Why do you suppose Jesus never condemned slavery?

We don't agree at all!!!

God's people were living in the shadow of literal Babylon. Child sacrifice, necromancy, weird sexual practices (not the kind like a threesome, the guro kind), and slavery were all a thing.

What would happen if 6you abolished slavery in your country as part of your religion. Slaves from other countries will head there. Pretty soon, you're at war with all of those countries. So they only made the rule for Jews.

Also. We have a God who legit wanted to set everyone free, conbined with a bunch of hypernationalist Jews that were unable (and indeed still are unable) to consider any culture beyond themselves. Getting them to not be enslaved and not enslave each other was major progress. Getting them to even consider setting free non-Jews if they converted was an outright triumph.

You're awful!

I very much do not agree with you, but somehow you keep tell me that we agree, I can't even respond to that!

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

You, Frank Apisa, have never said you like zebra.
Therefore, I can only conclude from the lack of evidence, that you violently hate zebra, and wish their death with every waking moment.

Best movie poster ever, btw. "No black man ever killed like this!"
You could not make that poster in 2022.

In all seriousness, what have we learned here? That it is impossible to assign motive, good or evil, from person without asking them personally how they feel about something, or without some sort of evidence. And once a person dies, there is no further way to discover their feelings without some evidence on the matter.

Now, I believe Christ has risen. But I also believe this means that he is also no longer in a mortal human body, but part of the human collective known as the Body of Christ. So there isn't a single person to ask anymore.

We don't have record of him condemning slavery. But neither do we have any written record of him promoting slavery. Hold on though...

As I have already pointed out, his statement mission was to:

Quote:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

To set at liberty those who are oppressed. We do not know that he condemned slavery, we don't know that he supported it, but we do know that his stated mission was to set free people who are oppressed.

This is reasonable doubt on the claim that he supported slavery.

A part of the law that you read completely out of context.

Jesus talks about how divorce is allowed, and says "It is because of your hardness of heart that these laws were given." That is, some laws were written because God knew that the Jews wouldn't follow the laws he wanted to give. If Jesus truly endorsed the law, then he must have been in favor of divorce. But this was not the case. Jesus wanted the spirit of the law to be kept, not how people typically kept it.

The law as written says Jewish (debt) slaves are kept six years or until the Jubilee, whichever comes sooner. But now-Jewish slaves may be kept for as long as you want.

However, part of this law is open-ended. It says that you may keep non-Jew slaves indefinitely. But I want you to check something for me. Anywhere in the law, do see the word "should"? As in non-Jewish slaves should be kept indefinitely?

No, it is because of hardness of heart that these laws were written this way. But the law allowed a Jew to treat a non-Jew the same as one of them. But they were basically being racist and refusing to do what God wanted, which was to trear Jews and non-Jews the same, and release both of them after six years.

As I say, Jesus wants the spirit not the letter of the law kept. So this means doing better than the law as written. Refusing to have slaves (or paying them instead, making them hired hands), freeing slaves, etc.

Quote:

"Slaves, male and female, you may indeed possess, provided you BUY them from among the neighboring nations. You may also BUY them from among the aliens who reside with you and from their children who are born and reared in your land. Such slaves YOU MAY OWN AS CHATTELS, and leave to your sons as their hereditary property, MAKING THEM PERPETUAL SLAVES. But you shall not lord it harshly over any of the Israelites, your kinsmen." Leviticus 25:44ff

You're forgetting that I read the Bible.
1. No slaves are purchased native to Israel, in times when Israel's borders were closed.
That is the effective equivalent of going to another country to buy an exotic pet. And if the country nearby doesn't have slaves, this is like driving hundreds of miles to buy something. The further the drive, the more time guilt has to set in. This is the point. You're focusing on the allowance, and not on the other things. That there were a number of standards of the treatment of slaves that were in place to mitigate their suffering.
2. Let's read the parts before this for context, shall we?

Quote:

39 And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:
40 But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee until the year of jubilee.
41 And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.
42 For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen.
43 Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.

They are debt servants. They have potential to buy themselves out. They keep mentioning waxing rich and waxing poor. These are literally slaves based on economics. Btw, the word "chattel" wasn't in this Bible.
3. Perpetual wasn't that perpetual.
Also same chapter as the part about slaves.

Quote:

10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
11 A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.
12 For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
13 In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.

What do they mean to return a man to his possession? Just like it sounds. The slaves are freed. The debts are also cleared. Btw, this isn't only ppl who worked 50 years. This includes a slave bought in year 48 just before the jubilee. They too are set free.

Quote:

55 For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

The Jews, unlike the Egyptians, set up a tradition where all slaves in Israel were set free. See if you can wrap your head around this. A young slave is bought a day before the year of jubilee. The next day, he is a free man. This is not slavery, this is institutional manumission.

Oh no, I got it wrong. The Jews were a bunch of racist fucks.

But they paved the way for an idea of freeing slaves after enough time went by. And as time went by, the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish slaves did diminish.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_slavery

Quote:

The major change found in the Talmud's slavery laws was that a single set of rules, with a few exceptions, governs both Jewish slaves and non-Jewish slaves. Another change was that the distinction between Hebrew and non-Hebrew slaves began to diminish as the Talmud expanded during this period.

It says that if non-Jewish slaves converted, they could usually count on being freed.

Dude, the entire verse talks about the year of Jubilee, how it starts every 50 years, and how you're not supposed to mistreat Jewish (debt) slaves.

I dun told you about this!

You didn't even notice all those quotes, huh? It's about two or three posts ago, about the year of Jubilee, about the diff between Jews and non-Jews.
Yes, you may do this. But like a Jewish mother says, "If you're a complete asshole with no moral conscience you may own slaves forever. But should you? Well, it's not my business. It's not like these slaves have feelings, hopes, or dreams. So you just keep on enslaving them. I won't mind. My feelings don't matter, either."



Jewish Mama God ain't really happy. She pretends like she is, but you can sorta tell by the flaming eyes, I think.There's a reason why Jewish mothers have mastered the guilt trip. They learned it from God first, who told several laws in a sort of "You may do this, but you probably shouldn't" format. Or who told Moses to strike a rock, then criticized him on how he struck it.

You are totally being like this right now.



Jesus condemned slavery because this, this, this, blah blah blah.

Of course (ignores everything), so Jesus didn't condemn slavery.

The inaccuracies in some translations allow some commentators to claim, incorrectly, that the Bible approves of slavery. Actually, when some Israelites abused the system of indentured servitude, under which the servant had rights and the ability to depart in the Sabbatical year (every 7th year), the prophets of the Bible cried out against this abuse.

Now in New Testament times, many pagans converted to Christianity, and they found themselves in the situation where they owned slaves, obtained before they became believers. Some of the slaves, too, converted, and wondered what they should do. If they freed their slaves, in that society, the slaves would simply be captured and at best returned to slavery — at worst they would be tortured or killed as if they had escaped. The society would not permit these new Christians to free their slaves. Saint Paul, knowing this circumstance, advises the masters to treat their slaves as brothers, much as a Christian would treat an employee today. And he told the slaves two things: not to worry if they remain in slavery (especially to a Christian) for a time; and to obtain their freedom if they had the opportunity. This does not show approval for slavery, but toleration in a circumstance where it cannot yet be overcome.

On one hand, he and his family owned slaves, and he defended the recapture of runaway slaves. NPS.gov states that he “vehemently opposed abolition and favored the idea of colonization, helping to establish the American Colonization Society in 1816.

On the other hand, Key did free several slaves.

However, Key also supported abolition. On AmericanMinute, William Federer writes that in 1820, a U.S. ship captured the slave ship Antelope, which contained approximately 300 African slaves.

Key became involved in the legal battle to free the slaves of the Antelope and dedicated his own personal resources to win their freedom. The legal fight lasted 7 years and was brought before the Supreme Court in 1825.

Francis Scott Key did own slaves. But he worked to free other slaves at his own expense.

Key is one example of moral contradictions in the lives of historic figures. Many of the Founding Fathers vehemently opposed national legalization of slavery, but they owned slaves at the same time. This does not justify their participation in slavery, but, at the same time, it does not negate their efforts to end slavery and ensure the freedom of black Americans in the future through the Constitution.

The NPS.gov website is right in its claim that Key helped found the American Colonization Society. The Society was thought to be a solution to slavery, and Key raised $11,000 to aid Africans in returning to their home country. Key was a strong advocate of colonization to allow freed slaves to form a colony in their native country where they could truly be free.

{7:20} Let each and every one remain in the same calling to which he was called.
{7:21} Are you a servant who has been called? Do not be concerned about it. But if you ever have the ability to be free, make use of it.
{7:22} For any servant who has been called in the Lord is free in the Lord. Similarly, any free person who has been called is a servant in Christ.
{7:23} You have been bought with a price. Do not be willing to become the servants of men.

Pope Leo XIII: “This zeal of the Church for liberating the slaves has not languished with the passage of time; on the contrary, the more it bore fruit, the more eagerly it glowed. There are incontestable historical documents which attest to that fact, documents which commended to posterity the names of many of Our predecessors. Among them Saint Gregory the Great, Hadrian I, Alexander III, Innocent III, Gregory IX, Pius II, Leo X, Paul III, Urban VIII, Benedict XIV, Pius VII, and Gregory XVI stand out. They applied every effort to eliminate the institution of slavery wherever it existed. They also took care lest the seeds of slavery return to those places from which this evil institution had been cut away.”

Pope Pius X: “It is true that soon afterwards the worst of these indignities — that is to say, slavery, properly so called — was, by the goodness of the merciful God, abolished; and to this public abolition of slavery in Brazil and in other regions the excellent men who governed those Republics were greatly moved and encouraged by the maternal care and insistence of the Church.”

For Jesus and Paul then, because we all live in a client relationship (God-Man; or better, Christ-Christian), extending that relationship to human interactions is not morally problematic. As such, slavery requires no condemnation for we are all slaves. All that remains is for slaves to “fear” their masters; and for masters (who are not the real masters, only the stewards), to not beat their slaves and otherwise act like delinquents.

Okay.

https://ronconte.com/2019/10/25/does-the-bible-condemns-slavery-yes/

God hates slavery. We see this in the entire book of Exodus, where an entire group of slaveowners are given plagues, and an entire group of slaves are set free. If this isn't enough, the owners follow, only to be drowned in the water.

(I don't know how you think this can be ambiguous, unless you are deliberately being obtuse)

Most scholars today are of the opinion that the Egyptians never held the ancient Hebrews as slaves. The story in Exodus is almost certainly bogus. There may have been some ancient Hebrews in Egypt, but it is more likely they were expelled...than that they had to "escape."

There is no direct evidence that people worshipping Yahweh sojourned in ancient Egypt, let alone during the time the Exodus is believed to have happened. There is indirect evidence that at least some did. What's for sure is that thousands of years ago, Egypt was crawling with Semitic-speaking peoples.

Egyptian scribes of Ahmose I and Thutmoses III wrote boastfully of campaigns in the Levant, resulting in captured prisoners being enslaved in Egypt. Various descriptions perfectly match scenes in the Passover Haggadah.

The setting described in Exodus could be Egypt's East Delta, where the Nile floods every year. The area has no source of stone, and mud-brick structures repeatedly "melted" back into the mud and silt. Even stone temples have hardly survived here. Physical evidence of slaves working there isn't likely to have survived. But a leather scroll dating to the time of Ramesses II (1303 BCE-1213 BCE) describes a close account of brick-making apparently by enslaved prisoners of the wars in Canaan and Syria, which sounds very much like the biblical account. The scroll describes 40 taskmasters, each with a daily target of 2,000 bricks

Other Egyptian papyruses (Anastasi III & IV) discuss using straws in mud bricks, as mentioned in Exodus 5:7: "You must not gather straw to give to the people to make bricks as formerly. Let themsleves go and gather straw for themselves".

The tomb of vizier Rekhmire, ca. 1450 BCE, famously shows foreign slaves “making bricks for the workshop-storeplace of the Temple of Amun at Karnak in Thebes” and for a building ramp. They are labeled "captures brought-off by His Majesty for work at the Temple of Amun". Semites and Nubians are shown fetching and mixing mud and water, striking out bricks from molds, leaving them to dry and measuring their amount, under the watchful eyes of Egyptian overseers, each with a rod.

Also, the biblical description of how Hebrew slaves suffered under the lash is borne out by the Egyptian papyrus Bologna 1094, telling how two workers fled their taskmaster “because he beat them”. So it seems the biblical descriptions of Egyptian slavery are accurate.

Conclusively, Semitic slaves there were. However, critics argue there's no archaeological evidence of a Semitic tribe worshiping Yahweh in Egypt.

The papyrus Anastasi VI from around 3200 years ago describes how the Egyptian authorities allowed a group of Semitic nomads from Edom who worshiped Yahweh to pass the border-fortress in the region of Tjeku (Wadi Tumilat) and proceed with their livestock to the lakes of Pithom.

Shortly afterwards, the Israelites enter world history with the Merenptah stele, which bears the first mention of an entity called Israel in Canaan. It is robustly dated at is 1210 BCE, i.e., as of writing, 3226 years ago.

These Yahweh worshippers were in ancient Egypt well after the Exodus is supposed to have happened. Members of the Yahweh cult may have existed there earlier, but there is no solid evidence for that. There are, however, indications.

According to the scribe Manetho, the founder of monotheism was Osarisph, who later adopted name Moses, and led his followers out of Egypt in Akhenaten's reign. Akhenaten was the heretic Pharaoh who abolished polytheism and replaced it with monotheism, worshiping only the sun disc, Aten.

The absence of evidence of a sojourn in the wilderness proves nothing. A Semitic group in flight wouldn't have left direct evidence: They would not have built cities, built monuments or done anything but leave footprints in the desert sand.

Yet more support for the Haggadah may lie in an interesting poem copied onto a papyrus dating to the 13th century BCE (although original is believed to be much older), called the "Admonitions of Impuwer or the Lord of All").

It portrays a devastated Egypt haunted by plagues, droughts, violent uprisings – culminating in the escape of slaves with Egypt's wealth. In short, the Impuwer papyrus seems to be telling the story of Exodus from the Egyptian point of view, from a river of blood to the devastation of the livestock to darkness.

Also, the Egyptians were not above altering historical records when the truth proved to be embarrassing or went against their political interests. It was not the praxis of the pharaohs to advertise their failures on temple walls for all to see. When Thutmose III came to power, he tried to obliterate the memory of his predecessor, Hatshepsut. Her inscriptions were erased, her obelisks surrounded by a wall, and her monuments were forgotten. Her name does not appear in later annals.

The Exodus could be a distant Semitic memory of the expulsion of Hyksos, or small-scale exoduses by different tribes and groups of Semitic origin during various periods. Or it could be a fable.

Psychologically, though, why would scribes invent a tale about such a humble and humiliating beginning such as slavery? Nobody but the Jews describe their community's beginning in such lowly terms. Most people prefer to connect their leaders to heroic deeds or even to claim a direct lineage to Gods.

In both the Exodus and Jeremiah 34 stories, it's not that Yahweh hates slavery, it's that, in the first instance, he demands that the Israelites be emancipated by the Ramses, and in the second instance, he demands that the Jerusalemites free their Hebrew slaves in return for sparing Jerusalem from Nebuchadnezzar's invasion. No mention of slaves other than Israelites and Hebrew Jerusalemites is made in these stories. Yahweh is merely singling out these particular groups of slaves, his people.

1 The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

3 But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.”
3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:
Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant[a] and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?”
“It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.”
10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”

To sit and sulk like a little emo brat. Basically, the Jewish mindset as a chosen people has become a toxic thing, where they cannot tolerate the idea that maybe God also wants other people included. Nope, the Jewish laws are written with Jews in mind.

Throughout history there has been a wide difference in what "slavery" is. Some "slaves" were like employees are today.