sugarhitman

Johnny believes that slave owners could kill their slaves with impunity. But as you mentioned before these laws made to punish those brutal slave owners were created to discouraged such abuses. This law was for accidental death not murder.


Remember what happen to Saul after he slaughtered those who were tributaries unto Israel? Yeah God punished Saul and those members of his house who were responsible as well.



This God is most certainly Holy and Right too bad his enemies can't see this.

sschlichter

Are you reading the posts at all or is your initial post on a repeat cycle?

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished "(Ex 21.20)

"If a man hits a manservant or maidservant in the eye and destroys it, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the eye. 27 And if he knocks out the tooth of a manservant or maidservant, he must let the servant go free to compensate for the tooth. (Ex 21.26-27)

This was an incentive not to hit slaves.

Equinox

Sorry about the delay everyone - I was out celebrating the Winter Solstice with my wife and kids. We do the tree, presents, stockings, Yule log, all that on the 21st every year.


Steve wrote:


Come on. We both know that Paul is asking the slave owner to end the slavery of one of his slaves. He’s not talking about the weather in Phile 1:8-20, he's obviously talking about the slave status of a slave.


Are you saying that you cannot trust the word of the Bible? It says slaves, or forced labor, not payments of tribute money. I think that the people who translated the Bible may know Hebrew better than your apologetic sources that are trying to wiggle out the slavery issue.

Again, you are adding additional text to the Bible. It doesn’t say assimilate, taking a temporary sexual plaything (or sometimes a permanent wife) from the slaves is the next chapter, not this chapter. This section only says that they will be your plunder, not “people to assimilate as equals into your culture”.

The Next chapter:
Steve wrote:
No, it says if they surrender BEFORE THE ATTACK. If the town doesn’t surrender first, but some individuals surrender as they lose, then they are to be killed. Again you are ignoring the text of the Bible.


Steve Wrote:
Again these two verses are about Hebrew slaves, which are treated much better than foreign slaves. When Lev. 25 says you can enslave those from other nations, it doesn’t say you are to only buy them. Again you are ignoring the text of the Bible.


Steve wrote:
Since it was discussed at length, then why do you ignore this distinction and repeatedly use the Hebrew rules to argue that the foreign treatments isn’t harsh?

Steve wrote:No, you didn't tell me what the principle is. You told me about how you change the words of the bible by saying that a severe beating isn't a severe beating. If after any beating a person can’t get up, then that is obviously a severe beating. I can’t believe someone is trying to argue that beating someone so severely that they are unable to get up is an ethical thing to do.



Steve wrote:
OK, here’s the verse: Ex 21:32

Steve wrote:
Again, Steve ignores the Bible by ignoring the very verse we’ve been discussing for pages (ex 21:21) :

Again Steve ignores the word of the Bible.


Steve wrote:
Read the verse above – it explicitly says you can beat them, because they are your property. It contradicts “an eye for an eye”, since the slave didn’t beat the master until the master couldn’t get up. The bible doesn’t use the “eye for eye” standard here because the Bible is sees the slave as property, not as a person (if it did, it would mention an eye for an eye in Ex 21:21).

Steve wrote:
You are the one ignoring his opinion on slavery. Augustine saw slavery as a justified condition that it was fine to keep someone in.


Steve wrote
I'm just going by what the Bible says. The passages do not contain any consent from the women (she isn’t even asked), and God never, the whole old and new testaments, says anything against raping non-engaged slaves whenever the master feels the urge.

Steve wrote:
A) If it were seduction, why not say it? Because it doesn’t matter, that’s why. From the Bible’s view, the slave is propery (as it explicitly states in Ex 21:21).
B) It doesn’t say, again you are adding text to this Bible you claim to respect.

Steve wrote:
These verse don'y mention slaves or slavery. You show your disrespect for the Bible by picking verses for one topic that don’t mention that topic.


Steve wrote:
Good job cutting off your quote just before it says, in the NEXT LINE, that it is OK to severely beat a slave. Saying it is OK to severely beat a slave is not an incentive not to hit slaves. Wow, the bible is like clay in your mind, and the meaning there is irrelevant to you.

Steve wrote:
I only keep mentioning Ex 21:21 because you repeatly state that it isn't there. For another thing, all the verses you posted show that free people are treated much better than slave property, which shows my point, not yours. Plus, they are irrelevant to the question of how non-hebrew slaves were treated, which is the discussion.

Wow. Bible based Christians say that liberal Christians ignore the text of the Bible (such as on homosexuality or the rights of women), and I agree, but that's as least as much ignoring the text of the Bible as we see Steve doing here.

Equinox

James Brown

Paraphrased Exodus 20:21:

""If a man beats his [wife] with a rod and [the wife] dies as a direct result, he must be punished..."

Yes, this seems rather clear that Jehovah and every Hebrew worshiper deeply abhorred spouse abuse. Obviously there was a clear incentive not to beat one's wife.

"but he is not to be punished if [his wife] gets up after a day or two, since [his wife] is his property"

Now it's not so clear anymore. Perhaps we can stress that women entered marriage willingly and that nothing was stopping them from leaving a bad marriage, or that Hebrews didn't force foreigners to be their wives--not really, or that marriage was different back then and we shouldn't judge it by our modern welfare-friendly society.

Johnny Skeptic

The texts clearly state that a Hebrew who killed a free Hebrew was put to death, and that a Hebrew who killed a slave was not put to death, only punished. That was wrong.

The texts also clearly state that Hebrew slaves were guaranteed their freedom. Are there any Scriptures that say that slaves were guaranteed their freedom? If so, do those Scriptures refer to all slaves?

Chili

It sounds like they were a different breed Johnny perhaps with a wicked youth, but once they got past that they would live up to a 1000 years, was it? . . . or were they still beating them when they were let's say 500 years old?

sschlichter

yes, that is a different topic than the institution of slavery.

here is the word used. In deut 20:11, it is used in the context of a word that means pay tribute. Ie, they will pay / work for tribute as all serfs do. You see the same word used of a free man in the context of a King. He is a servant, a slave of the King.

H5647
‛âbad
aw-bad'
A primitive root; to work (in any sense); by implication to serve, till, (causatively) enslave, etc.: - X be, keep in bondage, be bondmen, bond-service, compel, do, dress, ear, execute, + husbandman, keep, labour (-ing man), bring to pass, (cause to, make to) serve (-ing, self), (be, become) servant (-s), do (use) service, till (-er), transgress [from margin], (set a) work, be wrought, worshipper.

normally, you would use the context to determine which sense of the word is used. of the possible uses of that word, you will likely ignore ALL of them except 'to enslave' like serve, work, keep, bond-service. All of these are possible meanings and you need to use the context to figure out which one fits.

yes, that is exactly what I said. Surrender.

I am not - you are determining which rules are for Hebrews and which are for all based on what outcome you want.

ok, describe for me a non-severe punishment in your mind. What would have been appropriate?

Wow! this is ridiculous. I ignored it the first time because I assumed you mis-spoke. Laws on rape (and sexual immorality) applies to all women, slave or free. There is no need to tell anyone that raping someone whenever you have the urge is wrong.

Identity theft is not outlawed either - perhaps God was pro-identity theft.

If it was rape, why not say it?


these verses refer to foreigners who reside among us - whihc includes and probably mostly consisted of slaves. It is contrasted with being in Egypt where they were slaves. You should not remove slaves from the group foreign residents.

no, it is repeatedly brought up because it's mis-interpretation is your only argument. I addressed that verse. If you do not buy it then we disagree and can move on. re-inserting into the conversation will not strengthen your argument. find another passage that endorses a beating without punishment, or insists that you stop treating foreign residents fairly to counter the ones that i gave you.

also,

How are you coming on the treatment of slaves from other ANE cultures. How does it compare?

Johnny Skeptic

Message to sschlicter: Consider the following Scriptures from the NIV:

Item 1

Exodus 21:2-4

"If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free."

Item 2

Leviticus 25:44-45

"Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."

Item 1 is about Hebrew slaves, and it shows that Hebrew slaves were guaranteed their freedom without paying anything.

Item 2 is about non-Hebrew slaves since it mentions slaves from "the nations around you," and "temporary residents......and members of their clans born in your country......." "You can.......make them slaves for life" means that non-Hebrew slaves were not guaranteed their freedom like Hebrew slaves were, and that the option of freedom was up to Hebrew slaveowners, not to non-Hebrew slaves.

Some texts state that a Hebrew who killed a free Hebrew was put to death, and that a Hebrew who killed a slave was not put to death, only punished. That was wrong.

andrewcriddle

I think you may be misunderstanding what is going on here.
If a man raped a bethrothed free woman he was executed.
If a man seduced a bethrothed free woman he was executed and so was she.
In the case of a bethrothed slave woman who has sexual relations with another man, maybe she agreed maybe she didn't and, given the realities of the power relations, you can't most the time really tell.
The passage in Leviticus 19 is intended to protect bethrothed slave women from being executed for being harrassed into having sexual relations with another man. Instead of the court deciding is this adulterous rape (he dies) or is this consensual adultery (both die) the case is treated as what we would regard as a statutory offence committed by the man upon the woman, with the man receiving a lesser penalty than for standard adultery and the woman not punished at all.

(I'm not claiming that this explanation straightforwardly justifies this law, however the law, in context, is to some extent trying to protect the slave-woman involved.)

Andrew Criddle

Johnny Skeptic

There is no straightforward justification, or any other kind of justification for the mistreatment of slaves that the texts show was the case. I partly proved that in my previous post, which was post #308.