Freethought & Rationalism Archive

SkepticBoyLee · 06-22-2010, 08:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Yeah, the Torah certainly had some limitations on the abuse of slaves, but modern abolitionism is actually an ancient concept that you don't really see in the Torah. This timeline from Wikipedia may help:

Ancient times

* In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great issues the Cyrus cylinder and abolishes slavery[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
* 3rd century BC Ashoka abolishes slavery in the majority of India, which was under his rule.
* AD 9 In China, Emperor Wang Mang usurps the throne, abolishes slave trading (although not slavery), and institutes radical land reform[10]

# ^ http://books.google.co.il/books?id=O...orever&f=false
# ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...lavery&f=false
# ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...age&q=&f=false
# ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...age&q=&f=false
# ^ {The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed about 539 BC by the order of Cyrus the Great of Persia, abolished slavery} http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1004563/...eer-Sex-Income
# ^ {Cyrus also abolished slavery} http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplac...0.4909021.html
# ^ {Cyrus the Great's abolition of slavery in the ancient Persian Empire, as outlined on the Cyrus Cylinder (a stone artifact), a replica of which hangs at the UN headquarters in New York City as an example of an early human rights document} http://www.democracyweb.org/rights/history.php
# ^ http://iranpoliticsclub.net/history/...nder/index.htm
# ^ http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache...&ct=clnk&gl=il
# ^ http://books.google.co.il/books?id=g...esult&resnum=2

I have been told that the Cyrus Cylinder is propaganda and really is not about human rights and freeing slaves.

show_no_mercy · 06-22-2010, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticBoyLee

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Yeah, the Torah certainly had some limitations on the abuse of slaves, but modern abolitionism is actually an ancient concept that you don't really see in the Torah. This timeline from Wikipedia may help:

Ancient times

* In 539 BC, Cyrus the Great issues the Cyrus cylinder and abolishes slavery[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
* 3rd century BC Ashoka abolishes slavery in the majority of India, which was under his rule.
* AD 9 In China, Emperor Wang Mang usurps the throne, abolishes slave trading (although not slavery), and institutes radical land reform[10]

# ^ http://books.google.co.il/books?id=O...orever&f=false
# ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...lavery&f=false
# ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...age&q=&f=false
# ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...age&q=&f=false
# ^ {The Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed about 539 BC by the order of Cyrus the Great of Persia, abolished slavery} http://www.docstoc.com/docs/1004563/...eer-Sex-Income
# ^ {Cyrus also abolished slavery} http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplac...0.4909021.html
# ^ {Cyrus the Great's abolition of slavery in the ancient Persian Empire, as outlined on the Cyrus Cylinder (a stone artifact), a replica of which hangs at the UN headquarters in New York City as an example of an early human rights document} http://www.democracyweb.org/rights/history.php
# ^ http://iranpoliticsclub.net/history/...nder/index.htm
# ^ http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache...&ct=clnk&gl=il
# ^ http://books.google.co.il/books?id=g...esult&resnum=2

I have been told that the Cyrus Cylinder is propaganda and really is not about human rights and freeing slaves.

This is a couple thousand years earlier than Cyrus and when Moses was supposed to have lived

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu

What survives certainly talks about the rights of slaves.

ApostateAbe · 06-22-2010, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticBoyLee

I have been told that the Cyrus Cylinder is propaganda and really is not about human rights and freeing slaves.

Well, then OK, never mind.

Iskander · 06-22-2010, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticBoyLee

I bet Richard Carrier has info on this.

This claim was made on another board while we were discussing "evil" Bible passages including passages on slavery.

It was said that the Torah was the FIRST book to ever have a code as to how to treat slaves and that this was "groundbreaking" for time. You know, real groundbreaking stuff like "don't beat your slave to death".

The torah treated slaves much better than their contemporaries did.
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studie...lecture10.html
Transcript

Quote:

For example, as in the rest of the ancient world, slavery existed in Israel. It did. Even so, and this is not to apologize for it, there is a tendency toward humanitarianism in the laws concerning slavery.The Bible is equivocating on this institution. In some societies, in their legal systems, it's clear that slaves are the chattel, the property of the master. The Bible, again, equivocates on this question.
They affirm some personal rights for the slave, but not all. In contrast to, for example, the middle Assyrian laws, where a master can kill a slave with impunity, the Bible legislates that the master who wounds his slave in any way, even losing a tooth--which is understood to be a minor thing, because it's not in any way an essential organ--so even if he knocks out a tooth, right, he has to set him free. That's in Exodus 21:26-27. Moreover, the slave is entitled to the Sabbath rest and all of the
Sabbath legislation.

And quite importantly, a fugitive slave cannot be returned to his master. That's in Deuteronomy 23:16-17:
You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master.He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst,wherever he pleases; you must not ill treat him.
This is the opposite of the fugitive slave law, actually in this country in the nineteenth century, but also in Hammurabi's Code. Right, Hammurabi's Code, 15, 16 through 19: "If a citizen has harboured in his house either a fugitive male or female slave belonging to the state or private citizen and has not brought him forth at the summons of the police, that householder shall be put to death."

The term of Israelite, Israelite slavery, that is to say an Israelite who has fallen into service to another Israelite through, generally, indebtedness--that's a form that slavery took in the ancient world and in the biblical picture--the term was limited to six years by Exodus, by the Covenant Code. In the Priestly code, it's prohibited altogether. No Israelite can be enslaved to another Israelite. So it's actually done away with as an institution altogether. In general, the Bible urges humanitarian treatment of the slave, again, 'for you were once slaves in Egypt' is the refrain.

Decypher · 06-27-2010, 04:42 AM

Quote:

And quite importantly, a fugitive slave cannot be returned to his master. That's in Deuteronomy 23:16-17:
You shall not turn over to his master a slave who seeks refuge with you from his master.He shall live with you in any place he may choose among the settlements in your midst,wherever he pleases; you must not ill treat him.

As I understand, that has been traditionally understood to be talking about people fleeing from another country. So it wouldn't mean you can't return a slave to his Israelite master.

Leviticus 25:46 talks of gentiles being slaves, but ends by saying, "but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour". Now this rather suggests that you can rule with "rigour" over the gentiles.

I'm not sure this sounds nice. Apparently the Hebrew word is "perek" and the blueletterbible.org site defines it as, "harshness, severity, cruelty". An example of the word being used is:

Quote:

Exodus 1

[13] And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:
[14] And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

Decypher · 06-27-2010, 05:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkepticBoyLee

It was said that the Torah was the FIRST book to ever have a code as to how to treat slaves and that this was "groundbreaking" for time. You know, real groundbreaking stuff like "don't beat your slave to death".

Something that may be relevant:

Quote:

"If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and sell himself, his wife, his son, and daughter for money or give them away to forced labor: they shall work for three years in the house of the man who bought them, or the proprietor, and in the fourth year they shall be set free."

(The Code of Hammurabi)
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM

Wasn't it 7 years for Israelite slaves?

Solo · 06-27-2010, 05:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

You cannot time-share human rights. The idea itself - that you can - is Draconian. The Sabbath was ONE day of SEVEN. rcscwc is correct in pointing out that OT does not have a single passage that safeguards the rights of slaves and Apostate Abe has already provided the "GOOD OIL" but perhaps may also have mentioned Buddha, who not only made inroads into the utter black despotic stone-age issue of slavery, but also made inroads into the field of equal rights for women. Between books and the oral tradition lies a fractal basin boundary - not a clear demarcation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Deuteronomy 5 12-15

Andrew Criddle

There are other prescriptions limiting power over slaves (not quite slaves' rights, which is a contradiction of terms) that are in Torah:

Exd 21:20 When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished.

Deu 15:12-18 If your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty-handed; you shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your wine press; as the LORD your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. ........

Deu 23:15-16 You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you; he shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place which he shall choose within one of your towns, where it pleases him best; you shall not oppress him.

Jiri

Anat · 06-27-2010, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

The bottom line is that Christianity saw Jews and Jewish proselytes as still being in a state of bondage with regards to their god.

Jews agreed and saw it as a good thing, as it equalizes all Jews. Jews becoming enslaved to other Jews was considered immoral *for the slave*, because that puts him in the absurd position of a servant to a servant. The Talmud forbids a Jew to sell himself into slavery until poverty forced him to sell his sandals.

stephan huller · 06-28-2010, 04:16 PM

Anat, I'm Jewish so take this with a grain of salt but what else are they [i.e. Jews] going to say? Christianity wouldn't be boasting about 'freedom' and 'redemption' if normative Judaism had an existing liberation theology.

Iskander · 06-28-2010, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stephan huller

Anat, I'm Jewish so take this with a grain of salt but what else are they [i.e. Jews] going to say? Christianity wouldn't be boasting about 'freedom' and 'redemption' if normative Judaism had an existing liberation theology.

Christians do not have a “liberation theology”.

Infants that die without baptism have been denied “salvation” despite the malignant horror show they call “The passion of the Christ”; for hundreds of years good catholic mothers have been terrorized by the teaching that the unbaptized foetus, born baby... does not go to heavens.

After 2000 years of history that liberated theology is considering the possibility of --of what exactly?

http://www.seattlecatholic.com/a051207.html

Quote:

it appears that the only papal statement expressly mentioning the destiny of aborted infants is that of Pope Sixtus V, whose Constitution Effrænatam of 29 October 1588 not only abstains from raising any hopes that they may attain the beatific vision, but positively affirms that they do not attain it!
The main purpose of this document was to reinforce civil and canonical sanctions against those who carry out abortions and sterilizations in the papal states: it goes so far as to prescribe the death penalty for both these offences. The Pope begins by affirming the need for sterner measures to be taken against "the barbarity ... of those who do not shrink from the most cruel slaughter of fetuses still coming to maturity in the shelter of their mothers' wombs" ("... eorum immanitatem ... qui immaturos foetus intra materna viscera adhuc latentes crudelissime necare non verentur" — my English translation.) Pope Sixtus then continues, by way of explanation (my translation and emphasis):
For who would not detest a crime as execrable as this — a crime whose consequence is that not just bodies, but — still worse! — even souls, are, as it were, cast away? The soul of the unborn infant bears the imprint of God's image! It is a soul for whose redemption Christ our Lord shed His precious blood, a soul capable of eternal blessedness and destined for the company of angels! Who, therefore, would not condemn and punish with the utmost severity the desecration committed by one who has excluded such a soul from the blessed vision of God? Such a one has done all he or she could possibly have done to prevent this soul from reaching the place prepared for it in heaven, and has deprived God of the service of this His own creature.

Infant mortality was then very high. Mothers must have been desperate to have their babies baptized as soon as possible.

Quote:

The teaching of the Ecumenical Council of Florence (the Bull Cantate Domino of February 4, 1442) is more emphatic. It says (my emphasis):
Regarding children, indeed, because of danger of death, which can often take place, since no help can be brought to them by another remedy than through the sacrament of baptism, through which they are snatched from the domination of the devil and adopted among the sons of God, [the sacrosanct Roman Church] advises that holy baptism ought not to be deferred for forty or eighty days, ... but it should be conferred as soon as it can be done conveniently (...). (Denzinger 712 = DS 1349.)

Redemption theology? More like cruel blackmail

Quote:

And it is important to emphasize that reaching Limbo does not mean reaching salvation. In another previous e-mail I mistakenly conceded to a correspondent his view that the word limbus, literally meaning "fringe", "hem", "margin", or "border", was adopted by the Church in order to indicate that Limbo (for unbaptized infants) was at the "border" of Heaven. In fact, as I soon discovered with a little more research, what was meant is that Limbo is at the "border" of Hell! This is evident both from the teaching of two ecumenical councils (Lyons II: D 464 = DS 858; Florence: D 693 = DS 1306); and Pope John XXII's 1321 Epistle to the Armenians (D 493a = DS 926). All these authorities teach that the souls of those who die in original sin only (who could only be infants and the mentally retarded who never reach the use of reason) "go down without delay into Hell" (mox in infernum descend[unt]), where, however, they suffer "different punishments" (poenis disparibus) from those who die in actual mortal sin. In other words, if Hell is defined broadly as eternal exclusion from the beatific vision, Limbo is actually the outer "fringe" or "border" of Hell itself. The seeming implication of these councils and popes is that the only "punishment" of those who die with souls stained by nothing worse than original sin is eternal exclusion from the beatific vision, which is compatible, however, with a natural (as distinct from supernatural) happiness. The "pain of sense" — or at least, a pain severe enough to warrant being described as "the torment of hellfire" — is reserved only for those who die in mortal sin. This is the teaching of Pope Innocent III in an epistle of the year 1201 (see D 410 = DS 780).

Such a pitiless theology.

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06-28-2010, 04:16 PM	#19
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Anat, I'm Jewish so take this with a grain of salt but what else are they [i.e. Jews] going to say? Christianity wouldn't be boasting about 'freedom' and 'redemption' if normative Judaism had an existing liberation theology.

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