Quasimofo

I'm sure this an issue discussed a thousand times already but it is one I would like to hear some answers for from both Christians and Non-Christians alike.

You can say I'm taking these passages out of context, but in my opinion there should be no context for slavery. Deny it if you will but what you see here suggests that God condones slavery. Please give me some other passages that show he does not approve if there are any (though these would only show clear contradictions).

Note: Anything in bold is paraphrased, I don't want this post to be TOO long so look it up yourself.

EX 21:20-21 With the Lord's approval, a slave may be beaten to death with no punishment for the perpetrator as long as the slave doesn't die too quickly.

2SA 8:13 David slew 18,000 Edomites in the valley of salt and made the rest slaves.

Exodus 21:7-11 (King James Version)
King James Version (KJV)

7And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.

8If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.

9And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.

10If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.

11And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

EX 21:7-11 A father can sell a daughter into slavery to pay a debt. A daughter sold into slavery is not released at the end of six years as is an ordinary male slave.

EX 21:16 Whoever steals a man is to be put to death. (Note: This is in spite of the fact that a father can sell his daughter into slavery; see EX 21:7-11.)

EX 21:20-21 A slave owner is to be punished if he strikes his slave and the slave dies shortly thereafter. If the slave lives a day or two and then dies, the slave owner is not to be punished. A slave is the same as money to his owner.

EX 21:28-32 When an ox gores a man to death, the ox must be stoned. If the ox has gored a man previously, the animal's owner must also be put to death; in the case of the goring of a slave, the only requirement is that the owner of the ox must pay thirty shekels to the owner of the slave.

LE 25:44-46, DT 15:17, EP 6:5, CN 3:22, TS 2:9, PE 2:18 Slavery is an everlasting institution. Slaves are to obey their masters in everything.

Christianity was created in a society that was built on slavery. It was an accepted practise and therefore the Bible reflects this (though it should be the other way around, the Bible should not be catering to the times because that just means God had no say in what is righteous and was merely going with what the people writing it thought OR GET THIS...that it was JUST people writing it). Time and time again the Bible just reflects the HUMAN opinion of the time.

No wonder slavery took so long to be abolished when the teachings of one of the world's leading religions (and that which the Western World was built on) actually permits it. Notice how God is our "MASTER" and we are his "Servants"...in other words God is the slave master and we are the slaves and like a slave if we do not obey our master we are punished, quite horribly...like, say, eternal damnation horribly .

On a competely seperate note I saw a Christian refer to himself as a "moderate Christian"... what the hell is a MODERATE Christian? They are what I like to call a "Pick-and-Choose Christian". It's ALL or NONE, you either believe what the Bible teaches or you don't, you can't just choose the passages the coincide with your beliefs and disregard everything else.

WishboneDawn

Well heck, I'm a liberal christian, worse then the moderate dude.

If you read the bible thinking it's God's word then yes, it's very much an all or nothing proposition. If however, you believe the bible was written by men in certain contexts then I don't think that framework applies anymore.

Take the matter of slaves. Slaves were a fact of life at one point. It sounds horrid now but it was life as usual back then. God gets into it because his name is invoked to give the laws authority (LE 25:44-46, DT 15:17, EP 6:5, CN 3:22, TS 2:9, PE 2:180)or to be attributted with victories where slaves result. It was men tagging stuff with God's authority, not God putting pen to paper. If you understand that, why on earth should you conclude that you should then be capturing slave to beat? No need to abandon scholarship, reason and critical thinking when reading the bible.

I'm always a little leery when the odd atheist says it's all or nothing. Partly because it's the same line I hear from conservative christians. Christianity started before there even was a bible and it centered on an idea of a relationship with god embodied by that Jesus fellow. It didn't center on following Hebrew law, often quite the opposite. I know it would be a heck of a lot easier to debate us if we all followed one tidy, homogenous approach when it comes to the bible but shucks, we're anything but tidy and homogenous.

Anat

Quasimofo, with all the contradictions in the Bible it cannot be followed without picking and choosing. The difference between flavors of Christianity is which parts they choose.

Quasimofo

It sounds to me that you don't believe what the Bible teaches but more you have developed your own belief system and only use pieces of the Bible that reflect and back-up your opinions/morals and disregard what you believe to be wrong/immoral, passing it off as being "written by man".

By admitting that you can pick and choose you are admitting you cannot truely trust ANYTHING the Bible says. Such as: I believe everything about Jesus in the Bible is a creation of man and in no way was it inspired by God just as you believe the condoning of slavery by God was man's word. Now who is to say what you've chosen to believe is right and what I believe is wrong? If there is even a single thing in the Bible that you cannot trust it means that the accuracy and truthfullness of the entire Bible should be put into question since there is no way of telling what was actually God inspired and what wasn't.

The thing about what I believe is that if I'm right and you're wrong neither of us go to hell, yet if you're right then I, and the majority of people on Earth, do. I would not have any problem with picking and choosing your beliefs if they didn't invlove punishment for being incorrect.

Even though I believe "Liberal Christian" is an oxymoron and a belief system ridden with hypocrisy I still like it a lot better than literalist/fundamentalist approaches because it means you are probably a decent human being and pick and choose because you do not agree with the often horrid nature of the Bible.

The problem with basing your beliefs on a 2000 year old book that YOU admit is flawed is the fact that you are required to gamble your eternity on it.

Quasimofo

I agree, and therefore it should not be followed at all.

mountainman

Slavery is evidenced in the fine print to the Nicaean Creed,
as the eighteenth of a set of 22 sub-creeds appended to,
and signed by all attendees of the council, with the exception
of Arius and a handful of others who were banished (325 CE)
in accordance to the Nicaean Disclaimer Clause.

According to Rufinus of Aquileia:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_054.htm

XVIII.
No one is to steal away someone
who belongs to someone else
and ordain him a cleric in his own church
without the consent of the one
to whom he belongs.

WishboneDawn

What, you don't think it was written by man? Goodness.

Often the bible doesn't back up my belief system. I have a hard time with some of what's in it and I'm not going to run around saying the bible holds all the answers or supports my POV.

Well that's bunk. Mostly because the bible isn't really one complete text. It's myths, legends, liturgy, geneology, psalms, history, etc. all written by different authors, reflecting different traditions, edited by different groups over a large span of time. I can read the first creation story and understand that what it has to say is about the theology of an ancient hebrew preisthood. I can read Micah and get an understanding of what a contemporary thought of hebrew society. I can read Galatians and get some early thoughts on what being christian involved.

Just because a committee sewed in all between two covers at one point doesn't mean you swallow it whole or not at all. For the record, I might agree with you about Jesus, that's entirely possible.

Maybe go to hell. There's also the idea of annihilation which has scriptural support as well. I'm not entirely comfortable with either idea but you're right, they're in the bible. I'm not going to reject those parts of the bible that deal with that or pretend they're not there...But they may have a context that affects their meanings (or maybe not) and ignoring the context of those bits of scripture in favour of a literal reading is also cherry picking. It twists warnings from prophets about events in their day into fortunetelling and reads the use of terms like 'Immanuel' in the NT into fullfillments of prophecy instead of reflecting clever gospel writers who knew their Hebrew scriptures.

It IS often horrid. But life was horrid back then and it reflects that. It wasn't restricted to the Hebrews either...Greek city states might raid neighbours states and turn their people into slaves. All our moaning about how horrible the bible is and yet it's a valuable reflection of times past.

I have met the odd decent fundy though.

What gamble? If I'm right, I go to heaven. Maybe. If I'm wrong I'm compost (I think annhilation is more plausible then eternal torment myself, less romantic though). I think compost is a nice legacy. And come on, you don't honestly believe I'm making a gamble anyway because you don't believe in a christian god.

As for the 2000 year old book, some parts are a lot older then that. But the fact that some people have found value in it for 2000 years seems not a bad reason to keep it round and consider it in my life.

arricchio

There is an excellent book edited by Paul Finkelman called:Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South : A Brief History with Documents (or via: amazon.co.uk). It's a collection of Southern antebellum pro-slavery arguments. I haven't read it in a while, but there is at least one, maybe two, articles written by Southern preachers who argue that slavery is entirely biblical, and any talk of abolishing it is heretical.

I find the argument utterly convincing. If the Bible really is, as most Christians claim, the inerrent word of God, true and relevant in every detail, then we committed a sin by ratifying the 13th Amendment.

9/11 happened, according to Jerry Falwell, because we allow gay people in our society. He could just as easily have argued, with more Biblical authority, that 9/11 happend because we freed the slaves in violation of God's word.

Either the Bible was wrong on the subject of slavery, or we were. I'm thinking it was the Bible.

WishboneDawn

How did that amazon link get in there???

Quasimofo

Written by man without the divine influence of God, thus by "written by man" I meant written PURELY by man (in all circumstances man does the physical action of "writing" but that is not what we are talking about here we are talking about who influences what is written). But I think you know what I meant, I think I've made it obvious that I believe ALL of it was created and written by man. Well picked though, I could have chosen my words better though you could have given me the benefit of the doubt.

I agree with most of this, my only problem is that from what I can gather you think that you can believe whatever it is you want out of the Bible yet when it comes to Jesus it is expected that you believe in him lest you go to hell (or if not hell still do not have a chance to get into heaven). It sounds as if you are Christian just incase Jesus really is the Messiah and if not it is of little consequence because you either cease to exist or end up in heaven, there is no truely "bad" outcome. You even accept that I might be right about Jesus, not the strongest of faiths I've ever heard (not that this is a bad thing in my opinion).

The Bible is great for gaining understanding of the times and what being a christians invloved etc. this is all true. I don't deny that the Bible has uses, I just don't accept it or Jesus as the key to heaven.

The gamble is in what religion you choose, you haven't covered all your bases simply by being "Christian" what if Catholics are right, or other religions such as Islam, I doubt you will be going to heaven then, nor will you be compost .

Though I think you're a smart lady and I think you know their (Catholics and Muslims) beliefs of how to get into heaven and what happens if you don't are extremely unlikely. You have covered yourself a lot better than I have I'll give you that, being an Atheist there is little chance of me getting into heaven in the case that one of the major religions is actually right. When I die I will either cease to exist (which is what I believe), be reincarnated or end up in hell lol. I like your options better, even though they are the same as mine at least you have heaven thrown in the mix :P.

PS: You have a good sense of humour about the topic and it's always nice to hear logical arguments for a change.