Hi Arwen,

Saw your message after the prior thread closed. Here's some light reading regarding the subject. Notice that many christians who are unfamiliar with the bible will try to obfuscate the issue by ignoring the passages about real slavery and pretend the only passages about it refer to the hebrew indentured servants. That's dishonest as you can see below:

Except for murder, slavery has got to be one of the most immoral things a person can do. Yet slavery is rampant throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible clearly approves of slavery in many passages, and it goes so far as to tell how to obtain slaves, how hard you can beat them, and when you can have sex with the female slaves.



Many Jews and Christians will try to ignore the moral problems of slavery by saying that these slaves were actually servants or indentured servants. Many translations of the Bible use the word "servant", "bondservant", or "manservant" instead of "slave" to make the Bible seem less immoral than it really is. While many slaves may have worked as household servants, that doesn't mean that they were not slaves who were bought, sold, and treated worse than livestock.



The following passage shows that slaves are clearly property to be bought and sold like livestock.



However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)



The following passage describes how the Hebrew slaves are to be treated.



If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only six years. Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for his freedom. If he was single when he became your slave and then married afterward, only he will go free in the seventh year. But if he was married before he became a slave, then his wife will be freed with him. If his master gave him a wife while he was a slave, and they had sons or daughters, then the man will be free in the seventh year, but his wife and children will still belong to his master. But the slave may plainly declare, 'I love my master, my wife, and my children. I would rather not go free.' If he does this, his master must present him before God. Then his master must take him to the door and publicly pierce his ear with an awl. After that, the slave will belong to his master forever. (Exodus 21:2-6 NLT)



Notice how they can get a male Hebrew slave to become a permanent slave by keeping his wife and children hostage until he says he wants to become a permanent slave. What kind of family values are these?



The following passage describes the sickening practice of sex slavery. How can anyone think it is moral to sell your own daughter as a sex slave?



When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)



So these are the Bible family values! A man can buy as many sex slaves as he wants as long as he feeds them, clothes them, and screws them!



What does the Bible say about beating slaves? It says you can beat both male and female slaves with a rod so hard that as long as they don't die right away you are cleared of any wrong doing.



When a man strikes his male or female slave with a rod so hard that the slave dies under his hand, he shall be punished. If, however, the slave survives for a day or two, he is not to be punished, since the slave is his own property. (Exodus 21:20-21 NAB)



You would think that Jesus and the New Testament would have a different view of slavery, but slavery is still approved of in the New Testament, as the following passages show.



Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)



Christians who are slaves should give their masters full respect so that the name of God and his teaching will not be shamed. If your master is a Christian, that is no excuse for being disrespectful. You should work all the harder because you are helping another believer by your efforts. Teach these truths, Timothy, and encourage everyone to obey them. (1 Timothy 6:1-2 NLT)



In the following parable, Jesus clearly approves of beating slaves even if they didn't know they were doing anything wrong.



The servant will be severely punished, for though he knew his duty, he refused to do it. "But people who are not aware that they are doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, and much more is required from those to whom much more is given." (Luke 12:47-48 NLT)

You can see how easy it was for southern christians to justify slavery using their holy book as a guide, right?

In fact, the argument was often made that abolitionists were not true christians since nowhere does jesus or yahweh ever say: don't own people, it's wrong.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

kolobian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> In fact, the argument was often made that
> abolitionists were not true christians since
> nowhere does jesus or yahweh ever say: don't own
> people, it's wrong.
>
> Quite the opposite, in fact.


Yep.

However, slavery was more a universal norm than not, that is up until the English "low churchers" started advocating for its abolition. Quakers and other dissenters and guys like John Wesley (Methodist?) got the anti-slavery ball rolling towards our views today.

Did they use 'the bible' to justify their view? Yep. This is one of many examples of how 'the bible' is/was use(d) to argue both sides of any controversy. Take today's fad for atheism. Nobody quotes 'the bible' like an active atheist. I reckon many of them were the scripture chasing champions when they were wee lads and lasses. ;^)

So atheism's a fad now?

Who knew...

schlock Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So atheism's a fad now?
>
> Who knew...

I've been an atheist for 33 years.
Fad?
No.

Although I know you're being facetious, I totally agree with you.

I was great at scripture chase. It's just that I happened to chase ALL the scriptures which ultimately led to me asking questions, which resulted in my atheism.

kolobian Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> It's just that I
> happened to chase ALL the scriptures which
> ultimately led to me asking questions, which
> resulted in my atheism.

Would all our TBM family and friends did the same.

Cheers,

Humnan

Thank you so much for posting this, Kolobian! I was hoping you would explain more, and I found it quite interesting to read...and quite disturbing.

I live in the south and was actually asking a baptist the other day (he found out I left the church and so we were chatting online). I was telling him that upon leaving the LDS faith, it's made me view the bible differently and I didn't believe everything in it was gospel. Some was just society of the day and not meant to be followed. He disagreed. He believes it's all gospel and to be taken literally. So, I asked him about slavery, and he NEVER ANSWERED ME! I asked him twice. I wonder, now, what his opinion of it is. I hadn't thought that perhaps that believe slavery could be okay still.

Your point about the abolitionists not being considered true Christians is something I was unaware of, but it TOTALLY makes sense. To me, it's along the same lines as those who want women to have equal rights - to be equal to her husband - as not viewed as true Christians by many other Christians. (Also something I talked to this baptist fellow about, as he believes his wife should submit to him, etc...)

Thank you again for the information. I'll make sure my hubby reads it too. We are both trying to figure out the bible right now, especially Christ. We CERTAINLY will not be following anything in it over what our conscience says is right/wrong.

Reading the Old Testament made me to lose my belief in the Bible. I became Christian after I left Mormonism, and I was encouraged each week by my Pastor to read the Bible. I started at Genesis 1:1 and read the Old Testament completely through for the first time in my life. I began to loose my belief in the Bible before I made it out of Genesis. Some of the stuff, like slavery, made me sick. Yahweh's behavior reminded me more of what I would expect from a devil than a god. I came to the conclusion that very few people must actually be reading the Bible, at least the Old Testament. How much more obvious can it be than when they kill all of the women and children in Deut. 31, but they keep the virgins for themselves?

Similar story here! As a TBM, I remember deciding I wanted to read the Old Testament since I had never read it from beginning to end. It wasn't very far in, but I came across the story of a girl being raped and then being told to marry the man that raped her (or something). I was so shocked (not to mention completely offended as a woman). My opinion of the Old Testament went from thinking it was a great book to thinking people were insane for believing anything in it! It was obviously DARK and EVIL. If everyone hadn't been raised as this being gospel but had been given the book as an adult, I don't think many would believe it since it would morally hit them so wrong.

It wasn't until recently that I realized that some of the stories have been factually proven impossible - like Noah & the Ark. And, I find myself thinking about the Bible similar to how I feel about the BoM. A bunch of made up stories that show that even if the stories were true, THAT God is not a God worthy of worship.

We don't believe in the Old Testament, but we aren't sure what to think about the New Testament. It seems like it could so easily be a bunch of stories as well.

Thank you, again, for sharing this, OP. It's helpful.

Slavery was taken for granted as part of the social economy for most cultures up until a couple of centuries ago. That beacon of rationality, the Athens of Socrates, was also built on slavery. Except for concentration camps for extermination, though, probably no peoples treated their slaves worse than we treat animals for consumption, and on a far larger scale. Two or three thousand years from now, humans may look back on our 'enlightened' (?) era and see that practically all of its cultural contributors blithely and unnecessarily perpetuated the abomination of cannibalizing their fellow creatures.

I was thinking the same thing about the idea that slaves were treated worse than livestock--too valuable for that kind of mistreatment. But then I realized that kolobian might have been making a reference to sexual exploitation. I would think that human slaves were sexually abused far more often than livestock (though that did and does happen too).

Agree with the idea that future generations will take a dim view of our overall treatment of animals, especially in our factory farms.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2014 10:58PM by Facsimile 3.

I agree 1,000,000% ...

What we do to our fellow sentient creatures will be near unbelievable to future generations who will be learning about us as THEIR "ancient history."