This is why I have always given people a sideways glance when they proclaim God’s morality never changes. From what I can see, it most definitely changes. If slavery is condoned in one part of the Bible and considered blasphemous in another, how is that not a change?
At the same time, I also approve of this approach. I do think morality is subjective (a massive hornet’s nest for another thread) and it does change through time and between cultures. It makes sense for God to adjust morality so that it fits with where people are.
Chattel slavery means being a slave for life, being owned as property, and whose ownership can be inherited. It describes children born to slaves as being owned by the slave master. Also,
Exodus 21
20 “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.
Is that how family members are treated? As long as the beating doesn’t kill them, it’s fine?
The problem is the idea that MORALITY is absolute, unconditional, and unchanging. Like I said elsewhere… the good parenting for the toddler is not the same as good parenting for the teenager. And this doesn’t mean the parent has changed, just the conditions.
When the only workable safe choices for dealing with enemies is genocide or slavery, slavery just might be the most moral option. Of course that certainly did not apply to American slavery - that was purely economic. The economic argument for slavery is certainly weaker but not entirely devoid of merit of either. There is something a little skewed with modern self-righteous judgements on slavery in the past now that we have machinery and automation to do so much of the work.
Ah… yeah. I see you are pretty much saying the same thing.
It is not God who change, it is the human understanding of God that changes. As God reveals more, so does our understanding. Science doesn’t get it right first time, all the time, why should religion? (or the Bible, unless you are going to claim God’s authorship, which I do not)
The notion of enslaving defeated enemies is not restricted to Religion, and like many things, it takes courage to change the norm. At least Israel has the Jubilee whereby all slaves are freed after 7 years or so. I wonder, is slavery better or worse than genocide?
Richard
Science doesn’t claim to be the inerrant and infallible words of a deity. Science very much admits that it is a very fallible human enterprise.
First, not all slaves are freed very 7 years. As described in the Bible, foreigners who are slaves can be owned for life, and inherited.
Second, I don’t see how an all powerful deity would be limited to the choices of genocide and slavery. God couldn’t have shown the Israelites a different way of settling conflicts with their neighbors?
Ah yeah…! He could have taught them spells like “abracadabra, be my friend.”
(sarcasm font, of course)
And also things like proper employment laws, welfare, political asylum, adoption services, prisons…
Severe corporal punishments used to be widely accepted, however difficult it is to stomach for modern people. Want to blame the Bible for that as well?
Yeah, I guess God could have just teleported all the enemies elsewhere!
Exactly. Or perhaps teach the Israelites ways of diplomatically solving any issues that exist between them and other people. Barring that, protect the Israelites from attacks.
Some would say God did. He’s known as Jesus. Of course - his lessons never quite “took” - witness the scramble of us - all his ostensible ‘followers’ all the way up to current U.S. evangelicals to find ways to ignore or explain away his teachings.
I do not conform to the doctrine of inerrancy, like the majority of Christians I might add.
I suppose they could always just sign a treaty and leave them to govern themselves, like the end of WW1? And look how that turned out: they just built up another army and tried again!
There is no right way to deal with people like Hitler or Nations bent on domination (Russia?)
The only certain way is to take away their freedom, one way or another.
Richard
You’re blaming Christianity for people abusing it. That’s no different than someone saying that all atheists are dictators and murderers because Stalin was.
How does that “approve racism”?
Are you aware what God said about why He chose Israel? It boils down to that they were the worst option available – so if by racism you mean a belief that your race is worse than all others, fine.
So you choose to read the Bible like it’s a menu and you get to pick and choose what items you want, rather than actually reading the whole thing.
So you don’t care about what the Bible has for principles, you just want to pick on items you’ve selected from it as a menu. Fortunately for humanity, Christians and Jews both applied the principles and fought to eliminate slavery.
I’m not ignoring anything, I’m treating the Bible as a unified collection of literature.
If someone did science the way you approach the Bible, then they could insist that there are just four elements, that the Earth is flat, that light is waves in the luminiferous aether, and that everything orbits the Earth which stands still – by your approach, those must all be taken as legitimate scientific positions.
Excrementum tauri. This just shows that you don’t care about logic, and/or have so little respect for others that you don’t actually pay attention to what they’ve said, you just want to attack and argue.
Go back and actually read what I wrote.
Good article. I wish they’d included a citation from one of the second-Temple rabbis who argued that slavery was blasphemy, and from one of the church Fathers who did the same.
Back then, yes, in most societies. Hammurabi’s Babylon was an exception, and it has always bugged me that Leviticus falls below the standards he set.
What the priestly code did do was put limits on beatings: put out an eye, the slave goes free; break a tooth, and the slave goes free; cripple a slave, and be required to care for him/her the rest of his/her life.
And even with the verse taken in isolation, it was an improvement over conditions in Egypt or Moab; there and in other places slaves had no more rights than goats (except that eating one’s goat was acceptable).
What gets missed in how people approach the Torah is the prophets and how they treated all those laws: they were not absolute but were to conform to justice and mercy; they were not eternal but were meant to teach people to treat others better than before. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount sets out a logical result of how the prophets approached Torah when He said, “You have heard . . . but I say to you”: He is doing what people were supposed to have learned from the Torah, pointing to a higher way.
That aligns with the provision that in order to pay debts a person was allowed to sell himself into slavery – it didn’t mean it was a good option, but it was better than defaulting on debts.
It’s worth noting that when all the verses about slavery are considered, it appears that fellow Hebrews were never slaves as usually defined, but more what we would call indentured servants. That is a step towards ending slavery since it was an assertion that none of God’s people were to be made slaves – which in the New Testament leads to the conclusion that slavery should come to an end since Christ died for all, thus granting everyone the status that Jews had held.
That’s a matter of dealing with human beings: do something too radically, and they’ll reject it. In the ANE, Richard is right: in dealing with enemies it was either enslave them or eliminate them; neither the culture nor the economics allowed for any other option.
BTW, that reminds me of the real issue I see with OT slavery: a male slave who was not a Hebrew could gain freedom by choosing to get circumcised and become a Jew, thus falling under the Sabbath year manumission rules, but the only way for a female slave to get free was if she married an Israelite man!
So set them up to be laughed at and regarded as weak? Diplomacy back then consisted of negotiating terms of submission or demonstrating that one’s military power was such that one must be treated as (relatively) an equal.
So, teach them to be weak.
Too many proposals ignore the cultural realities of the time.
I dont think that is an acceptable argument…
The above texts clearly mean that the Bible is written in such a way that any person in any time can read and understand without misunderstanding the intent of its Creator and not being able to correctly interpret in any time, place, or language!
One of the reasons why we can know this is found in correlating with other bible texts on similar topics…this cross referencing ensures we do not screw up the use of normal language to know what the scripture tells us and means.
An example of cross referencing is as follows
CREATION
Genesis 2
(Exodus 16:22–30; Hebrews 4:1–11)1Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2And by the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on that day He rested from all His work.a
3Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on that day He rested from all the work of creation that He had accomplished.
Exodus 20:
11For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy.
Romans 1:20
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
THE FLOOD
Genesis 6
(2 Peter 3:1–7)
1Then the LORD said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and all your family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2You are to take with you seven pairs ofa every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate; a pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate; 3and seven pairs of every kind of bird of the air, male and female, to preserve their offspring on the face of all the earth. 4For seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living thing I have made.”
Matthew 24
38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. 39And they were oblivious until the flood came and swept them all away.
2 Peter 2
5if He did not spare the ancient world when He brought the flood on its ungodly people, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, among the eight; 6if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction,b reducing them to ashes as an example of what is coming on the ungodly;c 7and if He rescued Lot, a righteous man distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless 8(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— 9if all this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment.