At -2, that is K_As point of view, not what Jesus necessarily thought. Not useful in a debate.
K_A was doing something that I encourage called thinking in order to determine possible motive. It's pretty useful in debate, actually: give a try sometime. In doing so, he reached a point that I agree with, and so I took the opportunity to expand upon it. Since Jesus took it upon himself not to actually say what he thought (likely due to the reason K_A pointed out), I consider that very strong evidence that his guidelines do not constitute the entirety of an absolute moral code.
In general, servant and slave are interchangeable. Servant being an employee, slave being a slave.
That is... not what interchangeable means. Every reference I've found says that servant is often, though not always, translated as slave. The KJV refers to humans owning humans as "slaves" only once, for example. That is not a true translation and you're lying to yourself if you pretend that it is.
As for racial slavery, the slavery the Jews took part in was significantly different from what the USA, for example, took part in. You notice they can only buy slaves from foreigners living within their borders? The reason the foreigners are selling their children is because they are too poor to keep them alive and fed. Selling their children into slavery means that those children will be fed, clothed, have steady work, and a roof over their heads. The Jews were governed by strict rules on how they treated their slaves, and the purpose of slavery was to keep people alive and healthy and useful. Like the welfare system but with the keeping people useful bit
I'm really not sure what your argument is here. Do you feel that people should be able to sell extra children as slaves, as long as they are immigrants? I'm pretty sure that's what you're trying to defend, and if so I think we're about done.
I don't see where the verse talks about racial purity. Nor sex slaves. I see it talk about having a woman slave, a wife, a daughter in law, and a wife who he us forced to take care of even if he wants to divorce her and marry someone else (which was highly disapproved of in the Bible). all in all, the woman seems to have a pretty good deal out of it all.
Your reading comprehension seems to have failed you. I'll highlight those parts:
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)
Orange is racial purity: Israelite women are not to be sold to foreigners. Red is sex slaves: sleep with a woman that you own as you sleep with your wife. That's about as straightforward as it gets- sorry.
If one Muslim goes on a suicide bombing attack, he makes his whole religion look bad. If a catholic priest, or many catholic priests, commit pedophilia, they make their religion look bad. If a Christian slave is disrespectful to his master, or a Christian employee is disrespectful of his boss, or if a Christian is disrespectful of the police, he makes his whole religion look bad, even though what he does may go against his religion. Yeah, it's a bad thing to do something bad and make your religion look bad because of it.
I agree it's a bad thing to do something bad. I don't think being an disobedient slave is a bad thing, so it would appear that's where we disagree. How fitting.
Notice how the slave owners of pre Civil War completely failed to follow the guidelines written in the Bible, and only read the part they wanted to read. You could get anything out of a text by interpretting it the wrong way. That's why the accuracy of Bible is such a controvertial issue.
That's exactly what I'm pointing out to you. As I said earlier, when is the last time you stoned someone? How many passages in the Bible demand stoning as punishment? There are many good ideas in the Bible. However, every idea in the Bible is not a good one. Those are two very different concepts. There were many Biblical defenses of slavery in the South, see this explanation on
the Curse of the Canaan people, probably the most prominent argument of that time. If you believe that slaves in ancient Isreal were treated much better than American slaves, you're mistaken:
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)
Many good and moral individuals in early America were fully convinced that slavery was God's will. There were various compelling Biblical arguments from religious leaders of the time who were pressed to justify slavery, and people were intellectually lazy enough to accept these sermons as fact. Today, we see those arguments as being "obviously" mistaken and thus a different interpretation of the Bible has become the "correct" one. The exact same situation played itself out for Galileo in the 1600's when he disagreed with the Church on geocentrism. Within a few decades, I have no doubt whatsoever that history will repeat itself on the matter of evolution. People will say that the Biblical interpretation of our time was obviously flawed and give alternative scriptural interpretations that fit with what we, as humanity, know to be true: slavery is wrong, the earth is not the center of the universe, and humans descended from apes. In time, one final point will be conceded: the Bible was not divinely inspired.
Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 22 2011, 11:44 pm by FaZ-.
None.