Quote:
Originally Posted by ToothSayer
Thanks for these - wasn't aware of them. It makes the people who try to link Christianity to slavery look even more dishonest and irrationally hateful toward what is actually the greatest anti-slavery force in history - Christianity.
That, or the other explanation, the one where the Bible is contradictory about a topic, as it can be on other topics. This would clear up how it was used to support both sides of slavery. For example, it turns out that the death sentence in Exodus 21:16 only applies to non-Hebrew slaves.
"If a man is found stealing one of his brothers of the people of Israel, and if he treats him as a slave or sells him, then that thief shall die. So you shall purge the evil from your midst." (Deuteronomy 24:7)
There's more. Did you forget the passage from
Exodus 21 earlier? You bolded the second sentence ("If she does not please the man who bought her") but the more obvious words to bold are at the very start: "
When a man sells his daughter as a slave". Daughters can be sold into slavery without any messy kidnapping required.
There's more. Male Hebrew slaves might be treated differently, having a six year term limit before being set free. Except there is a loophole where they can be kept as slaves
just as permanently as foreign slaves.
"Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall be his slave forever." (Exodus 21:1-6)
There's more. Buying and selling human beings from foreigners is perfectly acceptable, and these are
perma-slaves who can be passed from one generation to the next.
"As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly." (Leviticus 25:44-46)
There's more, for example the taking of young virgin girls as
sex slaves after a defeating an enemy (in some cases there'd be no male slaves to worry over as all the men end up executed, along with the non-virgin women).
Quote:
Originally Posted by ToothSayer
Thanks for these - wasn't aware of them. It makes the people who try to link Christianity to slavery look even more dishonest and irrationally hateful toward what is actually the greatest anti-slavery force in history - Christianity.
Were you not aware of these passages either? It's the only way I could imagine anyone thinking that this was "the greatest anti-slavery force in history".