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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Kerygmania: This is in the Bible - but it stinks! IMHO...
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Ok, first you have an incorrect view of what slavery is. It is not only the most brutal treatment, it is indefinite servitude.
Second, Exodus 21 is carving out an exemption for the treatment of male Hebrews, not describing anything different to slavery.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Mamacita
Lakefront liberal
# 3659
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Ok, first you have an incorrect view of what slavery is.
It's not a question of an incorrect view of slavery. It's a matter of trying to understand what the text says about the system of slavery as practiced by the Israelites and how it was governed and regulated. That is not to excuse it or pretty it up or paint over it, and certainly not to use it as sanction for continuing such practices.
People upthread are simply trying to explain that slavery in ancient Israel was not the same thing as the system of chattel slavery known in the West in the last 400 years.
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Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Posts: 20761 | From: where the purple line ends | Registered: Dec 2002
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
A link to a Wikipedia article is a refutation?
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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)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
It shows that the treatment and conditions endured by slaves didn't really change. The economic scale is the major difference between ancient world slavery and new world slavery.
Not a hell of a moral highground, IMO.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Nigel M
Shipmate
# 11256
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Posted
The issue about whether the bible supports slavery could do with a thread all to itself here in Kerygmania. It would be a worthwhile investigation as it clearly still has resonances in the popular imagination. Here the issue has only really been about the single passage in Exodus 21.
For what it's worth, I'd start off with a good wholesome thesis: Nowhere does the Bible support slavery.
That would then need to be explained along these lines:
[1] The biblical authors have to be understood on their own terms and in the terms they used to express their worldview, mindsets, and resulting cultures. Authorial intention is king (or at least is better than the alternatives)
[2] Importing concepts from other worldviews, mindsets, and resulting cultures, into the biblical texts risks anachronism, which is illegitimate. Concepts from one culture do not automatically overlap with concepts from another. I cannot assume that just because I think about something in one way, that therefore someone from another time and place thought about that something in exactly the same way.
[3] Following from that, and because concepts are communicated so commonly by words, it follows that words used in a translation process have to be chosen on the basis of their 'fit' with the concepts denoted and connoted by words used in the original language. It is rare to find words with a complete fit.
[4] The English word 'slave' carries connotations (and even denotations) that do not map effectively with their Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek counterparts in the Bible. As shown by the issue on this thread and by websites that prove the point, the word 'slave' is proving to be hopeless, in that it has failed to do justice to the concepts behind the biblical words. Rather than promoting study of the bible, it has facilitated a 'reading in' that has distorted the author's original meaning. There is no hope that it can prevent this
[5] Accordingly, it is not appropriate to use the term 'slave' in translation of biblical texts unless it can be shown that the concepts associated with the term 'slave' map sufficiently to their equivalents in the Bible. In lieu of that, and in the absence of a related term that might suffice, I suggest that the biblical authors were communicating a concept that is better translated by the English term 'work' (or cognate terms to that).
Hang on... I'll start a new thread...
Posts: 2826 | From: London, UK | Registered: Apr 2006
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Agnostic Believer
Apprentice
# 18566
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Posted
Too many pages to this thread for this ‘newbie’ to attempt even a ‘speed read’ to see if anyone has hit on my stinkiest stinker, which is Genesis 19:1-8.
But what is important, to me, is the lesson that the entire succession of ‘stinkers’ ought to teach us.
And that is that none of the writings of anyone from Moses through to current Religious leaders were/are ‘inspired’ to a degree whereby they were/are exempt from the influence of their culture, cosmic knowledge, or academic capability.
From the most primitive, barbaric, and penal, through to the most civilised, all spoke/wrote accordingly, as distinct from doing so under God’s ‘Robotic Pen’ control.
Even today we still have those whose penal and judgemental personalities would have God resurrecting the majority of mankind for the purpose of subjecting them to an ‘eternal life’ of hellfire torment.
After all is said and done, it is but a mere 400 years since (in Britain) we hunted witches (always female), strapped weights to them, and cast them into deep water…..those that surfaced proving that they were witches and were then burned at the stake, whereas those that stayed submerged were granted posthumous pardons.
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Saying what I think I might know, helps me to know what I ought to think.
Posts: 22 | From: Holt, Norfolk, UK | Registered: Mar 2016
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