Slaves could buy and own their own property. They could even buy their freedom from their masters
Lucky them.
Bible writers ignored their own principle
by venus 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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konceptual99
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David_Jay
ttdtt,
Do remember that you are quoting from the New World Translation. The verse doesn't read exactly like that in the Hebrew.
The Hebrew reads like this:
When someone strikes their slave with a rod, whether they be male or female, and it's the type of beating that results in a death, punishment must be extracted. But no punishment will be demanded where this does not happen. If there is a question, wait a day or two. The slave is the other’s property.
Torah isn't saying that Jews may beat those in their service up to the point of death. On the contrary, Torah is explaining why someone can receive capital punishment for killing their own slave. It is teaching that there is a difference between someone whacking another with a rod and one beating them so badly that they die.
The phrase, "the slave is the other's property" follows the statement LO YUQQAM in Hebrew, which literally means "DO NOT EXECUTE (HIM)." This shows that the subject of the passage is when a slave owner is accused of going too far in beating a slave. Torah is asking: Was this just a passing beating? Was it bad enough to kill the slave?
Torah suddenly skips a few verses to say something else, then continues with the slave issue, stating in verse 26:
When someone strikes the eye of their slave, male or female, causing permanent damage, they must let that slave go free on account of losing their eye. If they knock out the slave's tooth, male or female, they must let that slave go free on account of losing their tooth.
You might notice that there are verses stuck in between speaking about what happens to a slave when a slave owner punishes them. What are these verses? Verses 22-25 are the famous Lex Talinois law, the "measure-for-measure" punishment, the "eye for an eye, life for life" law. They are applied to free people in this instance and then Torah goes back to speaking about slaves. Why?
Torah is saying Biblical law is the same for all classes. You beat anyone, free or slave, and cause any damage, the same gets done to you.
Sure, my people the Jews had slaves, but don't forget, so did yours. How did your people treat your slaves when your Gentile ancestors had them? Were their laws worse or better? What does history say about your culture's treatment of slaves?
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David_Jay
konceptual99,
What about your culture's history with slavery? Did your ancestors treat slaves better? Could your ancestor's slaves free themselves?
Could the slaves of the UK or US free themselves this way? Did your people apply the Lex Talinois to free and slave the same, or could the slave owners of your people get away with how they treated them?
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David_Jay
For the record, Jews learned from Torah that any type of slave ownership was wrong. Torah did not call for slavery. On the contrary, Torah called for the Jews to end it. Eventually we did, but while our culture grew out of it, Torah demanded we treated all life equally.
This cannot be said for how Gentiles treated their slaves throughout history.
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konceptual99
DJ
You know nothing about me, my ancestors or my culture. You don't even know if I am white, black, Asian or a bloody martian.
Over the course of history there will have been few cultures that have not been the instigators and victims of slavery, sometimes at the same time. It's still happening now FFS. Dragging white led, imperialist slavery of Africans into the mix misses the point completely.
It's not about who was least bad at being slave owners. It's the fact that slavery went on at all. Just because those enslaved by the Jews had some limited rights does not make it right. It does not lessen the injustice and it certainly does not lessen the nonsensical situation where a supposed God of love provides the framework for one group of people to subjugate another.
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David_Jay
Just because those enslaved by the Jews had some limited rights does not make it right. It does not lessen the injustice and it certainly does not lessen the nonsensical situation where a supposed God of love provides the framework for one group of people to subjugate another.
Who said Jews teach that our God is "a God of love"? Torah never describes God as the "love-all, always perfect and always just" God you're talking about. You got that from Christians, not us!
I'm a Jew, and I tell you we know slavery was evil. We never said:
Just because those enslaved by the Jews had some limited rights...
--that it was right. We teach that slavery in all its forms, even that regulated by Torah, has always been unjust and evil. It was never right, even in Biblical times as it occurred in Israel.
You know nothing about me, my ancestors or my culture. You don't even know if I am white, black, Asian or a bloody martian.
And the fact that you attribute such incorrect interpretations about Jews, the Scriptures we wrote, and our God-concept at the center of it all, shows you don't know anything about me, my ancestors or my culture.
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konceptual99
Well in my book slavery is slavery is slavery. The Bible shows that the Israelites were permitted by the laws they claim came from God to subjugate others. Any relativism in their treatment compared to any other example of slavery is meaningless.
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David_Jay
The Torah verses under discussion where composed around the post-exile era, when the Jews lived in Babylon or shortly after the rebuilding of the Second Temple had begun. They weren't really uttered to Moses from God millennia ago during the legendary narrative of Israel's 40-year trek through the wilderness.
They reflect an attempt by the Jews to understand how to be just in the world around them. Jews are not of the opinion that God really stated the actual words in these laws, telling us it's okay to have slaves. Some Christians believe that, and you seem to believe their take on the matter, be we Jews don't.
The Jews have struggled through the ages to understand and apply the principle of Tikkun Olam, which is basically trying to see clearly now to act right in and toward the world and it's inhabitants. Over the ages Torah has reflected the mores of society in which they developed, changing and even being discarded as our religious view evolved.
God has been against subjugation of anyone since the beginning of history, and Jewish Scripture is but an ancient snapshot of how Torah was understood at the time of their composition. Many of these biblical laws were discarded by Judaism centuries before Christ. The Midrash and then the Talmud took up the cloak of presenting Torah after this.
The Scriptures often use particular language to claim that God permitted certain behaviors and practices, attributing things like slavery to God. But Jews know this was not really the case. The Biblical record is neither historical nor are all the commands within really from Heaven.
We don't view the Bible in these terms about slavery in the way you believe. You repeating Christian theology and starting it represents Jewish thought is not a way to prove your point. It only shows you lack of exposure to Hebrew thought.
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konceptual99
You are right DJ - I don't have any real knowledge of how Jewish scholars and theologians interpret the Torah and I bow to your superior knowledge on this however would you agree that the ancient Israelites had God's authority to subjugate other nations or not? Either they took captives or not.
It's not about the so called rights under the law of the time. It's not about retrospective interpretation of so called holy books. It's certainly not about some kind of relativism where this sort of stuff happened all the time in those days and those people enslaved by the Israelites were bloody lucky they'd not been captured by one of the other nations around them.
I am no Hebrew scholar but I don't need to be to know that type of slavery attested to in the Bible cannot be justified as some kind of pretend or pseudo slavery. People were forceably removed from their homes and made to work for others without any freedom of movement. It's wrong when it happens to women from Eastern Europe when they are forced into being sex slaves. It was wrong when it happened to Africans for 200 years. It was wrong when it happened to the Israelites and it was wrong when it happened to people captured by the Israelites.
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David_Jay
konceptual99:
If you will be patient with me (and I will try to be as concise as possible), I will explain how we are actually both on the exact same page.
You keep debating with me and saying the same things over and over, even though I’ve repeatedly said that Jews view slavery, even the slavery spoken of in Scripture, as evil. Though I totally agree with you and have explained that Jews do too, you still keep arguing as if I haven’t said those words or that my claim about how we view slavery isn’t true.
But then you added this following point, and I suddenly realize what the problem is:
It was wrong when it happened to the Israelites and it was wrong when it happened to people captured by the Israelites.
It seems that you believe that the Biblical accounts of the Hebrews conquering nations and taking their people as slaves are historical fact (and that we Jews do too). They are not fact, and we know and teach this.
The five books of Moses, the Torah, the Pentateuch, whatever you want to call it, is not an historical record. We never conquered the peoples living in the Fertile Crescent, destroying their cities, killing their people, and enslaving those who survived the invasion. We, the Jews, are those very people.
The New Union Haggadah sums it up best:
The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The rule of the world order up until that time--and for most cultures, ever since--was quite simple: if you were conquered and exiled, left without a monarch and bereft of religious shrines, your people would be integrated into the conquering host culture and quickly disappear. The Torah writers...remind us repeatedly of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadomites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites--people who were once nations like all other nations but whose destiny went the way of the conquered and oppressed…The Torah’s allegory, therefore, was devised to reform the Judaism of its day from an altogether land-based culture (prior to 586 BCE) into a religion that could survive without a central shrine, without an oligarchic priesthood, and most impressively, without a king--both on ancestral lands and in the Diaspora.
Did you notice how the Torah is referred to as “allegory”? What historically happened is not what you are repeatedly accusing me, the Jews, and the Hebrew Scriptures of. “When Torah was written, Egypt was no longer the player it once has been on the historical stage of nations. The shores of the Nile provided a place with few political ramifications during the author’s day...The Torah tells us of servitude and redemption in a valorized time and mythic place, but the servitude is to be abhorred in every era, and redemption is to be sought for captives in each generation.”--The New Union Haggadah, “The Biblical Exodus,” Rabbi David H. Aaron, PhD, Professor of Hebrew Bible and the History of Interpretation, Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, Ohio.
As you might know, a Haggadah is the book we Jews read from during the Passover Seder (which will be in about 12 days). What you just read above is from the one I use in my home with my family, and those statements pretty much sum up much about what you can expect from the rest of the Bible and its stories about the Jews.
This isn’t to say there isn’t any history behind the mythos. There is, but it is just under the veil of an illustrative narrative. The Israelites “12 tribes” are likely a combination of “the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadomites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Biblical stories of Israelites conquering and plundering these nations and enslaving survivors is not what really happened.
The Bible Through the Ages, (1996, Pleasantville, NY) states:
During the period of [the] Hyksos rule [of Egypt], and for a long while afterwards--or until about 1300 B.C.--there were great migrations of people in and out of Egypt owing to drought and famine and the slave trade.
It was likely during the Hyksos rule that the primary or central family of Hebrews entered Egypt. The Hyksos dynasty lasted 108 years, but saw its end when the Theban revolt spread northward under Kamose, with his successor, Ahmose, becoming king. The migrant peoples were enslaved under this new dynasty, but eventually it lost power over its slaves. A series of revolts and at least three series of exodus movements followed, with the enslaved people leaving.
It is theorized that the last exodus movement was the one that contained the people who would become the nation of Israel, but by this time they included more than just the nucleus of Hebrews. The mixed company that came with them crossed over into the Fertile Crescent and apparently merged with the peoples who lived there, with “the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadomites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”
Our legends say we conquered them, but in reality they merged with us and we all became the nation of Israel.
Stories of them being conquered by “God’s army” are mythological ways of saying their cultural ways eventually dissolved to become one with ours. Under the Davidic dynasty, worship of YHWH became the state religion, and the stories that would be carried into Babylon and eventually become the Bible took shape.
But the conquests, our taking slaves, etc., these things didn’t happen as the legends say. The laws in Torah are meant to sound just like you describe them, as if to say “we treat our slaves better.” But this was only because we were a nation made up of slaves, not warrior conquerors of nations. Such a warrior state would have never fallen to the Babylonians if we were as great as the Torah stories say we were.
What you are talking about is based on a view we all got when we were Jehovah’s Witnesses, that these stories were factual. They aren’t. Slavery is evil. Always has been, always will be.
This doesn’t mean that the Jews didn’t own slaves at times. We did, probably from very early in our history. We were like everyone else when we were an ancient nation and thought that slavery was a normal aspect of life. We might have had laws that were made to regulate it that seemed humane, but we were not always faithful to our own laws.
Jews participated in the Atlantic slave trade. It appears I myself may have had ancestors who, while living in New Spain to avoid the Spanish Inquisition, purchased slaves during the time the Sephardic Jews founded what is now known as Monterrey, Mexico.
But just like practically all of us have ancestors who engaged in the horrible practice of slavery (I am sure you can find slave owners in your family tree too), we also likewise both have ancestors who were part of the Abolition Movement. (See “Antislavery Movement” from the Jewish Encyclopedia for more information).
You might get what I’m saying, and I hope you do. Or you might keep repeating the same thing over and over again as if I haven’t said from the beginning that I and the rest of Jewry agree with you. If just keep saying that, you are arguing something that isn't about Israelite or Jewish history. I can’t help or keep arguing with someone who won't learn the fact and be logical based on the real historical data.
Whatever other feelings or views you may have, however, are not based on a factual view of the Jewish people or their history. They seem to be left over of views left by the cult that left us both with scars. You may also be unaware that the Jews are not a religion, but a people and culture. Judaism is not a religion of belief but a practice. Some members and practitioners of Judaism are theists, others are atheists. It’s an ever-evolving way of preserving a people through time, and we are not innocents or more enlightened than others.
And it's a tapestry. Pull at one string you don't like, the whole thing and the people and culture within gets the impression you are against it.