Belief versus Piety
Active
We have to try and judge the Jews properly Kirby. You are not visualizing their reality. As I discussed on stoning. We simply cannot cherry pick a verse without grasping the reality in which they lived. They were told to love all (woman and men) as themselves. They stoned people guilty of any grievous evil to death. They used the same working brain you and I have today. The brain's ability to judge right and wrong has not evolved since then. The permanency of woman in slavery is related to something like the justification of a man taking his dead brothers wife. It was for their provision and protection. Woman in that day did live different lives to woman of today. That is the only issue to grasp. I wouldn't say it was discrimination. Discussion of that deserves it's own thread though. So much to discuss on roles of men and woman per scripture. Such a sensitive subject too. You cannot use it as leverage to argue unjust slavery without properly discussing it.
It makes no sense to me that anyone say we cannot judge God. He gave us a mind that can.
You are correct to discern and hate what is wicked. I just pray that you grasp that that is what God does. You are ironically after God's heart when you spot ''an evil of slavery to woman'' and it causes you to be upset.
Rom 12:9 Genuine love is to hate what is wicked and cling to what is good.
James 1:27 Religion undefiled before God is look after widows and orphans in need.
Active
I can. I would like to hear your argument. Why do you say this?
Have you read the full account of the Amalekites?
Member
I don’t think citing Exodus 21 as evidence of the Bible’s validation of slavery is any more a case of cherry picking than when you cite relatively distant verses which still fail to remedy my complaint. Taking care of widows and orphans is all well and good. None of that restores the rights of self-determination and autonomy to a girl who is sold under the auspice of Ex 21. (I’m going to call her Alice from now on to make life a little easier). Rather than cherry picking, I think you’re asking me to move the goal posts, alternating between archaic and modern moral standards as needed in service of some overall general ideal. I think I have mentioned the “back in olden times” apologetic just doesn’t hold water with me.
Just as you believe in Christ and salvation, Practitioners of pre-Abrahamic religions were absolutely 100% convinced in a polytheistic cosmos, something I consider a much more radical and fundamental understanding of reality than the relative morality of human slavery. Yet God was very capable convincing Abraham to turn away from polytheism and has been able to prevent its resumption by billions of people down the ages ever since. He did not pretend to be some menagerie of false deities in order to make his message more comprehensible to Abraham’s bronze age thinking.
I can’t say for sure why, at no point in the subsequent 1500 years or so, God ever declared slavery anathema, but he simply never did. Rather, he lays out quite specific rules about how slavery is to be conducted.
I accept that if God does exist he and his justice are changeless and timeless. And any being who exists from everlasting to everlasting would view the few thousand years separating us from events described in the Bible as a sheerly insignificant amount of time.
Let’s shift gears and consider Alice’s situation in modern life. I’ll throw out some comparison cases and let’s see what fits. Whether or not Alice’s situation was ever a moral one, I think you’ll see that it certainly no longer is so today.
Can my nine-year-old daughter leave home forever anytime she wants? Yes. The instant she is mature enough to be responsible for her own welfare. Alice is not accorded this relief to her servitude.
Can an inmate at a federal penitentiary leave prison anytime she chooses? No. She is serving out a prison term as punishment for some crime she has committed. Ex 21 makes no mention that Alice’s sale and servitude is any sort of punishment for any transgression.
Can a cat burglar who wants to rob me just wander into my house anytime he likes? No. I have an inherent right to safety, security and, to the extent our laws allow it, possession and control over my own personal property.
Can a patient with a advanced stage Alzheimer’s leave her nursing home anytime she wants? She could, if she is healthy enough so as to not pose a danger to herself or others. The only personal attribute about Alice the Bible takes into consideration in her plight is neither her health nor any danger she would cause at liberty, but her gender.
Indeed, the only modern cases I can think of that are in anyway comparable to poor Alice are women in fundamentalist Muslim and Hindu communities in the Middle East and Asia, and oppressed people of all ages in failed states in Africa.
Moreover, if Alice lived in my community and I saw her being led away from home by a man who had just purchased her from her father, I would consider it my moral duty to thwart the transaction at all hazards. I think you would too. Please tell me I am not mistaken.
Member
I have. I think God’s personal and explicit command to subject them to Genocide, I Sam 15:3 is a clear example of an unequivocally immoral injunction. I am aware of certain rabbinical interpretation that it is no longer in force because, over subsequent generations, any remnants of the people of Amalek were absorbed and dissolved into the other nations in the region.
What is your own understanding of it?
Active
Citing James 1:27 is to prove that God's heart / religion undefiled is looking after woman in need.
Lev 19:34 Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
Any Jew back in that day that saw 'anything' as unjust would bring it before the elders. As I have explained, it was that kind of society. A counsel of elders would judge the matter harshly.
The roles of woman and how they were treated differently is the only subject to be discussed.
Active
The Amalekites were an extremely wicked and cruel people.
They knew the Hebrews had been enslaved by the Egyptians for some 400 odd years. They knew they had suffered in the desert for 40 years.
They make a deal with them, to give them safe passage through their land. They then break the deal and attack when they are off guard. They continue to attack and kill all stragglers. They then get the other Canaanites around them to join in and help them kill all Hebrews.
They came to know the Hebrews as a race of people that would stone the wicked among them to death. They still chose to hate and kill them. They were not just ''wicked''. They were extremely wicked. They....would repeatedly rape and torture.....woman.
Deut 25:17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you were weary and worn out, they met you on your journey and attacked all who were lagging behind [typically women and children]: they had no fear of God.
If a nun came to you and said ''Kirby, I am desperately hungry. I have been enslaved my whole life. I just want to pass through your house to get to the forest behind you. There I can go and make a life for myself. I promise not to impose, to stay on good relations. I only want peace''. You then attack her in your house, kick her out and get your neighbors to join in on the abuse. You could not be more wicked.
I would be upset with God if He did not bring a swift end to the Canaanites.
Last edited:
Member
...aaaaaaand, again, none of this places any limitations on the terms of Alice’s servitude.
My only syllogism is this: Exodus 21 describes and allows slavery (so far as my understanding of what slavery is). Slavery is immoral. Exodus 21 is immoral.
I consider the sale of one’s own daughter (who, by definition, is a member of her parents’ tribe) to even the most benign of masters is inhumane and immoral. You seem to rely upon the Jewish men of that era to conform to our modern notion of that which is just and unjust. Yet in the very same context you suggest we can’t claim that to treat certain people like chattel is “immoral” because they lived by a different, antiquated social order compared with our own.
Which is it?
Forgive me being stubbornly pedantic, but you advised (correctly) that we try to focus on slavery. Which means we are not focusing on gender inequality — which is another train wreck in terms of consonance with modern society. If you would like to switch horses, we can go there. But, as I have said, I think we have hit a genuine impasse.
I would, though, press you for a clear answer, please, to my question of how you would act in the face of your Jewish neighbor little Alice being sold to another of your Jewish neighbors by her own father.
Active
Yes it does. You are keeping to a tunnel vision view off of that single verse. That was the 'general rule'. The 'general rule' for men was a six year contract. They could break that and leave to a new master. There is no evidence woman could not do the same. Why are you ignoring the instruction in Lev 19:34? You are honestly saying there is no doubt in your mind?
A six year contract. Being able to leave at anytime. You kind of do have to accept that the word slavery in that day was what we refer to as employment today. Employees can be bought and sold. Mind you, employees in that day were to be treated well. I guess that comparison is not fitting either.
They were not treated like chattel. You only arrive at that conclusion when you cherry pick a verse.
I can imagine it just fine. I live in South Africa. We have many woman who live at the house of a wealthier then average family in the full time employment of cleaning the house. They visit their husband and family when they get leave. They get leave often by good employers. They love their employers. Full time employment is much better then contractual employment. So much more security.
I do love 'Alice'. The short term solution is for her to continue being a good employee in a full time position. I will encourage her to study further and develop a better skill. So that she can work for another employer on a full time basis. If I could, I would buy out her contract and have her work for me full time...or give her so much money that she never needs to work again.
You are throwing a feather with full force hoping it is a dart. It is not. It is a feather. There is no dart.
I do think a thread dedicated to better understanding Jewish society would be good.
Member
Yes. The Amalekites do sound a devilish bunch according to the Bible.
Let me suggest an analogy. It will be admittedly clunky, but I think it will serve. I am of Jewish background. Very roughly, there were about 17 million Jews worldwide just prior to WWII. By 1946, thanks to the industrious determination of Brother Adolf and his “Master Race,” that tribe had been culled down by about 6 million. A 35%(!) slaughter of an entire people.
Is the slaughter of Hebrews at the hand of the Amalekites something on the order of this magnitude? Perhaps. Though, let’s agree their usual prey were sicklings and stragglers, so I would argue their decimation was probably no worse than the 20th Century counterpart. And in absolute numbers, if we allow the highest estimates that there were about 2 million Hebrews in the Exodus, a loss of 1/3 of the body would mean the murder of about 660,000. True, nothing to sneeze at, but anyone keeping score might care that this hypothetical poaching of Hebrews in the wilderness accounts for about 1/10 the bloodletting of the Holocaust.
The Jews of Europe, the ones who bore the brunt of the Holocaust, had been suffering a pretty raw deal, what with constant pogroms, expulsion from this kingdom or that, denial of basic rights to property, commerce, free practice of religion, freedom of marital relations, etc, etc, etc... for almost 2,000 years because of a big misunderstanding in Iron Age Jerusalem. The Nazis and the Holocaust were simply the (almost inevitable) apotheosis of a virulent, ravenous antisemitism brought about because of, and in the wake of, what people (mis)understood about Jesus’ message of peace. The point is, as with the Exodus Hebrews, the Holocaust was definitely a case of kicking a man when he’s down.
Neither the Germans, nor even just the Nazis, were subjected to a collective punishment of extermination at the end of the war. Instead, an international effort was made to bring those responsible for human rights violations to justice.
I mentioned I am, by Nazi standards, Jewish. My extended family still had a thriving branch in Europe in the 30s. They were all consumed in gas chambers and ovens.
I have had the pleasure of living and working for a time in Germany. I have several friends from that time whose fathers or grandfathers took part in the German war effort and at least one I know to have been a rather high ranking Nazi officer.
I don’t get offended at the suggestion my friends’ families ought to have been exterminated after the war. Instead I find it preposterous. Utterly laughable - a very bad joke. The horror of the Holocaust was that it was an ingeniously engineered program of genocide against the Jewish people (among others). The (attempted) genocide, the premeditated extermination of a defined group purely because of membership in that group, is THE root evil of the Holocaust. Setting (frankly, flip and unenlightened) platitudes on revenge like “An eye for an eye” aside, when is the burning down of a house made right by burning down another house? If genocide is bad, its damage is in no way repaired by killing every man, woman, and patently innocent CHILD of a people who commits it.
I don’t particularly condemn the Hebrews for a genocide of the Amalekites (if it actually happened - the Bible is not even clear as to how successful it was). The Bronze Age was an appallingly bloody time and, to my understanding, the extermination of any rival tribe was probably not an uncommon occurrence.
But genocide = bad. Calling any particular genocide “good“ = bad. And deliberately looking for any lesson in a story of genocide other than “genocide = bad,” = bad.
There aren’t many ethical standards clearer than this.
Member
I think it is appropriate to punish people for wrongdoing in ways proportionate to the harm that wrongdoing has caused.
Is that what you mean?
Loyal
Hello @Kirby D. P.
Yes, genocide, slavery and public execution - all bad.
I wince when I read many of the Old Testament passages being discussed in this thread, and, to be honest, I haven't heard explanations for them that I find satisfactory. The same goes for many of the teeth shattering elements of the Psalms
My faith is grounded in the person of Jesus Christ, his example, teaching, death and resurrection, and in the expectation of him returning in glory. I am utterly convinced of his goodness, and that he is the source of all goodness. I think you too mentioned your admiration for the principles of forgiveness, grace and reconciliation earlier on in this thread.
As I haven't been able to puzzle these issues out, I am forced to keep it in the rather full box of things marked "things I have no answer for". It does not eclipse my faith in Jesus, but it does trouble me.
A bit of a disappointing answer perhaps, but it's honest.
Yes, genocide, slavery and public execution - all bad.
I wince when I read many of the Old Testament passages being discussed in this thread, and, to be honest, I haven't heard explanations for them that I find satisfactory. The same goes for many of the teeth shattering elements of the Psalms
My faith is grounded in the person of Jesus Christ, his example, teaching, death and resurrection, and in the expectation of him returning in glory. I am utterly convinced of his goodness, and that he is the source of all goodness. I think you too mentioned your admiration for the principles of forgiveness, grace and reconciliation earlier on in this thread.
As I haven't been able to puzzle these issues out, I am forced to keep it in the rather full box of things marked "things I have no answer for". It does not eclipse my faith in Jesus, but it does trouble me.
A bit of a disappointing answer perhaps, but it's honest.
Member
You and I have very different comprehensions of chapter Ex 21. I believe you when you say you have read it. I admit, then, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to convince you that your reading is wrong. I will, though, quickly summarize MY understanding so you understand what I feel is so objectionable here:
• Jews may buy and own slaves. (This is as far as I need to go according to my sense of morals. But I’ll continue…)
• Slaves can be purchased from whomever owns them OR from the slave themselves if they are a free person.
• Certain slaves are slaves for life, some obtain freedom under certain circumstances.
• If you buy a male Jewish slave, you can only keep him as a slave for 7 years, at which time he becomes free.
• If you buy a female Jewish slave, she is yours for life or until you no longer want to own her.
• If a female slave (Jewish or gentile) has children, those children become your slaves. You may sell them. But they are never entitled to go free.
• There are rules governing how to terminate the enslavement of female Jewish slaves.
• When a male Jewish slave “ages out” at the end of his 7 year term, he may leave only with whatever belonged to him when he became your slave.
• If, while slaving for you, he married one of your other slaves and they had children, those children are your slaves.
• If a male Jewish slave “ages out” but does not want to leave his wife and children who are still your slaves, you may pierce his ear as a permanent sign that he has agreed to become your permanent slave.
• Any permanent slaves (ie., any slaves other than male Jewish slaves who have not bound themselves to you for the sake of staying with their wife and children), are you property to do with as you will, except beat them so badly they die immediately (or within the first 72 hours).
• When you die, these permanent slaves remain the property of your family and are inherited by your children. The children of those slaves belong to your children and when your children die, their children inherit those slaves, and so on, and so on.
You may be of the opinion that I am mistaken in some detail of this host of horrors, but I can textually back up every point of it. And not a single bit is even close to being morally sufficient.
You describe servants who work in your community. Are these the binding laws by which they abide? If so, your community tolerates slavery, a grave moral deficiency.
You refer again to Lev 19:34. I have taken the trouble to paste in its full text below and I have placed all the particulars relating to the limitations to slaveholding and the specific preservation of each slave’s inalienable human rights in bold red, highlighted in yellow and double underlined them so we might better parse them, if this is an avenue of conversation you think is still worth pursuing:
“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Member
Hi, Hekuran. Good to see you.
I find you answer very satisfying. And acutely on-topic. I inadvertently opened a can of worms when I declared I am neither convinced in God’s existence nor that I find the Bible a particularly excellent or very consistent moral guide. And I wondered what the opinion of some Christians might be if I were to adopt one or the other. We got (understandably, I see now) sidetracked when I was asked to explain what I find problematic in scripture. And here we are setting up a rent-a-slave concession in post-war Germany… or something. I think. Admittedly my own fault.
Anyway, just based on your recent comment I think I know your answer to my original wondering. If you could convince of only one, it would be belief, ya?
Loyal
Not really. If God is not good, then his existence or otherwise is much less interesting.
In terms of the set up of this thread, I'd just cheat my way out of the dilemma.
I'd prefer to start with something I think we'd agree on - the existence of good and evil. Could there be something such as goodness in a purely material reality?
Member
Hm. I am a big fan of the existence of good and evil. But I consider them very subjective human abstractions that vary from person to person, place to place, and era to era. To me, this makes them no less real than depression or calculus. I know many people are quick to jump all over that insisting it means, since everyone is “entitled” to “their own” definition of good and evil, there effectively would be no such thing.
But I see what (to me) are good guardrails to keep us from going off any cliff of valueless relativism. First, I think an impulse to maximization of well being (however you want to define that) and a minimization of suffering is enormously consistent from human to human, regardless of social milieu. And this gets things going in the right direction. I think this is augmented when there are rules forbidding the securing of one’s own well being at the expense of another’s suffering.
Another reassuring guard rail is our track record as a stubbornly gregarious social creature. I can’t think of any evidence that, generally speaking, humans gravitate to solitary lifestyles like orangutans. Of course, in a population of 7 billion, there are going to be some rare exceptions. But there ARE 7 BILLION of us. We didn’t get such a deep bench by accident. And the vast majority of us participate in some sort of social unit every day of our 7 billion lives. That only works thanks to our relationships with our kin and social counterparts, most of which depend on fairness, affection, reciprocity, etc, etc. So (again, there are always exceptions) I think there’s massive evidence we are predisposed to according those with whom we are socially bonded with maximal well being and minimal suffering inasmuch as it is within our power to do so.
To me, the big trick, the real challenge, is to get people to internalize as wide an understanding of that social bond as possible. I’m not exceptionally good at it. Though I honestly do consider all children my children, for instance. I trust other parents to take care of their specific offspring because they are best situated and equipped to do so. As I am regarding my own. But no parent who is a stranger to me ever needs to worry that I would not drop everything i am doing if I see their kid in jeopardy. And, while it takes a LOT to scare me these days, one of my worst imaginable nightmares would be if I had to choose between the life of my son or daughter and another child. It terrifies me because I’m pretty sure I would favor my own kid. And though I know that’s natural and it’s a strictly hypothetical thought experiment, it makes me miserable.
I find this perspective helps make the world comprehensible in a few different dimensions. It makes sense of the fact things like slavery and genocide were (globally speaking) more permissible in antiquity but no longer so. It also describes why and how there is still such a variety of moral codes from culture to culture today. And it keeps me from getting so cocksure in my own worldview that I’d refuse to admit the discovery of some small good or evil of which I was not formerly aware, poising me to make improvements in my own view on the moral landscape.
And it also helps explicate why there are evil people despite how much effort we have spent developing entire Milky Ways of rules and laws and customs and taboos. Cleaving to good and eschewing evil is an intensely subjective, voluntary activity. It’s pretty amazing to me we agree on how to properly do it as much as we do. And I think it treats our moral motives and behavior with the sophistication they demand, rather than on a very two dimensional scale of sinfulness. To me it is still valid to think and speak of certain people as evil. But I am aware that while they are evil to me, they are almost always not evil to them (Genuine clinical psychopaths are an exception.)
Finally, it completely removes any mystery from non-human forms of “evil.” Earthquakes, cancer, hurricanes all become the cost of doing business in a risky, perilous cosmos. And any time or energy spent wondering, “Why is this happening to me?” and, “What have I done to deserve this?” Is energy wasted.
Active
According to whose morals?
Do you think the Midianites would judge themselves worthy of death for their killing of the Jewish stragglers?
Do you think the Nazis would think killing Jews or Gypsies was worthy of death?
We need a law giver to judge all men, in regards to guilt and innocence.
A law giver who is not prejudiced by time and local mores.
I just wondered if you personally would have treated those who sinned against Israel any different than God did.
Member
First, my conviction on the death penalty has evolved from reasonable support to agnostic to definitely against. If you would like me to explain that evolution I am happy to. For now I’ll simply describe my current position in detail. If we, as the State, agree it is wrong to kill, and since as a practical matter in the US guaranteed due process under law is extremely lengthy and expensive in cases of capital offenses, society gains nothing from the execution of any prisoner in custody. If murdering someone against their will is bad it is not remedied by murdering someone against their will. As for Nazis and Amalekites, I’ll ask you to check out my unfortunately long winded explanation to KingJ about why, even as a Jew, I consider it immoral to subject all Nazis or all Germans to collective ethnic extermination because of their relatively successful campaign of genocide against “my“ people. What makes the Nazis evil is they engaged in genocide. That is not undone by committing another genocide, especially since by definition genocide entails the murdering of innocent children who took no part in the decisions or activities required for the Holocaust.
In my opinion, no one gains anything but the most base and fleeting emotional satisfaction from vengeance. In my opinion the merits of any penal system are to serve as a deterrent to would-be wrong doors, as a means of inducing wrongdoers to remedy the effects on society and individuals of whatever harm they have caused, and hopefully reduce the likelihood of more wrongdoing through rehabilitation. I don’t think today’s penal system accomplishes much of this, but I no longer believe that the execution of a prisoner for any to crime is ever a just punishment.
Now, as to standards of morals, I get why you value an absolute, unchanging set of laws with a seal of approval from an ultimate unchanging lawgiver, and obviously I don’t think that’s the world we live in. But I can at least explain why I have the perspective I do. My wife and children just left home for work and school. All of them were wearing clothing that is made of blended fibers. If I choose I can find a law in the old testament that decrees I must stone them to death for doing this. I don’t know of anyone, not even ISSis, who enforces this silly commandment. Now you may argue that according to the New Testament, the kosher rules of ritual and purity have been revised, and Wearing fabrics of blended fibers is no longer a capital offense. I agree. But that proves my point. No matter how unchanging you may consider God and Jesus are, the fact is the laws ARE, as a matter of principle, changeable.
Slavery is wrong. If I look to the Old Testament’s edicts regarding slavery, it is not. And if I look to the new testament for a repel of the sanction of slavery, the very most I can rely Upon is a rather twisted interpretation of injunctions to do things like “love thy neighbor as thyself”. Even St. Paul orders every man’s servants to serve their masters as anyone would serve Christ that to me is not a moral injunction.
Morals are systems humans compose and evolve on an ongoing basis. Cultures that have never heard of Jesus or Yahweh have very elaborate moral codes. And they evolve. It does not matter who originally composed Jude’s/Christian Western values. Was it God? Sure. Why not. And the morals enunciated in the NT might have been very spiffy and enlightened... 2,000 years ago. Bit not for me and the people I love today.
Active
1. Slaves back then had to be loved as though they were native born. Do you think for one second that 1% of love was shown to Africans who were raped, stolen from families, abused and beaten.
2. I am an accountant. Another company can buy my contract out or recruit me if I have no job. I wish I could leave at anytime like those '''slaves'''' in the OT Deut 23:15 If slaves run away from their owners and come to you for protection, do not send them back. When you say this does not apply to female slaves, you are simply adding your own words. You do not want to allow this verse, Lev 19:34 and the fact that the Hebrew society lived by the harshest laws to uphold good morals, ever seen by mankind, to shine on your other verses.
3. If they choose it, they can be.
4. Yes, it is a contract. It gives both parties some security.
5. Females got permanent employment. More security.
6. They grow up in your company. As though they are part of your family. The ''master'' needs to commit to looking after them. It worked out best for both parties.
7. Yes and they are not evil.
8. That is up for debate. In the instances where they had a debt to pay, yes. When not, slaves received education and skills. I have been Googling and seen instances where they were remunerated. It was more of case of ensuring slaves could not leave with the ox that ploughed the field.
9. See point 6.
10. You reading that wrong. He could take his wife and children. That law was to provide him with the means to stay on if he could not. He had more rights then someone who did not have their wife and children with the ''master''.
11. Do with as you will, regarding work / employment. Not anything wicked. Any mistreatment was punished. The passage you quoting is Exo 21:221, where the context on punishment for the master is the death penalty Exo 21:12. Exo 21:26-27 speaks of compensation for abuse. The 'going free' was compensation for those who had debts to pay. As many did. We cannot just focus on the actual example quoted. That passage sets a precedent for all similar types of abuse.
12. Security.
13. You read these verses through the lense of modern slavery. You could not be more out of context. It is a North verse South pole error.
14. Have you ever been employed? We are all ''slaves''. The uneducated and poor need more help and security.
15. Of course I still stick to Lev 19:34. How can you ignore it. When the high level view is that they were to love and not hate slaves, you cannot then go and read the practical application as though it is instructions from hatred. Lev 19 is a good chapter. Clearly showing the good morals and laws they were to uphold. What is your issue with it?
Kirby, you must Google OT slavery. You will find that many books have been written on it. They go into detail and heavily support my views. I do believe you are reading too much atheistic / god basher / biased against Christianity, articles. You are reading and interpreting with a clear bias (perhaps not intentional).