sschlichter

So you would legislate the forgiveness of all debt. Why would anyone loan any money if there was no reason to pay it back. What if they are destitute but have not received a loan?

Does your father know that you are playing on his computer?

Sheshbazzar

And if this male slave was born to parents who were both lifelong slaves to the master, and was thus the masters slave from the day of his birth?

The Law as it is written is ambiguous, and lacking in detailed instruction, its interpretation and application being entirely committed to the deciding authority of the Jewish priesthood.
Do you trust that the Jewish priesthoods authority was/is divinely ordained, just, and to be obeyed and followed regarding the slavery laws?
Even to the deciding of life and death matters ?

Do you also along with supporting the slave laws, support the continued application of the Law set forth in Deuteronomy 17:8-12?

If you affirm this portion of The Law, then by your own affirmation, that man whom you deify, was then justly and rightly condemned to death by the only Scripturally recognised and authorised authorities.
And thus you ought to also obey The Judgment which they gave, and which is of public record, and well known, that all have been;
"straitly commanded... no longer teach nor preach in this name"
Howbeit if you do not affirm and obey all of The Law, and The Law's authorised Judgment, you become guilty under all of The Law, and of its Judgment.

It is a perversity, and a perversion of The Law, to affirm some few of The Law's rules regarding the institution of slavery, while resisting authoritative Judgments rendered by that selfsame Law's Divinely appointed authorities.

Your appeal to the teachings of The Law as support for the morality of the institution slavery is utterly lacking in merit, in that you willfully neglect such other provisions of The Law that bear upon The Law's active application.

In other words it is not, and never has been, up to "christian" or other such self-appointed "authorities" to Decide, nor to render Judgment upon how The Law is to be implemented.

"Christian" conducted and ruled slavery, is always ipso-facto a pagan slavery, because all christianity is only existent in defiance of, and in opposition to the authority of The Law.
Thus any "rules" or "judgements" about slavery made then, now, or in the future by christian "authorities" are only -pagan- rules and -pagan- judgments made by -pagans- about the -pagan- slave practices of their -pagan- cult.
A re-institution of the slavery as laid out in The Torah, would also require the re-institution of the ONLY authorised Priesthood of The Torah to run, and to regulate it, christian pretenders need not ever apply.

The ages have moved on, and it is now recognised (by most) that slavery has never been either a just, nor an effective solution to humanities problems.
There is no slave in the "Old Testement" (sic) that would not have been better off in all respects, as a free and paid worker.

sschlichter

Surely you are not suggesting that I am calling for a return to slavery. That totally misrepresents my position. As far as Jesus, the law was the instrument of his humiliation. His humiliation is now over, though.

It is naive to suggest that people have moved on. Slavery is alive and well in nearly every part of the world. Even more now are killed in the simple name of inconvenience. OT Hebrews were smart enough not to kill their own children by twisting off their head as they were being born. To state that people have gotten smarter just means you probably do not have cable and are not paying attention.

Yes, the slavery instituted by most of the world (including Christendom) was unlawful, immoral, and cruel. This is contrary to the description of slavery in the OT. However, since one of the themes of the Bible is the depravity of man, it does not provide any leverage for your position at all. Christians screw things up - just like all other manner of person. moot point.

All you have to do to prove your point that slavery served no purpose is answer the question of how would the destitute have survived without slavery. If merely waving a fair wages wand is your reply then why do we have prisons and welfare in our enlightened times?

Exciter

It doesn't need to be legislated

Is the only reason you lend money is so it'll be paid back?
What do you consider destitute? Someone else used people with carboard signs saying "Will Work For Food" as an example, do you consider them destitude?

Lol, look how far you've come!

My father has been dead for some years now. Even if I was only a kid playing on his father's computer, I could still make you look foolish, as I have in this thread.

It's not really that hard to do, seeing you have an inability to be able to read or if you don't like what you read you make things up to try and fit it to what you want what you've read to make you feel gay and fluffy inside, lol.

Are you still trying to find a website that doesn't say "because the Bible says so."? to show that those urns are child sacrifice? lol, I can't believe such a smart grown man like you see yourself as fell for that.

arnoldo

Funny that, anything that can be considered negatively towards the bible is accepted as fact, i.e., "immoral double standard of slavery" in the OT however if "child sacrifice" is also documented in the bible it's dismissed a priori. If you want evidence of child sacrifice in the Near Middle East go to the library and do some research on your own. . .

Johnny Skeptic

Since there is not any credible evidence that a God inspired any writings on slavery, discussions about slavery are merely academic, and do not really have anything to do with divine inspiration. Who knows what kind of people Old Testmament Jews were compared with all other groups of people in the world. There is no way that we can know that. The bottom line is that they chose themselves to be God's chosen people. If they had better character than some groups of people did, so what?

No matter what the texts say, there is no way for us to know how much they might have been altered in order to make Old Testament Jews look good.

No matter what the outcome of this thread is, the outcome would not be able to reasonably prove that a God ever inspired anyone to write anything about slavery.

sschlichter

Yes, you are making me look foolish and you are exposing ivy league universities as secret hives of Christian apologetics.

All you are actually doing is avoiding a discussion on the relationship between slavery, poverty, and crime in the ANE.

Without slavery, can you please let me know how those destitute were to survive? how those that committed crimes were to be rehabililated?

simple question. I am not asking you to get baptized, just to consider the possibility that slavery in the ANE provided social functions that jails and welfare do today.

Exciter

Another whiny pants who can't prove his assertions that expects me to find the evidence, lol.

I figure since you and SSchlichter are such experts on what went on back then you must have something other then the Bible says so.

For what it's worth, I believe that Israeli's were told that their enemies practiced child sacrifice, propaganda is a very effective tool against your enemies. Just look at all the stuff the Third Reich said about Jews.

sschlichter

Why can't we compare this culture with other cultures on the subject of slavery?

code of Ur-Namma

If a slave escapes from the city limits, and someone returns him, the owner shall pay two shekels to the one who returned him.

code of Haamurabi

If any one find runaway male or female slaves in the open country and bring them to their masters, the master of the slaves shall pay him two shekels of silver.

code of Hittites

If a slave set a house ablaze, his master shall compensate for him. The nose of the slave and his ears they shall cut off, and give him back to his master. But if he do not compensate, then he shall give up this one.

compare these with the runaway slave laws of the OT.

Ben C Smith

Do you accept Jeremiah 19.3-6 as evidence that the Judeans themselves sometimes practiced child sacrifice to Ba'al?

Ben.