eutychus wrote:Autodidact wrote:Most non-christians know what the word slavery means, but I'll explain it to you. Slavery means that one person, the slave, belongs to, and is the property of, another person, the owner. The slave must do what the owner says or risk being whipped or otherwise punished, and is not free to leave, regardless of how he or she is treated. The owner can sell the slave to someone else, regardless of how the slave feels, and the owner can leave the slave to his or her heirs as property. That is what we mean by slavery. In your view, is it moral, or immoral?
The condescension is unnecessary.
Well, you asked the question. The rest of us know what the word means.
Then am I to take away from this you are unfamiliar with all the forms of slavery the Bible addresses? Allow me to inform.
What you should take away is that I answered the question you asked.
While the Bible does not specifically condemn the practice of slavery, it gives instructions on how slaves should be treated.
Actually, what the Bible does is to specifically authorize slavery.
Some may see this as the Bible condoning all forms of slavery. What many fail to realize is that slavery in Bible times was very different from the slavery that was practiced in the past few centuries in many parts of the world. The slavery in the Bible was not based exclusively on race.
What difference does it make? Slavery is wrong, whether it's based on race or not. At least, that's how non-Christians see it. How about you?
People were not enslaved because of their nationality or the color of their skin. In Bible times, slavery was more a matter of social status. People sold themselves as slaves when they could not pay their debts or provide for their families. Seneca comes to mind. In New Testament times, sometimes doctors, lawyers, and even politicians were slaves of someone else. Some people actually chose to be slaves so as to have all their needs provided for by their masters.
Some did. Others, thousands of them, were captured in war. Or they happened to be born to slave parents. People became slaves in many different ways.
The slavery of the past few centuries was often based exclusively on skin color. In the United States, black people were considered slaves because of their nationality and slave owners truly believed black people to be inferior human beings. The Bible most definitely does condemn race-based slavery. Consider the slavery the Hebrews experienced when they were in Egypt. The Hebrews were slaves, not by choice, but because they were Hebrews. The plagues God poured out on Egypt demonstrate how God feels about racial slavery (Exodus 7-11). So, yes, the Bible does condemn some forms of slavery. At the same time, the Bible does seem to allow for other forms. The key issue is that the slavery the Bible allowed for in no way resembled the racial slavery that plagued our world in the past few hundred years.
Actually, no. Biblical slavery is in fact based on nationality. What God objected to was HIS people being enslaved.
In addition, both the Old and New Testaments condemn the practice of "man-stealing" which is what happened in Africa in the 19th century. Africans were rounded up by slave-hunters, who sold them to slave-traders, who brought them to the New World to work on plantations and farms. This practice is abhorrent to God. In fact, the penalty for such a crime in the Mosaic Law was death: Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death (Exodus 21:6). Similarly, in the New Testament, slave-traders are listed among those who are "ungodly and sinful" and are in the same category as those who kill their fathers or mothers, murderers, adulterers and perverts, and liars and perjurers. See a difference and catch the disapproval for the type of slavery you are defining?
No, man-stealing means simply stealing someone else's slave. The penalty for this and almost everything else, including picking up sticks on saturday, was death. There was no penalty for capturing foreign slaves, and at times it is commanded.
I notice you give us your opinion, as though you were an authority on the subject. I prefer to supply the actual Bible verses.
Leviticus 25:
[font=Times New Roman]
Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 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. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life...[/font]
So we see the actual Bible verses are quite different from what you have described. In fact slavery is completely based on nationality, and Biblical slavery is chattel slavery, in which some people own other people, and can buy and sell them and treat them as property.
In other verses, which I am happy to cite verbatim, the Bible says how hard you are allowed to beat a slave (stop short of putting an eye out), that they are to be circumcised (ouch!), how to sell your daughter into slavery, and the like.
So I don't have to "see" it as the Bible "condoning" slavery. In reality, the Bible specifically authorizes chattel slavery. My question to you: In your view, is this right or wrong?
