The Hebrew Scriptures (AKA the Old Testament) - How Important Is It?

[2timothy316]

We as Jehovah's Witnesses are currently reading the book of Leviticus worldwide. Which contains much of the Mosaic Law and its importance to our understanding of God's will. My wife the other day, who was raised baptist, made a comment to me how upset she was that she was never taught anything from or about the Hebrew Scriptures growing up. She is amazed at the world's lack of knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Are the Hebrew Scriptures important?

[Tcg]

We as Jehovah's Witnesses are currently reading the book of Leviticus worldwide. Which contains much of the Mosaic Law and its importance to our understanding of God's will. My wife the other day, who was raised baptist, made a comment to me how upset she was that she was never taught anything from or about the Hebrew Scriptures growing up. She is amazed at the world's lack of knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Are the Hebrew Scriptures important?

Perhaps to those interested in ancient cultures. As your wife experienced, they don't have much relevance today even for modern Christians who have rejected almost all of the laws contained in Leviticus.


Tcg

[2timothy316]

We as Jehovah's Witnesses are currently reading the book of Leviticus worldwide. Which contains much of the Mosaic Law and its importance to our understanding of God's will. My wife the other day, who was raised baptist, made a comment to me how upset she was that she was never taught anything from or about the Hebrew Scriptures growing up. She is amazed at the world's lack of knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Are the Hebrew Scriptures important?

Perhaps to those interested in ancient cultures. As your wife experienced, they don't have much relevance today even for modern Christians who have rejected almost all of the laws contained in Leviticus.


Tcg

Yet the question is not about relevance, the question was, is it important to study? If it is, how important?

[JehovahsWitness]

How important? Very important, essential.

I'm surprised how much I'm getting out of Leviticus this time round. If you look for the underlying principle, the verses have a lot to offer.


JW

[2timothy316]

How important? Very important, essential.

I'm surprised how much I'm getting out of Leviticus this time round. If you look for the underlying principle, the verses have a lot to offer.


JW

I am enjoying the symbolism, like that first sheaf of grain how it points to Jesus and and the firstfruits of the barley that points to those first people going to heaven. It also shows that the Levitical Priesthood had no excuse to deny Jesus Christ. They knew the symbolism of their work for over a thousand years and even with these yearly reminders they still denied him. There are those that think that keeping these rituals is what makes them righteous but they are continuing a ritual of reminders that have already past. Doing something that serves as no reminder or is not helpful to themselves in anyway is just spinning one's wheels.

[Miles]

We as Jehovah's Witnesses are currently reading the book of Leviticus worldwide. Which contains much of the Mosaic Law and its importance to our understanding of God's will. My wife the other day, who was raised baptist, made a comment to me how upset she was that she was never taught anything from or about the Hebrew Scriptures growing up. She is amazed at the world's lack of knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Are the Hebrew Scriptures important?

Well they were exceedingly important to Southern whites because they gave them permission to enslave blacks. (I picked Leviticus here because it's what you're currently reading. Of course there are many, many other verses dealing with the ownership of others.)

Leviticus 25:44-45
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.

Leviticus 19:20
“If a man lies sexually with a woman who is a slave, assigned to another man and not yet ransomed or given her freedom, a distinction shall be made. They shall not be put to death, because she was not free;

Leviticus 25:46
You may bequeath [slaves] to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.

.

[2timothy316]

[Replying to Miles in post #6]
Are you a southern white person speaking for yourself or are you trying to speak behalf of all southern white people?

[Miles]

[Replying to Miles in post #6]
Are you a southern white person speaking for yourself or are you trying to speak behalf of all southern white people?

Good grief!

I'm a "northern white person" speaking about what the bible says, and what historians have told us:

1) The Bible condones slavery

2) Southerns who had the inclination and wherewithal to own slaves morally justified it by using passages from the Bible.


.

[JehovahsWitness]

1) The Bible condones slavery

No it does not.

TO CONDONE
transitive verb

: to regard or treat (something bad or blameworthy) as acceptable, forgivable, or harmless

One can only condone something if it is "something bad or blameworthy", since slavery of itself is neither, the bible cannot accurately be said to "condone" it. For example, if someone were to ask "Do you condone mothers loving their babies?" this could be considered a loaded question as it implies there is something wrong with mothers loving tbeir babies.

Abusive, oppressive slavery is bad. Slavery is not.




JW



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SLAVERY, CHATTEL SLAVERY and .... SLAVE BEATING

[Difflugia]

Are you a southern white person speaking for yourself or are you trying to speak behalf of all southern white people?

Why would either of those be necessary? It's not like contemporary southern white people didn't tell us themselves, in their own words.

From page 674 of Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments by E. N. Elliott, who I deduce is a white, southern man from his portrait and the fact that he was "president of Planters' College, Mississippi." (all emphasis in original):

"We know that Abraham, the chosen one of God, exercised it and held property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that God had authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference or conjecture. At the hazard of fatiguing you by repetition, I will again refer you to the ordinances of the Scriptures. Innumerable instances might be quoted where God has given and commanded men to assume dominion over their fellow-men. But one will suffice. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, you will find domestic slavery—precisely such as is maintained at this day in these States—ordained and established by God, in language which I defy you to pervert so as to leave a doubt on any honest mind that this institution was founded hy him, and decreed to be perpetual. I quote the words:

Leviticus xxv. 44-46: "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Africans] that are
round about you: of them ye shall buy bond-men and bond-maids.

"Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you which they begat in your land [descendants of Africans?] and they shall be your possession.

"And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession. THEY SHALL BE YOUR BOND-MEN FOREVER."

What human legislature could make a decree more full and explicit than this? What court of law or chancery could defeat a title to a slave couched in terms so clear and complete as these? And this is the law of God, whom you pretend to worship, while you denounce and traduce us for respecting it.

Before making accusations of putting words in someone else's mouth (or pen, as it were), you may want to at least make sure that they weren't there in the first place.