Gundulf

Of course, it is still quite legal in the United States, although not currently practiced, to do that exact thing: force a man to serve against his will.

Johnny Skeptic

I never said what you quoted me as saying, although I might have quoted someone else as saying it. At any rate, it is not my position that involuntary servitude is always one of the most immoral things a person can do. Surely in some cases people who did not want to be slaves were much better off being slaves. However, in many cases slavery was an atrocious practice. The title of this thread is 'Does the Bible clearly oppose slavery?' That is the main issue in this thread. If the God of the Bible exists, his negligence regarding the issue of slavery is a gross sin against humanity that has led to a lot of suffering and hatred, and his negligence was possibly a major cause of the U.S. Civil War, where Christian killed Christian, and brother killed brother. This is not a situation that indicates the existence of a loving, compassionate, perfect God, and this is not a situation that indicates that the Bible is all that Christians need in order to be moral.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to rhutchin: Your buddy Pascal said that only Roman Catholics will go to heaven. Your buddy John Calvin endorsed having Christians put to death who disagreed with his interpretations of the Bible. Martin Luther did not believe that the book of Revelation belonged in the Bible. The Roman Catholic Bible contains books that Protestant Bibles do not contain. Millions Today, a large percentage of Christians do not believe in predestination, and a large percentage of Christians to not believe in hell in the afterlife. Millions of Christians do not believe that the Bible is inerrant. So, what is "the Christian postion" regarding these issues? Who has appointed you as the correct interpreter of the Bible?

You said that skeptics who do not tell other people about the Bible are evil. However, the Secular Web lets people all over the world know about the Bible, so don't you mean that skeptics who do not "promote" the Bible are evil? If the God of the Bible exists, skeptics who do not promote it do so out of ignorance, and God refuses to promote it out of intent. Obviously, God is more culpable of not promoting the Bible than anyone else is. Is it your position that God always uses humans to promote the Bible? If so, in the 1st century, why did God discriminate against people who lived far away from the Middle East and died without hearing about the Bible? You would have people believe that Jesus gave the disciples the Great Commission, but that doesn't make any sense because God has never had any interest whatsoever in telling people about the Gospel message himself, at least as far as we know. If you discovered a cure for cancer, if you were able to make it immediately available to everyone in the world, would you do so? Do you consider the availability of the Gospel message to be more important than the availability of a cure for cancer?

Joan of Bark

I agree that one word can make all the difference, but you haven't answered my question: why do so many Biblical translators use the word 'slave' with all its negative connontations, when that is not the correct word? The translators are, after all, well versed in Hebrew and believers in God.

Berggy

There are many lexiconal aids for people who dont speak fluent Hebrew. Most notably, those lexiconal aids contain the titles of "The Strongest Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon of the Old Testament, Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, Thayer's Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament - (I get these two mixed up all the time). These are all the lexiconal aids compiled by the experts of the Hebrew and Greek Languages and they all coincide with one another.

Most of these books are keyed to the Strong's Concordance, which in turn is based on the KJV of the Bible. Now, because these lexicons are all keyed to strong's, which is keyed to the KJV, then you must use the KJV in study until they come out with versions for other translations such as the NIV.

Now, look up the word slave in that concordance. You will find only one mentioning of it in the Law and the Prophets, which is Jeremiah 2:14. That word is in italics and The Strong's Concordance will tell you that that word "slave" either by not having a number keyed to it for using the phrase "NIH or NIG" is not in the original hebrew text.

You will also see another mentioning of the word "slaves" in Revelation 18:13. However, the difference here is that the Greek word for "slaves" is "soma" and it just means flesh, the body both of men and animals or anything else. The word "slave" as a definition is not mentioned.

You will not find the word "slave" in the Bible, however, you will find the Hebrew word "ebed" in the original text and it means either a servant, worshipper of god, servants of the king..etc. It "can" mean a slave, yes, dont mis-understand me. However, because all of these definitions can be applied by this word, you must then take into context of a particular verse with another and therefore, let Biblical context define what any given passage is talking about.

Therefore, "why" do these people do this? It is because they simply dont want to let the Bible define itself. Either that, or perhaps they were just simply mistaken. Take your pick.

Johnny Skeptic

Message to Berggy: Numbers 31:13-18 say "And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp. And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Killing women and children is immoral. In addition, regarding the women who were taken who had not slept with men, surely some of those women were taken against their will.

Christians lose no matter what because God knew in advance that for about 1800 years, the majority of Christians would believe that the Bible condones slavery but refused to show up in person and tell Christians that slavery is wrong, and knew that if he showed up in person and told Christians that slavery is wrong that most of them would have opposed slavery. The same goes for colonization and the subjugation of women. If the God of the Bible exists, he could not possibly have anything whatsoever to lose by being more helpful to humans, and if he was more helpful, the world would be a much better place in which to live.

Anat

Of course we are letting the text define itself. But we do not assume the text has to be free of contradictions, especially between disparate passages, since the text was formed from multiple sources, each with its own ideology, and the redaction left multiple views. So I do not try to reconcile all passages from different locations but try to see what each means separately.

JoshuaL88

Conclusive evidence that double-speak and double-thought are alive and well... :huh:

If the bible is able to "define" itself, then why are there many translations? Is god not able to produce a book that clearly states and defines what he wants from his followers? Let us assume that all references of ebed in the bible mean servant:

Leviticus 25:46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen servant for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.

Now could you explain to me the difference between someone who is a slave and one who is a servant for their whole lives? Sure, you could argue that a servant might have better living conditions, but the actual difference is really just semantics. A slave is the equivalent of a servant who is forever under the rule of his master (in essance, he is owned, he has no rights or freedom to do what he wishes).