[Vision2020] Wrong About the Bible: Slavery

[Ralph Nielsen]

On Feb 3, 2007, at 10:25 PM, Andreas Schou wrote:

> On 2/3/07, Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu> wrote:
>> You're the one who is dodging, Tony. Just go back and read what I
>> said. I have never claimed the Bible was consistent from cover to
>> cover. That is what dishonest preachers claim. That is why Xians like
>> to pick out particular verses or stories to prove their pet
>> prejudices. That is why Doug Wilson and his friends want to have
>> homosexuals killed by the government. That is why the majority of
>> Idahoans don't want same-sex couples to have the same rights as other
>> married people. That is why millions of Americans want to have
>> creationism and so-called intelligent design taught in public
>> schools. And so on...
>>
>> But the Bible is consistent on at least one subject: nowhere does it
>> condemn slavery. That is precisely why Andreas jumped on me.
>>
>> As for translations into English, they are usually made from Hebrew
>> and Greek texts, not from previous translations thereof. But entire
>> books have been written on this subject.
>
> Ralph --
>
> There have been very few times at which the morality of slavery was a
> matter of debate in the Christian world; consequently, modern
> scholarship on the issue of slavery is sparse, as modern theologians
> (with very few exceptions) consider the matter closed for debate.
> This, of course, elides the fact that the Bible is not ambiguous, but,
> rather, contradictory on the subject. However, as I mentioned before,
> abolitionism was, at its root, a Christian movement, and found its
> roots in the same Bible from which slaveholders derived their
> authority.
>
> I mentioned, in an earlier post, the pardes rules of scriptural
> interpretation. You seem content to use only the plain reading of the
> text, the p'shat. This is, of course, appropriate if you believe the
> Bible is cover-to-cover nonsense. However, you've got a bad habit of
> applying a plain reading of the text to only parts of the text which
> you find repugnant, which is dishonest.
>
> The Bible contains several types of texts: straightforward narrative,
> epistles, prophetic texts, gospels, and administrative priestly texts.
> Each have different attitudes toward slavery.
>
> As Genesis and Exodus, the Torah's main narrative texts, depict a
> people in slavery, it's unsurprising that depictions of slavery are
> ambiguous. Of the slaveowners depicted in the Bible, only Abraham (who
> is given extrordinary license elsewhere in the Bible to violate God's
> commandments, even going so far as to serve God Himself milk and meat
> in the same meal) is depicted as wholly good. Elsewhere, slaveowners
> and slavetraders (who are largely, themselves, owners and traders of
> Jews) are depicted as lazy, venal, cruel, and in violation of God's
> commandments, and slavery as being a profoundly negative condition.
>
> Once you reach Leviticus, you find slavery both condoned and
> regulated, and regulated in a way that is fairly morally repugnant.
> This moral repugnance is fairly characteristic of Leviticus, which
> regulates things as one might expect of what is (effectively) the
> Constitution of a tiny, despotic Near Eastern kingdom. One might note,
> however, that as Israel became less of a tiny, despotic Near Eastern
> kingdom, Jewish theologians did their best to mitigate the stupidest
> laws of Leviticus.
>
> The first thing that they noticed, of course, is that while Leviticus
> regulates slaveholding, it appears to establish no legal method for
> obtaining slaves, other than Exodus 21's offhand comment that one can
> sell one's own daughter into slavery. Exodus 21 (as befits a text
> about the Jews' own experience with slavery) condemns manstealers to
> death, and, notably, does not restrict the crime of manstealing to
> Jews. Any Jew or foreigner found with any kidnapped Jew or gentile is
> punished with death. As this text specifically mentions that the
> penalty applies even if the victim is sold, it can't be argued that
> this was not intended to apply to slavery.
>
> Jesus, not being particularly concerned with issuing particular moral
> pronouncements on particular activities. The New Testament contains
> sin punishable in the afterlife and forgivable by repentance, rather
> than laws punishable in the corporeal realm. Jesus did not
> particularly consider that his teachings would ever be used in an
> attempt to administer a state. For that reason, if you are looking for
> a law in the Gospels that stands in direct contradiction to
> Leviticus, you simply won't find one: the New Testament contains no
> such administrative principles.
>
> Contrary to the apostles, Paul returns much more clearly to the Old
> Testament. As a Jew who sought to maintain Christianity's roots in
> Judaism and who was actively combatting gentile converts who saw
> Christianity as a religious movement entirely distinct from Judaism,
> he returned to the Old Testament when giving advice to Philemon --
> advice that is  both facially inconsistent with the radical
> egalitarianism of Jesus'  command that 'there is neither slave nor
> freeman. Even granting that inconsistency, Jesus' removal of the
> distinction 'between Jew and Greek', Christian abolitionists argued,
> caused the crime of manstealing (which previously was interpreted to
> only apply between Jews) to apply to all people, and, while it did not
> free slaves in Paul's day, (a) made new enslavements punishable as
> manstealing and (b) applied the tradition of the Jubilee year to
> gentile slaves to which the rule was previously inapplicable.
>
> This is a fairly straightforward remez interpretation of two clearly
> stated principles, and one that does not rely on the theological
> wishy-washiness of using Christ's 'do unto others'  proclamation as a
> sort-of overarching Constitutional principle for the entire BIble
>
> I can anticipate, of course, that you interpret Paul's interpretation
> of Christ as the correct one. This is, however, inconsistent with the
> interpretive strategies you use elsewhere -- strategies that accept
> that the Bible contains clearly contradictory principles. Why you
> believe that an interpretive principle you use elsewhere (to, for
> instance, argue against the existence of an afterlife in the Torah)
> somehow does not apply when it can be used to paint the Bible in a bad
> light is beyond me.
>
> If you're interested, which I doubt you are, you can find any one of a
> number of Christian abolitionists' arguments against slavery in
> historical collections online. They are not entirely without merit.
>
> -- ACS

Dear Andreas, you can't get around the fact that slavery was  
permitted in both the OT (Hebrew Bible) and the Xian NT. It was also  
accepted by the Xian churches for many centuries. I have long thought  
that using the Bible as an argument against slavery is both  
hypocritical and self-defeating. Slavery is wrong because it is cruel  
to our fellow humans, not because of anything one might dig up from  
the Bible or any other alleged holy book.

I think you are wrong to claim that Paul was trying to keep his  
version of the new Xian religion attached to the Hebrew Bible. That  
was what the Jerusalem Xians were trying to do. Paul boasted that he  
did not get his gospel from any man but directly from Jesus Christ  
(Galatians 1:1, 11-12). Obviously in a vision, not from a personal  
encounter with Jesus. Paul quoted frequently from the OT (Septuagint  
Greek version) because he was a Jew himself and those were the only  
Jewish scriptures there were in his day. The later gospel writers  
also quoted (not always accurately) from the Septuagint.

Paul's letters were first accepted by Marcion precisely because they  
abolished the old Jewish law for Xians. Paul was only later accepted  
by what later became the official Xian church.

I frankly don't understand what you're trying to say in your  
penultimate paragraph. Please give us some examples of what you mean.

As for the final paragraph, I have already said what I think about  
Xian abolitionists trying to use the Bible for ammunition. They're  
not only trying to ride two horses at once but the horses are going  
in opposite directions.

Ralph