bacht

Okay your honor, I'll be a good boy from now on

The OP makes the charge of racial bigotry. I agree that that is there in the text. No argument. What does that prove?

Stephen T-B

"The OP makes the charge of racial bigotry. I agree that that is there in the text. No argument. What does that prove?" (bacht)
It is evidence, I would think, of a god that endorsed racial bigotry (to the extent that many believe the Bible to be the word of that god.)

bacht

This is why I was raising points about context. First, we need to understand what these words meant to the people who wrote them. Then we need to know whether these words reflected a consensus in the community (was there a minority of xenophobic scribes?) Then we can discuss what racism and bigotry meant in the 1st millenium BCE.

The worst approach is to use post-scientific post-Enlightenment criteria. This won't clarify anything about the original meaning and usage. What modern readers take from these texts is another issue altogether.

Stephen T-B

"What modern readers take from these texts is another issue altogether." (bacht) in purely academic terms, absolutely.

In the context of when they were written, slavery was an accepted norm, and undoubtedly, our understanding of it has been coloured by the form it took on the New World plantations. Nevertheless, slavery can only ever mean one thing: the possession of one human being by another, casting the "owned" individual in the same role as that of an animal. If human beings in the 21st century are not entirely different from the human beings who lived in 8th century BC Judea, then I think we can assume that some were kindly to their possessions - whether human or non-human - some harsh and others sadistic. It would be absurd to think that no Judean slave owner mistreated his slaves, and clearly the authors of the Biblical texts quoted by Johnny assumed that an owner would beat his slaves, or there would be no need to mention the sanction to be imposed should a slave die, having been beaten.
But credit where credit is due: killing a slave in Bronze-Age Judea did warrant a sanction, which is more than can be said for 17th and 18th century slave plantations in the New World (where slave owners, incidentally, were at least nominally Christian).

To expand on the point I make above, I should point out that rules for behaviour are formulated to meet contingencies as they arrive, thus, if no slave had ever been beaten to death, there would have been no need for the law givers to consider what should be done in such a situation.

This part of the discussion does rather miss the point, however: these texts are believed by many to be the word of a perfect god, in which case its "perfection" must be in doubt, unless it can be argued that slavery, in whatever form it takes, is a "perfect" arrangement among human beings. Additionally, this "perfect" god differentiates between Hebrew slaves owned by Hebrews and non-Hebrew slaves owned by Hebrews.
In the context of the time the texts were written, that would have been entirely unremarkable; but if we assume the texts were inspired by a god, what conclusion might we legitimately draw about that god based on these texts?

truth_child

i think slavery in the bible was an acepted thing but when JESUS came HE taught us that we did not have to nor should we have salavery

bacht

The simplest conclusion to draw, assuming the existence of God and that the Hebrew writers cared about His opinion, is that He only provided rules that people could actually follow, rather than some ideal code of conduct beyond human capability. We should NOT assume that any religious text can or has perfectly described a perfect divinity.

Slavery was always about cheap labour drawn from an underclass (criminals, POWs et al). The economic factor is still with us, though the affluent technological West now has the luxury of shunting the sweatshops offshore where consumers won't be disturbed by them.

Toto

No, he didn't. If you are going to call yourself truth, be a little more careful of what is actually true.

Johnny Skeptic

Yes, an immoral code that in some cases endorsed the wrongful abuse of non-Hebrew slaves.

Stephen T-B

"The simplest conclusion to draw, assuming the existence of God and that the Hebrew writers cared about His opinion, is that He only provided rules that people could actually follow, rather than some ideal code of conduct beyond human capability" (bacht)
Not owning slaves was beyond human capability?
I doubt it very much.
Besides, if a "perfect" god establishes a morality which is no better than the people for whom it was established, it's behaving no better than a human ruler who is as flawed as his subjects.
How would you know the difference?
By condoning slavery, this "perfect" god can take direct credit for all the horrors brought by plantation slavery, and which was practised by folk who read the Bible and worshipped the god whose word they believed the Bible to be.

bacht

Do you honestly believe that a perfect God who inspired writers to transmit His perfect laws would result in perfect human behaviour? How many Buddhists actually achieve perfect detachment? How many Zen practitioners achieve perfect enlightenment?

What should the biblical God have told His followers, to live like 21st C Americans?

I'm still having trouble understanding this need to judge the Hebrews. How could they possibly have known that anyone today would still be reading their texts, in a scientific age of global everything?