be deemed to have done nothing worthy of punishment, because he was your property? If that's not a clue, what would be?

quote:
You can check if you like, but I am pretty sure I haven't used the term “benefactor” in my arguments.
Try here.

quote:
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. [...] 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.
Point taken. As I'm not a Biblical translator, I don't feel under any great obligation to defend their choices, but I have to say that this one doesn't seem obviously wrong. This is why:

If you're translating a text which describes or prescribes actual events and actions, then I think it's legitimate to choose the words that most closely convey what's going on. While it may be the case that our attitudes to the facts described could be very different to the original readers, I don't think we have to (or should) change the description of events so that our response to the (altered) text matches the presumed response to the original.

For example, as someone born in C20 England, shipwreck stories are for me associated with historical romances and adventure tales. They aren't scary. They don't portray a real danger I've ever been exposed to. So I'm not naturally going to read Acts 27 with the same eyes as someone for whom a sea journey was the default means of long distance travel, and carried a non-trivial risk of drowning. You could paraphrase Acts 27 to refer to road traffic accident or air-liner crash, and probably get an immediate emotional response from me that's closer to the author's intent, but at the cost of falsifying something. St Paul really did travel by sea, not by motorway. So we should say so.

On the other hand, if you're translating a metaphor, there's no 'real event' to be misdescribed. The language has been chosen specifically for its (then current) connotations. I think it is at least an arguable position that if attitudes have changed so significantly that the metaphor is positively misleading on a literal translation, a substitute metaphor which will provoke something closer to the original response can be the more faithful translation. There's an even stronger argument where the original words covers a range of meaning, for example, if "whatever-St-Paul-said-he-was" in Greek is a word that covers both what we would call a servant and what we could call a slave, then, in the absence of an English word with exactly that range, the translator has to make a choice. I don't think there's anything obviously wrong with choosing the one that's closest to what we think St Paul was trying to say.

For what it's worth, though, my personal preference would be that if Bible writers used slavery as a metaphor for our relationship to God, I'd rather have the translation reflect that, and read it in the light of my knowledge that slavery wasn't, to them, as outrageously evil as it appears to me. I'm all for moral equivalents being explored in sermons (haven't we all heard the Good Samaritan re-interpreted as a Good refugee/Muslim/skinhead/Tory by preachers trying to convey what they think the story meant?) but in the translation itself, I'd like to know what the original metaphor was and think it through myself.

You're going several steps beyond the arguably-legitimate re-phrasing of metaphors. You want the actual institution of owning people in the Bible to be called something else than 'slavery', because the culture at the time didn't see slavery as the evil thing we now believe it to be. But the institution that the text describes is something that I would call slavery. That the slave-owner, his neighbours, and possibly even (though we will never know) some of the slaves themselves saw him as a Father-figure doesn't change that fact that what he was actually doing is something that I think is evil. I know that my reaction is a modern one. I know that the word translated "slave" wouldn't instantly have proclaimed "unjustly oppressed!" to the original readers in the way that it does to me. However changing the word falsifies the text. The word "slave" isn't all connotation - it also means something factual, and the Biblical institution for the ownership of people is solidly within that class of facts. Refusing to use the best English word for the facts, on the grounds that our attitudes to those facts have shifted, would be a misrepresentation of what the text basically means, in the interests of engineering a supposedly similar moral and emotional reaction. No.

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Leaf
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Eliab: excellent post. [Overused]
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lilBuddha
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Eliab,

Your post does indeed run along the same lines I was attempting.*
With the exception of this bit.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:

- I don't think it is entirely self-serving. I'm open to the idea that the way saw slavery affected the ways in which they regulated it. The fact that (on one reading of the text) Hebrew slaves had to be released after a term, and foreigners didn't, probably does owe a lot to the idea that the Hebrew was a co-heir of the covenant, and the foreigner wasn't. And that did soften the institution of slavery, against the interests of the owners, at least as far as Hebrews were concerned.)

Enlightened self-interest is the best I can manage to apply to their motives. This is a feature of most culture's slavery codes that I've read. It simply makes practical sense to have a greater reprieve and better treatment of one's own.


*Though I am hesitant to admit this, given Leaf's approbation of your text whilst no mention of my similar efforts. She hates my style. [Frown] Or me. [Frown]
Or worse, ignored my posts. [Waterworks]

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
However changing the word falsifies the text. The word "slave" isn't all connotation - it also means something factual, and the Biblical institution for the ownership of people is solidly within that class of facts.

I think I disagree here.
There are perhaps two senses of the word 'slavery'. One sensu lato (broad sense) refers to any instance of labour relations where the conditions of release from employment are unfairly weighted towards the employer. (*) The other sensu stricto (narrow sense) refers to instances where the employee is property: that is, the employee is entirely at the disposal of the employer, to be bought and sold, or killed or injured, at the employer's sole discretion. In this sense slavery can be distinguished from serfdom and other forms of bonded labour.

I would say that when translating texts from another culture the narrow sense is to be preferred even if the broad sense would be accurate within its terms. If a culture is alien to us then exact description is preferable to broad stroke description.

If I understand him, Croesos has granted (whether for sake of argument or absolutely, he hasn't said) that the condition of Israelites is not narrow sense slavery, even if it is inegalitarian in the broad sense. He still maintains that the treatment of foreigners is strict sense slavery; I don't think the distinction can be maintained especially should the Israelite go through the motions of having their ear pierced.

In particular: you've asserted that slaves can be bought and sold in ancient Israel. As I pointed out before, there's nothing in the text that explicitly asserts this. In favour of the idea that they can be bought and sold is the existence of prohibitions on buying and selling slaves under certain circumstances. Against the idea that they can be bought and sold is the whole performance of having the willing slave's ear pierced because he wishes to stay with the master: the performance is meaningless if the slave can then be sold on the next day.

I believe we're looking at something a bit like a miniature clan, where the clan chieftain wields despotic power over the entire group. I think it's hard for us to envisage the social set-up simply because the closest anyone in our society gets to a household beyond the family is an au pair or live-in lodger.

I think Nigel M's claim that the institution is therefore benevolent, except as preferable to starvation or utter destitution, is not supportable.

(*) Hence, the scam where the owner of a mine or other place of employment isolated from civilization gives employees an upfront loan to cover travel to the mine. At the mine, the only sources of food and shelter are owned by the company and charge extortionate prices, meaning that it is impossible to pay off the loan. That would count as slavery sensu lato, even though the employee is not actually owned.

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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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Leaf
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quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Though I am hesitant to admit this, given Leaf's approbation of your text whilst no mention of my similar efforts. She hates my style. [Frown] Or me. [Frown]
Or worse, ignored my posts. [Waterworks]

Oh honey, don't be jelly. Your posts were good too. [Big Grin]
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Net Spinster
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The other sensu stricto (narrow sense) refers to instances where the employee is property: that is, the employee is entirely at the disposal of the employer, to be bought and sold, or killed or injured, at the employer's sole discretion. In this sense slavery can be distinguished from serfdom and other forms of bonded labour.

I think your sensu stricto is too narrow. The state or greater community quite frequently put limits on what a slave owner could do (for instance many southern states eventually didn't allow slave owners to emancipate their slaves within the state or to teach them to read or write).

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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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Three pages of defending the indefensible. Like most other peoples in their area and their time, the ancient Hebrews had the institution of slavery. Naturally enough they invoked God in support of the practice, like people always have.

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mr cheesy
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I'm not understanding the logic here: even if the ancient Hebrews did not have a system of trading of other people, they still clearly had a system of ownership of other people - from which they (let's call them "slave") could not resign.

There doesn't have to be a form of trading for it to be slavery.

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arse

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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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Hair splitting to avoid the obvious conclusion - a practice existed that in more enlightened times we see as abhorrent and God was invoked in its support. It's not unusual for moral and philosophical contortions to be required to maintain a very high view of Biblical inspiration. Frankly, I look at the OT Law and really, really wouldn't like to live in a country run according to it. Not because it'd stop me doing things I wanted to much, beyond bacon sandwiches and cheeseburgers, but because I wouldn't want to be part of a society that had such a brutal penal system, where religious deviation is punished as brutally as any crime of violence.

I really struggle with that Advent hymn which says "of old did give the law, in fear and majesty and awe", because I just can't believe the OT Law comes from God. Accepting it did would be a bit like discovering that your Father, who you'd thought was a great bloke, fun, caring, loving, was actually a mass murderer, and not only do you have to accept that, but you have to approve of his mass murders and agree that the victims deserved what he did to them.

I don't even try to do this any more.

[ 15. March 2016, 09:33: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]

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Might as well ask the bloody cat.

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Nick Tamen

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quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I really struggle with that Advent hymn which says "of old did give the law, in fear and majesty and awe", because I just can't believe the OT Law comes from God.

For me, that's where the lens of Jesus comes into play, both in his assertion that he came to fulfill the Law, and in his distillation of the Law into love God, love neighbor—and his expansive understanding of what that entails.

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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'm not understanding the logic here: even if the ancient Hebrews did not have a system of trading of other people, they still clearly had a system of ownership of other people - from which they (let's call them "slave") could not resign.

There doesn't have to be a form of trading for it to be slavery.

It doesn't have to be slavery to be unethical. Nor indeed does it have to be slavery to be a form of ownership from which other people cannot resign.
In the late eighteenth centuries and early nineteenth centuries women were unable to resign from marriage, and unable to own property in their own right. Technically speaking, they weren't owned as slaves, and one of the reasons it would be wrong to say that they were owned as slaves is that their husbands couldn't sell them, except in Thomas Hardy novels.
On the other hand, someone might call nineteenth century marriage slavery, not in the sense that they want to give an accurate picture of the legal position, but because they want to say that the ways in which it is objectionable are the ways in which slavery is or was objectionable.

I've been recurring to the distinction between slavery and serfdom, as a way of clarifying my argument. The word 'serfdom' only has the academic use. Nobody says some employment practice or marriage law is effectively serfdom as a way of condemning it.

I'm arguing that the Biblical institution isn't slavery only in the sense in which arguing whether it is or isn't serfdom is a sensible argument. In the sense in which you might refer to nineteenth century marriage as slavery, I'm not going to disagree.
If some gentleman in Virginia were to propose reviving the Biblical system and say that it's ok because it's not technically slavery, I would be quite happy to say that the technical arguments are entirely beside the point.

But I think the buying and selling bit is one reason this might be important. If we use the word 'slave' we assume that buying and selling happened. And I think that from an anthropological point of view - making an effort to understand and imagine the past - it is worth realising that may not be the situation described.
It may, as I've been said, be more like a despotic miniature clan system.

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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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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Net Spinster:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
[qb] The other sensu stricto (narrow sense) refers to instances where the employee is property/qb]

I think your sensu stricto is too narrow. The state or greater community quite frequently put limits on what a slave owner could do (for instance many southern states eventually didn't allow slave owners to emancipate their slaves within the state or to teach them to read or write).
I think I can adjust my definition to take that into account. The limits aren't there for the benefit of the slave (though they might be spuriously justified as a "not making them discontented with their lot" pseudo-benefit).

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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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Moo

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quote:
Originally posted by Net Spinster:
I think your sensu stricto is too narrow. The state or greater community quite frequently put limits on what a slave owner could do (for instance many southern states eventually didn't allow slave owners to emancipate their slaves within the state or to teach them to read or write).

This board is for discussion of the Bible, and this thread is for discussion of what the Bible says about slavery in ancient times. Discussing slavery in nineteenth century America muddies the water. If you want to discuss slavery in general, start a thread in Purgatory.

Moo, Kerygmania host

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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.

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Eliab
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm arguing that the Biblical institution isn't slavery only in the sense in which arguing whether it is or isn't serfdom is a sensible argument. In the sense in which you might refer to nineteenth century marriage as slavery, I'm not going to disagree.

That's helpful.

I think I'd parse the distinctions slightly differently to you (but let's see).

At one end of the scale is (A) absolute, unqualified ownership of people. We all agree that that's slavery.

Then there are (B) institutions for ownership recognised by law that are similar, but regulated in ways that do not change its essential character. I'd call that slavery as well, in a literal sense, and not merely by analogy to (A).

Next there's (C) a broad continuum of arrangements like serfdom, including the heavily regulated ownership of people, and the extensive control of people not recognised as ownership. I think I'd agree with you that at least the 'maximum six years' Biblical servitude is somewhere on this spectrum - it's ownership, but a restricted from of ownership. I'd still call it slavery, though. I think the features which it has in common with (A) and (B) justify that. There are other possible arrangements that I think are different enough that in some contexts I'd distinguish them, but I don't think there's a simple test. I can't think of any particular "can the owner do this?" question that is definitive in all cases.

Then there are (D) cases like your mine-owner example, which nominally are not instances of slavery. Calling these slavery (which I would do, if the exploitation is sufficiently great) is not to use a metaphor, but to say this amounts to slavery - it has the same practical effect, even if it's claimed not to be. De facto slavery, in other words.

Then there's (E) things like grossly unequal marriage which have features that clearly distinguish them from all the other arrangements discussed, but are, or can be, open to exploitation that can be described as analogous to slavery. We don't think that married women in recent British history were literally slaves, even if we know that they could sometimes be treated as slaves.


I would say that the OT seems to me to condone slavery in at least sense (B) with respect to foreigners and sense (C) with respect to Israelites (or male Israelites, depending on how the provisions are read). I think both are firmly within the usual English range of meaning of the word, and that use of it in translation is fair. I don't think that (A) is the only proper literal meaning of the word in English: and think that what the Bible describes is within the class of institutions that I would literally, not metaphorically or by analogy, call slavery.

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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"

Richard Dawkins

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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It doesn't have to be slavery to be unethical. Nor indeed does it have to be slavery to be a form of ownership from which other people cannot resign.

Yes it does.

quote:
In the late eighteenth centuries and early nineteenth centuries women were unable to resign from marriage, and unable to own property in their own right. Technically speaking, they weren't owned as slaves, and one of the reasons it would be wrong to say that they were owned as slaves is that their husbands couldn't sell them, except in Thomas Hardy novels.
a) not the same and b) irrelevant to the topic of biblical slavery.

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arse

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
[QB] [QUOTE]In the late eighteenth centuries and early nineteenth centuries women were unable to resign from marriage, and unable to own property in their own right. Technically speaking, they weren't owned as slaves, and one of the reasons it would be wrong to say that they were owned as slaves is that their husbands couldn't sell them, except in Thomas Hardy novels.
a) not the same and b) irrelevant to the topic of biblical slavery.
a) Not exactly the same to be sure. Are you really saying that eighteenth century marriage couldn't be described in such a way that, if you didn't know what the person was talking about, you'd say that looks a bit like slavery?
b) It's relevant to whether there are things that could be loosely described as ownership, from which one party cannot resign, that aren't slavery.

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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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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
a) Not exactly the same to be sure. Are you really saying that eighteenth century marriage couldn't be described in such a way that, if you didn't know what the person was talking about, you'd say that looks a bit like slavery?

I think eighteenth century marriage is different in a number of ways. First, it is true that women were often held in something that looked like slavery but that was not the nature of the relationship. Loving mutual married relationships existed and - shock, horror - people breaking up from each other also happened. I'm not even sure that a woman who ran away from her abusive husband would have necessarily been brought back to him as his chattel.

I accept that this understanding of marriage is not the same as the free decision made by adults that we understand today, but I think it is a mistake to compare it to any form of slavery per say.

The essential quality of being a slave is that of being owned and controlled by someone else who then can compel you to work to his will. I don't accept that this is an essential quality of the English notion of marriage in the 17 century.

And although the ancient Hebrews clearly had a different understanding of marriage from 17 century England, it seems fairly clear to me that they recognised a difference between being a wife and being a slave. Hence the difference in status of Hagar and Sarah.


quote:
b) It's relevant to whether there are things that could be loosely described as ownership, from which one party cannot resign, that aren't slavery.
Well it only matter if one wants to try to minimise the brutal nature of slavery practiced by the ancient Hebrews. Which had almost nothing in common with 17 century marriage arrangements in England.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Are you really saying that eighteenth century marriage couldn't be described in such a way that, if you didn't know what the person was talking about, you'd say that looks a bit like slavery?

I think eighteenth century marriage is different in a number of ways. First, it is true that women were often held in something that looked like slavery but that was not the nature of the relationship. Loving mutual married relationships existed and - shock, horror - people breaking up from each other also happened. I'm not even sure that a woman who ran away from her abusive husband would have necessarily been brought back to him as his chattel.
I'm not sure that a Biblical slave who ran away from his or her master would necessarily have been brought back. Deuteronomy 23:15.

The Biblical set-up allows for slaves who want to remain slaves once their time is up to tell the priest that they love their master and would like to have their ear nailed to the doorpost. And probably some slaves had sexual relationships with their masters and they fell in love with each other. I wouldn't conclude from that the 'nature of the relationship' wasn't brutal.

quote:
The essential quality of being a slave is that of being owned and controlled by someone else who then can compel you to work to his will. I don't accept that this is an essential quality of the English notion of marriage in the 17 century.
The wife promises to obey the husband at the wedding ceremony. The husband is allowed to enforce that with violence if he chooses.
I'm not saying that C17th marriage was slavery. Indeed, my point is that although it had slavery-like features it wasn't slavery. But someone could describe it in such a way that it sounds plausibly like slavery.

Concrete relationships don't have essential features or not. They just have features. Only definitions have essential features. From the fact that being owned by your husband isn't an essential feature of the definition of marriage it doesn't follow that being owned by your husband is not a concrete feature of marriage in any given society.
Talking about essential features of relationships seems to me to imply that there's a gulf between slavery and everything that's not slavery. Whereas I think there's a continuum. There are a lot of ways in which someone could be said loosely to own somebody. Slavery is where ownership extends to the owned person's other relationships. If the master has the power to separate the slave from spouse or children then it's slavery. And the Biblical masters, however brutal the relationship, did not have that power.

quote:
And although the ancient Hebrews clearly had a different understanding of marriage from 17 century England, it seems fairly clear to me that they recognised a difference between being a wife and being a slave. Hence the difference in status of Hagar and Sarah.
Exodus 21:7-11 seems to me to blur the lines in that it implies that being sold as a slave is equivalent to being sold as a wife in the case of a woman. And so do phenomena like second marriages, concubinage, and so on imply that the lines are a bit more fuzzy than you're making out.

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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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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
At one end of the scale is (A) absolute, unqualified ownership of people. We all agree that that's slavery.

Then there are (B) institutions for ownership recognised by law that are similar, but regulated in ways that do not change its essential character. I'd call that slavery as well, in a literal sense, and not merely by analogy to (A).

Next there's (C) a broad continuum of arrangements like serfdom, including the heavily regulated ownership of people, and the extensive control of people not recognised as ownership. I think I'd agree with you that at least the 'maximum six years' Biblical servitude is somewhere on this spectrum - it's ownership, but a restricted from of ownership. I'd still call it slavery, though. I think the features which it has in common with (A) and (B) justify that.

I suppose if you don't think there ought to be any particular feature that separates slavery from not-slavery I don't have a lot of room to argue.

The distinction I'm using is I think pretty similar to the one put forward by Croesos, between owning the person themselves (slavery proper) and owning the person's labour (serfdom). It's not unique to me or the side of the argument. Now I'd agree that that distinction itself isn't clear, and there's no one feature you can use to determine which side of the line an institution is on. And I'd probably agree that there are features of the Biblical account you could use for either side of the line. But I'd say that the preponderance of features, and the more weighty (and I think the right not to be separated from one's spouse unless your spouse wishes it is one of the more weighty), lie on the serfdom side.

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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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LeRoc

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I find myself to be largely neutral in this discussion. Without having in-depth knowledge, my answer to "is the modern word 'slavery' an accurate translation of what is being described in the Bible?" would probably be "in some ways yes, in other ways no".

I would like to add something though. To me, it would be interesting to ask this question to present-day descendants of modern slaves.

I have no way of knowing if any of the people posting on this thread are Afro-American. I happen to hang out with Afro-Brazilians a lot, and one thing I've learned from them is that the word 'slave' (escravo) can never mean the same to me as it means to them.

I'm not talking about dictionary definitions here; I'm talking about a whole range of emotional, social and political associations they have with this word that can't be completely expressed in words, and that I'll never fully be able to grasp.

So, to me an important question would be: do modern Afro-Americans, Afro-Brazilians etc. see a connection at this level between the modern word 'slave' and what they're reading in the Bible? Without wanting to speak for them, I do think that the answer to this would be a rather clear "yes". There is a reason why Bob Marley called his most important album Exodus.

I don't think this validates or invalidates anything that has been said on this thread, but for me it is important to take this into account.

[ 16. March 2016, 21:39: Message edited by: LeRoc ]

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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)

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mdijon
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
So, to me an important question would be: do modern Afro-Americans, Afro-Brazilians etc. see a connection at this level between the modern word 'slave' and what they're reading in the Bible? Without wanting to speak for them, I do think that the answer to this would be a rather clear "yes". There is a reason why Bob Marley called his most important album Exodus.

Absolutely the case. There is a strong thread of biblical preaching in the African American church on this that likely began with some of the first enslaved Christians, was first documented for David George and carries on through to Martin Luther King (who often preached on Exodus) through to the present day.

Ira Berlin is good on this and buried somewhere in one of his books is an account of slaves converted to Christianity so that their masters could make them learn about the verses telling slaves to obey their masters. But they also read about Moses.

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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon

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mr cheesy
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:


The Biblical set-up allows for slaves who want to remain slaves once their time is up to tell the priest that they love their master and would like to have their ear nailed to the doorpost. And probably some slaves had sexual relationships with their masters and they fell in love with each other. I wouldn't conclude from that the 'nature of the relationship' wasn't brutal.

This is the weakest argument I've ever heard - which seems to be the basis of this thread; namely that Hebrew practices of slavery should not be called slavery because it wasn't actually that bad. Look, the text says that some slaves loved their masters!

Well woopie do.

First we have no idea whether any slaves ever took advantage of such rules. It seems entirely possible that these were nothing other than pious wishful thinking.

Second, slaves "loving their masters so much that they don't want to leave" would itself be an indication of a level of brutalisation and lack of personhood that the slave has become so institutionalised that they can't cope with life away from their captor.

Third, the slaves very largely didn't write the text - those in power who saw absolutely nothing wrong with the practice wrote the text. And given the national and religious narrative within which they're living (which was of repeated liturgical references to their own captive/slavery myth), then it'd be rather strange if they didn't tell themselves that they were better than those Egyptian and Babylonian bastards who kept us in captivity. Even where the slaves themselves have a voice, they've fairly clearly been sanitised so we've got very little to go on as to their true feelings about the situation.

We have very little to go on other than the religious texts which are by their very nature biased.

But we do know about human nature and we do know about other situations of slavery and unequal power relationships. I dare say it would be possible to find texts from the US South (from the Romans and elsewhere) where the slave-owners liked to tell everyone else that slavery wasn't that bad, that it was better for black men to be slaves and that look, slaves love their owners and stay with them even after they're free.

Yes, I know that none of this proves anything about the ancient Hebrew practices. But it also shows that we can't just assume that words are accurate nor that the texts which belong to our own religious heritage describe a benign situation - on the basis that the loving deity we believe in would never allow "full" slavery. That's bollocks.

quote:
The wife promises to obey the husband at the wedding ceremony. The husband is allowed to enforce that with violence if he chooses.
I'm not saying that C17th marriage was slavery. Indeed, my point is that although it had slavery-like features it wasn't slavery. But someone could describe it in such a way that it sounds plausibly like slavery.

Well sorry I don't agree. There was no obligation to treat a wife like a slave in 17 century England - and unlike 21 century England, people were directly acquainted with what slavery really was. To equate the two is bollocks.

Life for women in 17 century England was brutal at times. But it was not even slightly similar to the conditions experienced by slaves locked into the transatlantic slave trade system.

We can telescope from this distance and try to bring in various groups which had shitty lives at the time, but the reality is still that slaves were slaves and married women were not.

quote:
Concrete relationships don't have essential features or not. They just have features. Only definitions have essential features. From the fact that being owned by your husband isn't an essential feature of the definition of marriage it doesn't follow that being owned by your husband is not a concrete feature of marriage in any given society.
No, but you were talking about a specific relationship - marriage in 17 century England - and saying it had features which could be described as slavery. It didn't. The two things existed at the same time and there was a clear distinction between the two.

quote:
Talking about essential features of relationships seems to me to imply that there's a gulf between slavery and everything that's not slavery.
Absolutely. There was, and continues to be, a clear gulf between slavery and everything that's not slavery.

quote:
Whereas I think there's a continuum. There are a lot of ways in which someone could be said loosely to own somebody. Slavery is where ownership extends to the owned person's other relationships.
Well sorry I don't think there is a continuum. There were very bad and slightly better forms of slavery, so I can accept that there is a continuum within the understanding of what was slavery. But suggesting that the edges were so fuzzy as to merge the boundaries between what slavery was and what another form of free relationship was is, IMO, bollocks.

quote:
If the master has the power to separate the slave from spouse or children then it's slavery. And the Biblical masters, however brutal the relationship, did not have that power.
I don't accept that definition. But anyway, the bible characters do not have a great record of honouring previous spouse relationships, in keeping parents with children (in fact, I'm not sure it is possible to say that children were not taken into slavery when defeated enemies were. Hence I'm not sure it is even possible to make the argument that familial relationships were respected).

quote:
Exodus 21:7-11 seems to me to blur the lines in that it implies that being sold as a slave is equivalent to being sold as a wife in the case of a woman. And so do phenomena like second marriages, concubinage, and so on imply that the lines are a bit more fuzzy than you're making out.
Again, I've already agreed that there is a continuum within the definition of slaves. If we're talking about a man selling his daughter to another man for him to do with whatever he wants (except selling her on to foreigners), then that's still slavery.

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arse

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The Biblical set-up allows for slaves who want to remain slaves once their time is up to tell the priest that they love their master and would like to have their ear nailed to the doorpost. And probably some slaves had sexual relationships with their masters and they fell in love with each other. I wouldn't conclude from that the 'nature of the relationship' wasn't brutal.

This is the weakest argument I've ever heard - which seems to be the basis of this thread; namely that Hebrew practices of slavery should not be called slavery because it wasn't actually that bad. Look, the text says that some slaves loved their masters!

Well woopie do.

You've completely misunderstood.

You wrote that 18th century marriage wasn't slavery because some wives loved their husbands.
quote:
Loving mutual married relationships existed
Well woopie do.

You can see that would be a weak and useless argument if it were used about slavery. But you thought it's a good argument when used about marriage?

Just to make things clear I wrote:
quote:
quote:
I wouldn't conclude from that the 'nature of the relationship' wasn't brutal.

That meant I am not using your 'they had a loving relationship so it was free' argument. I am rejecting that argument, as applied to slavery, and therefore I am rejecting your argument as applied to early modern marriage along with it.

quote:
There was no obligation to treat a wife like a slave in 17 century England - and unlike 21 century England, people were directly acquainted with what slavery really was. To equate the two is bollocks.

Life for women in 17 century England was brutal at times. But it was not even slightly similar to the conditions experienced by slaves locked into the transatlantic slave trade system.

Well woopie do.

There was no obligation to make marriage as bad as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Therefore it was completely different.

quote:
But suggesting that the edges were so fuzzy as to merge the boundaries between what slavery was and what another form of free relationship
Not by any stretch of the imagination was C18 marriage a free relationship.

Let me summarise what I think are the logical consequences of your position.
There is a great gulf between slavery and free relationships. Yes?
Therefore if something isn't slavery it is a free relationship. Yes?
Therefore, no matter how exploitative it looks, if it isn't slavery it's a free relationship, and you can't object to it or legislate to regulate it, on the grounds that one side is less free.

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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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mr cheesy
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I think we're verging on a discussion about slavery not the bible - but in brief I'd say the difference is that slavery is not capable of being reformed, so it should be resisted wherever it is found. Marriage, on the other hand, is capable of reform, so where the darkest exploitative practices are addressed (and yes, I don't accept that because marriage is a good thing that all practices can or should be condoned) it can and should be kept.

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arse

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Some feminist analysis of 18th century marriage would consider it chattel slavery, I don't think it is a given that we don't consider it slavery. In that analysis, it is the status of the wife as property, rather than the quality if the relationship or the existence of comercial trading, that is used to define the condition of slavery.

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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell

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agingjb
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Posted this, probably inappropriately, in the Styx thread. Better, if anywhere, here.

I expect that this has all been thrashed out, but I feel that slavery in the time of the Exodus and slavery in the early Roman Empire may have different contexts, at least in sense of what we can find out from a diversity of sources.

And that might imply a difference between the moral force of the Old and New Testament mentions of slavery.

As with dietary commands, I would be more interested to start with, and build on, the implicit recommendations (if any) of the New Testament.

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A new weekend and I see quite a few points made. I think I can group my responses in themes to answer the main points being made, but will have to wait for another time to look at some others.

First I will deal with the 'benefactor' point. I agree that wasn't a good term to use (thanks for the link, by the way) as it, too, has a denotation that implies an application of an agency outside of a norm – someone who could be consider to be engaged in supportive action over and above a baseline adopted by society in general, whereas the Redeemer activity was included in the matrix of the norm in ANE Israel. I'll come back to worldview norms a bit later.

The definition of slavery may be running the death of a thousand cuts. I skimmed back over this thread and the one linked to in the OP and came across these defining moments for slavery:
* Ownership
* Perpetual (or indefinite) servitude
* Brutal treatment
* People being bought and sold without their consent

Ownership
Much is being made of the concept of ownership and an equation is being drawn: Ownership of people = slavery. So let's look at that idea.

I warned earlier that this needed to be treated carefully. If you asked an Israelite what he owned, he might reply, “I own my wife, my children, this house, the courtyard, those animals, and that piece of land over there.” If you then asked him who owned him he would reply, “My clan leader, of course. I am responsible to him and he is my first port of call if I fall on hard times and need a Redeemer.”

If you then go to the clan leader and ask who owns him, he could reply, “My tribal leader. I am responsible to him and he sorts out any land issues that may arise.” You can go up the hierarchical chain to the highest leader (King, High King / emperor...) and ask the same question, and he would reply, “I an owned by the god [insert name]. I am responsible to him and he protects me.”

This bi-lateral series of covenantal relationships formed the paramount social governance regime of the Ancient Near East, as it still does in parts of the world today. Terms and conditions applied; loyalty was enjoined on both sides: The junior owed loyalty by way of provision (labour, taxes, tributes, warriors), the senior by way of protection in the event the junior was threatened by enemies. I'm not convinced that the full implications of this are being understood.

Lev. 25:55 refers to Israelites belonging to God as – what? Slaves? Servants? The noun eved is being used here too. Does not this imply that ultimately they belong to God as property, perpetually owned?

I'm stressing all this because there never could be singular proprietorial ownership under this regime under God; every person was owned and every person owed. It would stretch the semantic domain of the English term 'slavery' to a point where it becomes too thin to be of any use if we want to include that concept of ownership into the definition of the texts. The norm was that all unmarried females were owned by their fathers, wives by their husbands, children by their fathers, men by their elders, and so on. An Elder could call on the tribute of his clan just as much as a master could call on the work of his worker / slave. So although we may indeed not be surprised if “covenant-minded Israelites saw slavery in terms of a mutually-beneficial covenant between unequal parties”, we should also not be surprised that they saw all relationships in those terms. I doubt that the English term 'slave' can be seen to stretch far enough without its elastic snapping.

Perpetual (or indefinite) servitude
I think I have covered much of what I wanted to say on this in earlier posts. The passage in Lev. 25:46 refers to resident aliens being “property for all time” (Lexham English Bible), or “slaves for life” (NIV). In the context of Lev. 25 – the record of cases falling out from the Sabbath principle – this particular ruling is limited to the resident aliens (i.e. not just any foreigner), and is mandated (the slave could be taken but if so, he or she must be retained – this to make sense of the modal shift in the Hebrew verbs). Sense therefore has to be made of why an Israelite might under certain circumstances take into his house someone from the resident alien community, but once so taken he could not release that person. Why that restriction? It removes any freedom the Israelite would have had to let the alien go at any time. The ruling is restrictive, not permissive.

I could limit my stand to that and say that text offers no support either way to slavery. I have gone a bit further, though, by suggesting – based on the behaviour mandated in other texts – that this restriction could be because of Israel's obligations to resident aliens. I'm sure resident aliens - migrants for whatever reason (war, famine, plague) from their homeland did no better or worse than migrants today do. Some do very well in their new country (and see Lev. 25:47, “In the case where a resident alien who is with you prospers...”), many do OK, but some find life a real struggle. In Israel there was scope to assist those who could not make it. Perpetual servitude does not imply slavery in the modern sense in those circumstances.

Brutal treatment
I made the point before that beatings were not specific to slavery and could not be taken as an indicator of it. The issue now has become one more of gradation and Exodus 21 has been referred to in this regard, as has Deut. 25 in respect of due process.

In regard to Ex. 21, which we only began to dip into on the other thread (linked to in the OP), we are again in the territory of judicial rulings on specific cases, just as with Leviticus 25. The section from Ex. 21:12-14 picks up on the “Do not murder” principle, just as vv.15 and 17 apply “Honour your father and mother” to cases of assault and shame, and v.16 applies the “Do not steal” principle to a case of kidnapping. Verse 18 starts a mini-section dealing with issues affecting neighbours and in the context of the overall section it would appear that this is an attempt by judges to apply the “Do not covet your neighbour's [belongings].” This seems reasonable, given the reasons for rulings here, which have to do with the impact on a person's loss. For example, “pay for the injured person’s loss of time” (21:19), “he has suffered the loss” (21:21). Coveting in this respect is not just desiring something in one's own heart, it is also the activities that result in loss to someone.

Just as the murder principle required working out in the case of a killing without premeditation, so the coveting-neighbour principle required working out in cases where someone suffered loss (probably both time and income). The point to note, again, is what is not in view in these cases. Questions relating to killing are dealt with under the “Do not murder” principle (vv. 12-14). Vv. 18ff are dealing with loss. So, for example, vv.18f does not bother to deal with an instance where a neighbour dies because that is covered elsewhere. The issue at hand is only about compensation for survivable injuries. Equally, vv.20f makes simple reference to the death of a servant as being subject to mandatory vengeance (leaving it at that – again reference back to the “Do not murder” case law applies), but focusses on the issue of applying compensation rules.

At no point in this mini-section does the court make rulings on the degree of injury in terms of “Thou shalt not beat thy servant” any more than it does so in the case of someone striking a neighbour - “Thou shalt not get into a pub fight...” It was not the purpose of the case before the court to do so; the cases requiring judgement were about different issues. It is, therefore, not appropriate to demand more of the texts than they were intended to give.

I could wish, for example, that the bible outlawed drunkenness, but it doesn’t make that ruling so overtly. Even in the narrative of Noah's drunken episode Noah is not censored for being out of his skull; instead judgement is made on the behaviour of one of his sons. So also with slavery in the passages we have seen. At best there is a description of a relationship (and as others have pointed out upstream, mere description is not the same thing as support), but mainly there is a different focus.

The point was also made that even if all this is right, then it is still valid for us in our modern era to judge the texts and apply our own judgement of right and wrong. This is bringing us into the realm of authorial intention again and the standing of the author, which is a fascinating subject in its own right. I can't do justice to it here, but should at least make it clear that I do not see that the judgement calls made from a different time and place are valid without first understanding the texts on their own terms. Too much is at risk. In a sense this is a corollary of the famous Intentional Fallacy, though here with the reader taking the place of the author.

People being bought and sold without their consent
As with the concept of ownership, this is not as simple as it seems. Modern concepts of buying and selling do not overlap nicely with concepts of exchange in the ANE. This post is already over long so I will have to limit things to just this: the Redeemer concept already makes the point that there were 'givens' in the culture that we do not map to now.

The role of a Redeemer was a given function. It's existence is assumed in the bible, which doesn't bother to waste time describing it, or mandating it per se. The texts start from the basis of its giveness and work from there to apply it to given circumstances. That's also why I agree that 'benefactor' doesn't really work; people with the role of a Redeemer didn't seem to question its rationale, if they did have an objection it was around its application in certain circumstances (see e.g. the tale of the two Redeemers in Ruth chapters 3 and 4).

Worldview – again
I promised I would come back to the worldview thing.

Worldview determines the underlying conditions appropriate to the production of a text. Israel was part of the Eastern Mediterranean traditions from Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine and Egypt, and its texts were informed by that cognitive environment. Later Israel had to react to other environments (Imperial Greece, for example), but the biblical texts remain intrinsically semitic in language and thought.

The social and linguistic environment is informed – whether consciously or not – by the worldviews of the authors. The identification of the worldview that provided the key framework within which people lived, moved, and had their being, is a major move in securing valid interpretations.

One starting point in interpretation, then, is to seek to identify the social and linguistic frames that formed the schema within which an author communicated. These frames are an important part of the context of a message. An interpreter should try to put him- or herself into the shoes of the author and the first audience.

If the English terms 'slave(s)' / 'slavery' were understood by readers of the biblical texts along the lines: “the conditions and behaviours appropriate to the concept of work as informed by the covenantal worldview of hierarchical relations between God and his created subjects, and between those subjects under God, as also regulated in part by the application of fundamental principles of behaviour appropriate to life under that God's rule, and as manifested as appropriate to the competencies of the worker” then I would be happy to say that the bible supports slavery. Somehow, though, I doubt the typical English reader brings that definition to the text.

I noted at the top of this post that there are other points to be considered, e.g., work without pay, map between the justification of slavery in modern times and the challenges taken here, 'reading-in' to texts versus 'plain meaning', the role of the NT in all this, and more. Time permitting I'll be able to respond accordingly.

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Lyda*Rose

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I've found all your information very informative, and all in all it would be a good thing if people delving into the OT had this information. But you still haven't persuaded me that abandoning the English word "slave" would solve the lack of understanding. We just don't live in the ancient world with its conventions, so any word would have misleading connotations if we didn't know the background. We have to do the work to understand it on its own terms. I'd no more abandon the term "marriage" just because the institution today is so different from that in the Bible. I'd just try to understand marriage in Biblical times, and tell myself firmly that things were different back then.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
The thing is, in v.40 the text runs: “As a hired worker (= sakir), as an alien (= toshav) that may be with you, until the year of Jubilee he may work with you.”

That phrase “with you” doesn't refer to the non-Israelites generally across the land. It refers to that class that had come into service in a house. It is asking the Israelites to take a fellow citizen into service (with you) in the same way that an alien or hired worker is in service (also with you).

This would seem to completely undermine your argument. A resident alien attached to the household is "toshab guwr", a phrase we see in your previously cited verse Lev. 25:6 and elsewhere. The modifier "guwr" is absent from Lev. 25:40, which simply contains the term "toshab" unmodified. The part translated into English is the semantically unrelated "hayah `im", meaning roughly "[he shall] exist/be with" you and clearly refers back to the indentured Israelite subject of the verse, not the toshab and sakiyr to which he is being compared.

Or to summarize, Hebrew has a way to distinguish between resident aliens (towshab) and resident aliens connected with the household (towshab guwr), and despite the fact that the author of Leviticus 25 makes this distinction elsewhere, he deliberately does not do so in verse 40. From this it seems fairly certain the verse is instructing its reader to treat his indentured Israelite like a paid worker or resident alien generally, not resident alien that has been specifically attached to his household.

I should note that towshav guwr does not necessarily mean ebed either. Household guests, which are subject to the laws of hospitality, could also fall under this classification.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Taking that “with you” phrase there and also in the context of the whole mini-section helpfully delimited linguistically by the particle ki + verb means we can't really hive off the understanding that this judgement is dealing with Israelites as workers from aliens as workers.

We certainly can, given that the "with you" in this section (hayah `im) is linguistically so different from the "with you" usually associated with resident aliens (guwr) and does not refer back to resident aliens but instead to indentured Israelites.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Lifelong servitude was aimed to be a protection and those taking aliens into their household were being warned that once in, always in; the Father could not wantonly abandon his responsibilities to the destitute alien. The covenant worldview drives this here, too.

I see little that is involuntary about this arrangement. I'm sure that for the typical destitute alien Plan A would not have been to become dependent on another. Ideally he would have done fine on his own account in Israel. Plan C, though, is to die. Faced with that option, Plan B is a better alternative and who is to say that he would not voluntarily have chosen that as the option?

Any arrangement where you owe someone your labor and can't quit qualifies as involuntary servitude. As noted elsewhere not all forms of involuntary servitude constitute slavery, but a lifelong condition of involuntary servitude (and one that is meant to be lifelong, by design) almost always falls into that category. In other words, if you can quit (even if the alternative is starvation) it's not involuntary servitude. If you can't, it is.

I should also note that the existence of day laborers (sakiyr), attested by this chapter of Leviticus, would seem to defy the notion that having no land is an automatic sentence of death by starvation.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Being owned as property can apply, I agree. Clearly the noun achuzzah used in the Hebrew scriptures applies to non-material entities (land, burial sites, house, towns / cities, the entire earth, and so on).

Perhaps you could explain what you're getting at here. Everything you mention would seem to be material entities, insofar as they are physical objects we can physically interact with.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
In Lev 25:45-46 the same term is applied to the alien.

The question I could only point to so far in passing, though, is what is meant by the term in question (the achuzzah noun). This is used about 66 times in the OT, predominately referring to the land that had been promised to the patriarchs. This was given as a place of security to be owned in the sense of stewarded, because the land ultimately belonged to God. There is a difference of quality between this understanding and that of an unlimited, total, ownership. I counted no fewer than 25 instances of the noun in Lev. 25, a chapter that is keen to protect this understanding of land as property on behalf of God. Use of it is regulated by the Sabbath principle and the land ultimately belongs to God (25:23 - “...the land is mine...”).

Now another understanding of owned property could be in sight in respect of the alien in chapter 25. I would suggest, though, given the flow and context of the regulations in that chapter, and the concern for the alien, that the more likely interpretation is one that accords with the understanding of land as given above. [/QB]

This doesn't seem to be a real distinction. Virtually all forms of property involve regulation. In fact, one could argue that property itself exists only because of regulation. I'm not sure it makes sense to argue that someone doesn't really "own" a car since they're only allowed to operate it in accordance with traffic laws.

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I'm not sure that a Biblical slave who ran away from his or her master would necessarily have been brought back. Deuteronomy 23:15.

The Biblical set-up allows for slaves who want to remain slaves once their time is up to tell the priest that they love their master and would like to have their ear nailed to the doorpost. And probably some slaves had sexual relationships with their masters and they fell in love with each other. I wouldn't conclude from that the 'nature of the relationship' wasn't brutal.

That only applies to indentured Israelites. As I've noted previously, the OT seems to describe two different conditions: a system similar to indentured servitude for fellow Israelites, outright slavery for everyone else. A lot of these "the Bible didn't really condone slavery" arguments consist of an elaborate effort to pretend that only indentured servitude part existed. (e.g. everything posted by Nigel M to date)

[ 21. March 2016, 19:06: Message edited by: Crœsos ]

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Jolly Jape
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It seems to me that the OT Israelites had a pretty modern understanding of slavery, (ie it is always bad, unjust, oppressive, dehumanising) when they, as a nation, were enslaved , ie, in the Egyptian captivity. Equally, they are somewhat more equivocal when it was they who became the slaveholders. Nevertheless, the strictures against the ill-treatment of slaves does suggest that, at least amongst the lawmaking (and, hence, literate) class, there was a strong desire to mitigate its worst excesses.

But the language used suggests that no-one was in any doubt that the Egyptian captivity sort of slavery was, in essence, the same type of social institution as that practised by Israelite slaveholders.

In fairness, Nigel does have a point is saying that the language of slavery is also used of the relationship between Israelites and YHWH, but to suggest that the basic concept of slavery as something from which it was desirable to be rescued and redeemed did not exist in OT thought seems, to me, to be completely wrong. For one thing, it is a central motif, not only of the Prophets, or even of the NT which sprang from those Hebrew roots, but of every subsequent Christian emancipation movement which takes its inspiration from the Exodus.

So is the OT complicit in maintaining slavery as a social system? Yes, but that isn't the only narrative at work. It also carries within its text the subversive message that it is the birthright of all God's children to live free.

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Much is being made of the concept of ownership and an equation is being drawn: Ownership of people = slavery. So let's look at that idea.

OK – I’m with you on the general point that an ancient Israelite probably did see his domestic, social, national and spiritual relationships are part of a hierarchy of bi-lateral, unequal, covenants. I’m not convinced that all your details are right (there’s textual evidence of some sort of clan structure, but is there really evidence of a single, powerful leader at tribal level?) but the general point seems sound to me.

So yes, he may have seen the relationship he had with his ‘slave’ as similar in principle, the same category of thing, as that of his king to a high-ranking elder. He may even have used the same words to express those relationships.

But they were different. Actually, in reality, different. By way of illustration, His Holiness the Pope is famously “the servant of the servants of the Lord”, but no one is going to call Francis and ask him to do their laundry. He just isn’t a servant in that sense. I don’t say that the title is appropriate – I have no doubt that the present Pope and his recent predecessors saw their role as one of genuine service – but “servant” applied to a powerful man, however gracious, isn’t the same thing as “servant” applied to a menial.

I don’t think you escape the implications of “ownership” of a person in a lowly condition in long term involuntary servitude, but citing examples of “ownership” of persons of real status, power and autonomy, and saying that they are the same sort of thing. They just aren’t.

Evidence for that: if you’d asked an ancient Israelite if he wanted to be “free” of his tribe’s ownership, he’d probably have decked you – that was his identity. If you’d asked his king if he wanted to be “free” of his God’s ownership, we would at the very least have loudly repudiated the idea as blasphemy. But ‘slaves’ absolutely did want to be free. All the texts point to ‘slavery’ as an unwelcome condition, limiting it significantly for fellow Israelites, and granting freedom any ‘slave’ who was sufficiently dishonoured or injured in breach of the law. While there may have been cases where some ‘slaves’ didn’t want freedom (though how often that happened, and how genuine it was, we cannot know), the assumption is that most ‘slaves’ didn’t want to be ‘slaves’. That’s not the case for the other forms of ‘ownership’ you cite, and it’s significant.

quote:
Sense therefore has to be made of why an Israelite might under certain circumstances take into his house someone from the resident alien community, but once so taken he could not release that person. Why that restriction? It removes any freedom the Israelite would have had to let the alien go at any time. The ruling is restrictive, not permissive.
But this is not so, as is evidenced by the fact that the law could compel the release of slaves. The compilers of the law quite clearly knew that as a general rule, slaves wanted freedom. If the owner does the slave a grievous wrong, that would be severely punished if done to a free person, the compensation owed to a slave is to free him.

quote:
I made the point before that beatings were not specific to slavery and could not be taken as an indicator of it.
Yes, but you don’t answer the point that the beating of slaves was governed by very different rules to the punishment beatings of others.

Also, I don’t think your point-by-point approach really works here. You say ‘ownership doesn’t equal slavery – other people were owned’, and ‘brutality doesn’t equal slavery – other people were subjected to violence’, and even if both of those are true, it doesn’t help you. Because ownership enforced by legal violence against an unwilling person who is required to work DOES equal slavery – or at any rate is absolutely within the usual definition of that word. The combination of factors matters here.

quote:
Worldview determines the underlying conditions appropriate to the production of a text. […] The social and linguistic environment is informed – whether consciously or not – by the worldviews of the authors. The identification of the worldview that provided the key framework within which people lived, moved, and had their being, is a major move in securing valid interpretations. […] An interpreter should try to put him- or herself into the shoes of the author and the first audience.
Up to a point, yes. But there’s a tension between conveying the facts, and conveying attitudes, if you’re translating for an audience whose attitudes are different.

No one (I think) is disputing that if you’d asked slave owners at any stage in history about their relationship with their slaves, they’d have said something like: “Yes, I own him, but that’s OK because: that’s the way the world works/we won/race/he’s unfit for freedom/covenant/the work needs doing/God wills it…”.

And no one (I think) is disputing that those are all bad reasons. We don’t think like that any more. We can’t think like that.

So you can call someone owned for one of those reasons “a slave” and convey something about their actual status, at the price of introducing a sense of moral revulsion the original audience would not have had, OR you can call them a “worker” or “employee” to avoid the visceral response, at the cost of misrepresenting the facts.

Sometimes a translator is fortunate enough that there is a specific technical term for the institution being described that is accurate but not emotive. Translations from the Icelandic sagas often use “thrall”, for example, a word taken directly from the original Norse, and generally understood in English as a historical term, but not often used for the general condition of slavery. Was a ‘thrall’ a slave? Well, yes, but the translator can convey the status without making (or denying) that explicit identification. That’s not an option (as far as I know) for Biblical translators – we don’t have a specific history-word in English for “slave in Biblical culture” – the word that we use to refer to slavery in the ancient world is ‘slave’, which has become the general term.

I’m all in favour of a sense of historical empathy which acknowledges that other times and cultures can see things very differently. I think that’s the antidote to the ‘connotations’ point, not changing the language to refer to someone who plainly was not an employee in the modern English sense in language that suggests he was.

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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"

Richard Dawkins

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Nigel M
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# 11256

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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
...to summarize, Hebrew has a way to distinguish between resident aliens (towshab) and resident aliens connected with the household (towshab guwr), and despite the fact that the author of Leviticus 25 makes this distinction elsewhere, he deliberately does not do so in verse 40. From this it seems fairly certain the verse is instructing its reader to treat his indentured Israelite like a paid worker or resident alien generally, not resident alien that has been specifically attached to his household.

I agree that a resident alien (toshav) does not always have to be an eved. Aliens could be present in the land among Israelites and could be doing very well for themselves. But Lev. 25:40 is dependent on v.39, where an Israelite falls into poverty and becomes indentured. He comes under the responsibility of another, in this case the debtee. He is to be treated like the hired worker, like the alien, and not subjected to oppressive work (that concatenation of eved related terminology at the close of v.39). The implication must be that the indentured Israelite is in the household until the seventh year at the latest, and also that he should be treated positively in the same manner as the hired worker and alien in the same circumstances – i.e. in the household and protected by other laws.

The terminology doesn't really make a difference. We have a few different phrases in use in this chapter: in v.35 the term is ger wetoshav, in v.40 it is just toshav. Later in v.45 we have hatoshavim hagarim. Back in v.6 the phrase is toshav [plus a 2ms suffix] hagarim.

It's also worth noting that hired workers were responsible to a household; they weren't out there in the land generally in the same way that an alien could be totally unconnected to a household. These legal texts are making the point that we are talking about people connected to a household, e.g. your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker … and the resident foreigner with you (v.6). Just because v.40 does not complement the term toshav with ger (or variations thereof), it does not follow that the status of the alien in view there is different to those in previous verses.

These Levitical texts do not distinguish between indentured Israelite servants and everyone else in the sense that the “everyone else” must have been outright slaves; that's a misreading of the texts. The texts do warn against treating Israelites oppressively; they judge that just as the law made provision for looking after hired workers and aliens, so too indentured Israelites were to be treated no worse than those classes. There was motivated protection (you were once aliens...).

quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
While there may have been cases where some ‘slaves’ didn’t want freedom (though how often that happened, and how genuine it was, we cannot know), the assumption is that most ‘slaves’ didn’t want to be ‘slaves’. That’s not the case for the other forms of ‘ownership’ you cite, and it’s significant.

The problem with saying that a class of people did not want to be in the situation they found themselves in is that we could all say that of our own situations. There are times when kids do not want to be stuck at home any more. I would really, really, prefer not to have to work each day, but if I don't I won't survive. So we need to step up the point a bit and look at the difference between the slave and other 'owned' classes. How about runaways? Surely the fact that there were runaways would demonstrate that slaves did not want to be in their situation and took steps to remedy things.

Here, though, I think the way the texts work is on the assumption that the slave (to use that term) did not want to take steps to be free. The norm was staying in the 'House', the ab-norm was not staying put. This comes out in the way the legal texts deal with the subject. When a slave ran away, the legal system had to deal with that as a case. The ruling that the judges made was: “You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.” (Deut 23:15-16, ESV). I would suggest that the judges were making the point that something had gone wrong in the master's house, someone abnormal, and that a protective ruling was required to ensure that the slave was not returned to that place of abnormal behaviour. If anything, therefore, the text demonstrates that the class of people translated as 'slaves' did not, in fact, run away as a norm. The cultural set up, supported by the law, provided for protection.

It's another example, it seems to me, of the issue at stake: we see the word 'slave' there in the English versions and we make an assumption about the behaviour and conditions surrounding it. When, however, we remove the word 'slave' and insert something more neutral, we are more able to see the text in context, taking it on its own merits and seeing how the author uses the words he used in the way he used them.

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Lyda*Rose

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# 4544

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Nigel M:
quote:
It's another example, it seems to me, of the issue at stake: we see the word 'slave' there in the English versions and we make an assumption about the behaviour and conditions surrounding it. When, however, we remove the word 'slave' and insert something more neutral, we are more able to see the text in context, taking it on its own merits and seeing how the author uses the words he used in the way he used them.
What neutral word? If the new word were "servant", with my modern vocabulary my mind's eye would insert a voluntary, paid employee who could seek other employment where he would, which would be no more true to the ancient Hebrew situation than that of a person captured and sold across the ocean as absolute property.

The fact is that our language, English, did not exist, and our modern experience attached to this language is vastly different. Any English word is an approximation of the Hebrew.

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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

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Nigel M
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# 11256

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quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Nigel M: [QUOTE]What neutral word?

I've been suggesting the word 'worker' as a more neutral stand-in.
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Nigel M
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quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
...any word would have misleading connotations if we didn't know the background. We have to do the work to understand it on its own terms. I'd no more abandon the term "marriage" just because the institution today is so different from that in the Bible. I'd just try to understand marriage in Biblical times, and tell myself firmly that things were different back then.

I absolutely agree. If readers of translated texts had the time and resource to do just that, then there would not be a problem with terminology. Translation is always risky and translators often have to tread in areas where there are no good overlaps between the semantic domain of a word in the original language and those of words in the modern language. Ideally in those circumstances, the modern word chosen by translators would come clothed in qualifications where they occur in the bible, so that readers could arm themselves with the necessary contextual understanding.

In the absence of such clothing I'd recommend readers follow your advice – assume the emperor had no clothes and double check the context.

quote:
Originally posted by Jolly Jape:
It seems to me that the OT Israelites had a pretty modern understanding of slavery, (ie it is always bad, unjust, oppressive, dehumanising) when they, as a nation, were enslaved , ie, in the Egyptian captivity.

The qualification here, though, is that nowhere in the entire narrative of Israel's stay in Egypt (Exodus 1-12) are the Israelites described as being slaves – that Hebrew word eved. The term is used repeatedly of Pharaoh's officials, though. What we do have elsewhere is the term 'House of eved' as a description of the Egyptian experience, which contrasts that experience unfavourably with the expectations associated with a 'Father's House'. We also have the experience of Egypt being described in terms of Israel being a resident alien.

Overall the experience in Egypt is being used as a motivation to avoid that in favour of a norm that was not slavery. I would suggest that what is going on in the bible in respect of Egypt and the Exodus is not a support for slavery, but a motivation for behaviour that was not slavery.

Posts: 2826 | From: London, UK | Registered: Apr 2006  |  IP: Logged
Lyda*Rose

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# 4544

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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Nigel M: [QUOTE]What neutral word?

I've been suggesting the word 'worker' as a more neutral stand-in.
"Worker", to my modern mind, indicates freely bartered service. This would just trade one misconception for another. The fact remains that these "workers" could not leave their employment at will.

[ 25. March 2016, 16:33: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]

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"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
The terminology doesn't really make a difference.

Hold on a second! Your whole argument is based on the idea that terminology makes a difference, that there are huge semantic gulfs that get lost in translation. This doesn't seem like something you can just hand wave away.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
Just because v.40 does not complement the term toshav with ger (or variations thereof), it does not follow that the status of the alien in view there is different to those in previous verses.

I think you're trying to shift the burden of proof here. Your argument is that, despite the lack of modifier, the towshab in Lev. 25:40 must necessarily be the same as the towshab guwr in Lev. 25:6, despite the fact that the author felt the need to make the distinction in one case and not the other. So far we have only your bare, repetitive assertion of this as "proof".

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
These Levitical texts do not distinguish between indentured Israelite servants and everyone else in the sense that the “everyone else” must have been outright slaves; that's a misreading of the texts.

No, that's a reading of the texts, and noticing that non-Israelite ebed are property and bound in perpetual servitude, while Iraelite ebed are neither. For most reasonable definitions of the term, that's sufficient to distinguish between "slave" and "non-slave".

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
If anything, therefore, the text demonstrates that the class of people translated as 'slaves' did not, in fact, run away as a norm.

This is true. In virtually all slave systems running away was not the norm, not because masters were always kindly but because enough barriers to escape were in place that running was typically futile. That's how slavery works! Some slave systems even classified making the attempt as a type of mental illness, placing such behavior outside accepted norms.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
It's another example, it seems to me, of the issue at stake: we see the word 'slave' there in the English versions and we make an assumption about the behaviour and conditions surrounding it. When, however, we remove the word 'slave' and insert something more neutral, we are more able to see the text in context, taking it on its own merits and seeing how the author uses the words he used in the way he used them.

quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I've been suggesting the word 'worker' as a more neutral stand-in.

As I've noted before, most modern English speakers live in a system of free labor. To them "worker" will not mean someone bound for life as property, so the term clearly does not carry the meaning the author of Leviticus is trying to communicate.

It also seems like this whole argument involves a certain amount of special pleading. Egyptian slavery did not have any direct duplicate in any English-speaking slave-holding culture, yet we usually don't object to calling certain classes of Egyptian workers "slaves". The same is true for Roman slavery. Translating Paul as writing "there is . . . neither [worker] nor free" would seem to erase the meaning he was trying to communicate rather than clarify it. Yet since Roman slavery was different than slavery practiced in any English-speaking slave-holding culture, your supposed standard would prevent us from using the term.

This only seems to be an issue when translating from ancient Hebrew because of a pre-conceived notion that the Tanakh is a set of instructions from God and that God does not condone slavery. In other words, it's not a conclusion drawn but rather a premise in search of defense.

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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