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This particular horror is also endorsed in the New testament, in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians 6:5: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ.”
Thank Gods we have a book like to provide a moral compass by which to guide our behaviour. Otherwise, it would be off the rails with us all.
So we can buy Canadians too?
@3 – but the Bible is “the inspired word of god,” right? So when did god change its mind about slavery? 1863?
@3 – I think the point is knocking the practice of taking little passages out of it (I think there’s something else in Leviticus people talk about?) and making them the focus of your moral life while conveniently ignoring stuff like this.
That stuff only applies to the Levites, right?
Damn. Too bad we can just buy up all the Evangelical Dominionists and put them to work in the salt mines, doing something useful. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, I’m looking at you.
This is useless without Mudede’s interpretation.
Boo fucking hoo. Don’t blame the bible because it’s a primitive load of human stupidity? That’s just more human stupidity.
I can’t remember who said this, but it is so true: (I’m paraphrasing) If the Bible gets this most basic question of human rights so wrong, how can anyone think it’s a reliable source of moral guidence?
What 13 said: this passage proves beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bible is not the word of a perfect moral being. it is the work of humans who lived thousands of years ago and who had very different ideas about morality than we do now, ideas that were heavily tainted by tribalism and superstition.
“I think it is unfair to knock the Bible for condoning slavery. Slavery was a near universal institution in the ancient world.”
Full disclosure, I am an atheist, raised though not born because my grandparents insisted on my baptism (Catholic) out of fear for my baby soul. My parents caved on that count but not on others.
Defending the bible based on the social mores of the ancient world calls out the lie in religion. Yeah, as a book written at that time, by humans it makes sense that it would reflect those mores. It also takes the wind out of its divine sails. If the bible was inspired by God, shouldn’t it have transcended those mores?
@5 we can’t offered Canadians any more but you can get two for one pricing on Oregonians
Sounds like someone didn’t really do his homework for the Council of Trent.
FINALLY – the GOP’s jobs plan revealed!
I want some female slaves from canada… that sounds like fun!
And don’t think there aren’t a few fundies out there who read Leviticus and get weak-kneed at the idea of God endorsing the ability to stone gays to death and purchase the children of strangers.
@14 — You said “taint.” Huhh huhh huhh.
Srsly though, I don’t see the problem. If you need money, you can sell your stuff. If you can afford something, you can buy it. It’s just the free market at work, right?
@13 That sounds like something Sam Harris would say.
@15 The phrases “defending the Bible,” and “calls out the lie in religion,” are replete with certain assumptions about what religion is.
The Fundamentalist, Bible-Study, Infallible-Word-Of-God camp is not the whole of the Judeo-Christian tradition, not by a long shot. In fact, up until a few decades ago it was a trivial minority. Unfortunately, since the rise of cable television and teh Internets, myopia and stupidity have a solid forum for reaching insipid minds.
I’m willing to bet, still though, that the majority of people who consider themselves Jews and Christians, don’t look at the Bible that way at all, but as the collected writings of those who lived while the religions were being founded, a collection of religious legend, thought and tales, some of it perhaps historical and much allegorical. In other words, interesting reading, if you’re interested in that sort of thing, but not an instruction manual.
Being a good citizen, and person (or a “mensch”) is the common ethical teaching of mainstream Christianity and Judaism. By no means does anyone need a formal religious foundation to be that good person, of course, and as we’ve all noted, the wrong religious foundation is antithetical to it.
Fundamentalism sucketh.
As I was getting to know the Quakers, a “weighty Friend” responded to my expressed distress at Fundies, by pointing out how those who worship the Bible are worshiping an inanimate object, an idol, which is a colossal sin in itself. That wasn’t Christianity at all, in his opinion.
Moreover you may buy the children of the strangers who dwell among you,
This is a misinterpretation of the original language which actually said: Moreover you may buy the children of The Stranger who dwell among you.
It is ABSOLUTELY fair to “knock” the bible for condoning and endorsing slavery. I think you’ve ignored the point that the bible is supposed to be the moral compass for life, written by GOD. Jesus had ample opportunity to say something against a moral wrong that is universally accepted. We know slavery is wrong, obviously, and we never had a bible or an authority to tell us that. Reality and fact and cause and effect tells us that. You’re going to tell me you have to forgive a DEITY for not understanding that slavery is wrong because “everybody did it?”
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. The Ultimate Arbiter of Good and Bad, the omnipresent, omniscient God would kind of have to know.
I’d also be more impressed if the omniscient God could have told us how to prevent disease rather than Jesus’ method, which was exorcism. Yahweh is an ignorant monster.
@27, wait, does this mean i can buy a Stranger employee’s kid? Dan, how much you want for DJ?
Almost no one on ths thread is a self-professed Christian. We’re all pretty sure that modern-day Christians are opposed to slavery, and have found ways to reconcile scripture with their more modern morals.But what if we’re wrong? I wonder what fraction of Christians are instead trying to mold their moral view of slavery to be more in line with biblical teaching? Certainly Pat Robertson has advocated that. While he’s not fully mainstream, neither is he treated as a pariah in the Christian public sphere.
@25…the old testament told people to not eat pork (something everyone did and thought was normal) and to cut off their babies’ foreskins. (something NOONE fuckin did.) Why would forgoing slavery be any harder? no, it’s obviously made up by humans.
If modern-day Christians were opposed to slavery it wouldn’t still be in the Constitution. That exception is still there in the 13th amendment.
@25 So God didn’t want to hurt the slaver’s feelings?
@25 So God is either a moral relativist or just kind of lazy? We’re not talking some minor point here. This is the enslavement of people for fuck sake. @31 is exactly right. So much obsession with silly rules about penises and where you can stick them, endless discussions of what to do with menstruating women, rules about what kind of fabric you can use and on and on, but not a simple ‘no enslaving’ rule?
The only explanations that make any sense are that either the bible is a book written by people and therefor containing both good and bad shit, or that God is cool with slavery.
Re @29: anyone else here getting creeped out by the increasingly frequent gratuitous references to Dan’s family? Please let’s all stop.
35
totally.
29
Well, Danny paid about $14,000 for the kid and has been feeding him for years…..
But be sure to kick the tires before you commit yourself. According to Danny the kid is a rabid anti-religion bigot like his Dad. So he’ll probably wind up being a Baptist Youth Pastor. Or a Catholic Priest…..
Sure the Bible is totally bogus for it’s treatment of slavery.
And the US Constitution, at least 3/5 bogus…..
@38
The US Constitution was wrong, and now it’s better–not perfect, but better.
That’s one of the great things secular governments have over religious institutions as ruling bodies. Change doesn’t necessarily equal heresy.
38, No one claims that The US Constitution is the perfect divine word of God. The founding fathers themselves knew it was flawed, and thus made a process for amending it as times, and society changed.
38, have you been listening to the Bachmann wing of the GOP? They ARE claiming the Founders were Divinely Inspired when they wrote our perfect Constitution.
42, Okay, no sane person is claiming it.
To add: Even the Bachmann wing thinks the Constitution is flawed, given that they want to amend it to ban gay marriage.
It should be pointed out that The Bible only applies to believers. So don’t you atheists get any fancy ideas about picking up a few slaves for your operations …unless you have a high-tech business, then you may hire young people and chain them to their desks with velvet handcuffs (Silicon Valley 12:5).
Of course, when The Bible was written, non-believers were an endangered species, as they were beheaded and/or burned at the stake.
Hey, where are Venomlash and KiminPortland? They usually have something intelligent to say about Slog Bible Study posts.
Someone say my name?
This excerpt isn’t terribly contentious, but the following verse is:
“And ye may make them an inheritance for your children after you, to hold for a possession: of them may ye take your bondmen for ever; but over your brethren the children of Israel ye shall not rule, one over another, with rigour.” (Leviticus 25:46)
In other words, it is permissible to keep foreigner slaves for as long as they live, but an Israelite slave must be given the option of freedom after six years of labor (as it is written in Exodus 21:2-6). This is in direct conflict with Leviticus 24:22, which states that “Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for the home-born; for I am the LORD your God.'” How can this contradiction be resolved?
Well, Maimonides had some ideas. In his “Laws of Servants”, he states the following:
The essence of Maimonides’ explanation is that although it is legal to treat a foreign slave more harshly than a Hebrew slave, or even to deny him the freedom due a Hebrew slave, it is sinful and immoral to do so. It’s still a thorny issue, and the institution of slavery in the modern world (being far harsher than slavery as regulated in the Old Testament, as slaves have been treated as property rather than indentured servants) has made it even thornier.