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".

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]

1. # ^ http://books.google.co.il/books?id=O...orever&f=false
2. # ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...lavery&f=false
3. # ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...age&q=&f=false
4. # ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=N3D...age&q=&f=false
5. # ^ {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
6. # ^ {Cyrus also abolished slavery} http://www.america.gov/st/peopleplac...0.4909021.html
7. # ^ {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
8. # ^ http://iranpoliticsclub.net/history/...nder/index.htm
9. # ^ http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache...&ct=clnk&gl=il
10. # ^ http://books.google.co.il/books?id=g...esult&resnum=2

stephan huller

Judaism is all about the ἀπολύτρωσις of slaves. It is what made the religion so dangerous and why after the Bar Khochba revolt proselytism was officially discouraged and ultimately a capital offense in some periods.

It is also why there is no such a thing as a 'Jewish race.'

jgreen44

The Torah had some limitations on the abuse of Jewish slaves. But, regarding foreign slaves, the Torah says that anything goes.

Leviticus 25

44 Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 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. 46 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.

rcscwc

Lev 25 gives a blue print about how to enslave, nothing about their rights. OT does not have a single passage that safeguards the rights of slaves.

andrewcriddle

Deuteronomy 5 12-15 Andrew Criddle

SkepticBoyLee

Now I am getting "look the Torah is way older than 539:. For its time there was nothing like it.

ApostateAbe

You may just want to leave it there. There is an implicit acknowledgment that the Torah is primitive and backward relative to modernity, which is really all you can hope to accomplish. You can say, "OK, so you think the Torah was ahead of its time, but not any more progressive than Cyrus the Great," but that would only arouse a defensive attitude that would motivate him to somehow make the Torah exactly as moral and progressive as it should be. I would say, "Very well, you win. I don't necessarily think that the Torah was composed before 539 BCE, but you do, and it is a common belief among Christians, not just an ad hoc explanation. If you push the date back sufficiently far enough, then the Torah can be progressive for its time."

stephan huller

But there is a difference between Cyrus, a king who issued a proclamation or proclamations regarding the freeing of slaves (he wouldn't have been the first despite what now survives from deepest antiquity) and a RELIGION based on the idea of the ritualized redemption of slaves. There is subtlety to Judaism and its core mystical formulation which people outside of the tradition rarely understand properly.

It's also why the earliest Fathers from Marcion to Irenaeus (and not to mention Clement and Origen) ALWAYS have an ἀπολύτρωσις myth at their core. It is too often said that Christians were all ignorant slaves. There certainly were rich, educated patrons and benefactors (Clement explicitly confirms a role for these folks in Quis Dives Salvetur). But the central paradigm of Christian - what made it so dangerous to the Empire was that it continued the Jewish interest in ἀπολύτρωσις.

We know too little about how Christianity actually functioned in the second century to truly make any firm conclusion about how these ἀπολύτρωσις rituals developed but it is my guess that it was an outgrowth of Alexandrian Jewish (Philonic) interpretations of the Crossing of the Sea (Exodus chapters 14 and 15).

It was there that initiates were 'purchased' or redeemed from the Devil or alternatively in the gnostic formulation, the god of the Jews.

The important thing however is to understand that the concept of slavery is ever present. My guess, sure to be disputed by most, is that Tertullian's claim that the Marcionites focused their efforts on Jewish proselytes is the original ground out of which these ideas developed.

The bottom line is that Christianity saw Jews and Jewish proselytes as still being in a state of bondage with regards to their god. They began as slaves and continued as slaves only now they had been transferred from Pharaoh to Yahweh. This must have been seen to be confirmed by the interest in cycles of seven and the Jubilee too (why would a culture be so interested in 'redemption' unless it hadn't been fully 'redeemed' yet).

I have always argued that Marcionitism isn't properly understood owing to most scholars of the NT and Patristic writings BECAUSE THEY REMAIN WOEFULLY IGNORANT OF WHAT JUDAISM AND SAMARITANISM WAS IN THE AGE.

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.