> aren't they going to get abused? ... Yes. They are. It's as simple as that.

You're making the assumption that godly people act the same as everyone else, but that's exactly the point: They don't. God forbade them to sexually abuse women. Let me give a little illustration: I've never sexually abused a woman and never would, even if I were in the military. People of God have a different value set, a different motivation, and a different lifestyle. You just can't assume, hey, we're guys, we'd all rape her.

> but there are no rules against abuse.

Sure there are. Ex. 20.14. Promiscuous behavior was strictly forbidden in Israel. I think it's a little funny that you think God-followers are just as corrupt and demented as the worst of people (war rapers).

> It even explicitly says that you can beat them so hard that they can't get up.

It does NOT say that. First, it's a hypothetical situation, not a command or even an allowance. It never says "You can beat them as hard as you want." Come on. let's raise the discussion to a higher level than that.

> Why can't you see that even if you won some minor points around the edge (which I don't think), your book is sick.

Because the book doesn't say what you claim it says, nor does it allow what you claim it allows. You're not reading carefully enough, and you don't seem to be acquainted with ancient Israelite culture.

Look at any research on modern day slavery or ancient slavery. If you've got guys in complete control of a slave woman, and there aren't even any regulations to prevent it, aren't they going to get abused?

Yes. They are. It's as simple as that. The OT sets up a system where the rules are laid out. There are no rules in that system to prevent thousands upon thousands of women from being abused. There might be rules about having to marry if you have sex (whether she wants either or not), but there are no rules against abuse.

If you have a book that says that you are permitted to own slaves, and that the things you can't do are as follows: (1) Blind them and they are immediately emancipated, (2) kill them and you get punished yourself ...

It even explicitly says that you can beat them so hard that they can't get up.

Why can't you see that even if you won some minor points around the edge (which I don't think), your book is sick.

You need to look at it again. Maybe start from scratch, read the skeptic's annotated version, and just make sure that you actually understand the criticism. Try to see it from the point of view of someone who doesn't like the bible, and doesn't think it's true.

Just do that. Take a weekend. Start by imagining that you think it's from a different religion, and you want to see if it's "Good". Then read the slavery passages again.

You might realise you're on the wrong side.

> You're trying to give the impression that these were just little paddy-whacks on the bottom

There is no real way to know what these were, and we are misguided to just assume.

You probably read that I also said that Exodus is casuistic law—hypothetical situations to guide a judge. None of it may ever have happened, but maybe it did. I was in a course a few days ago to be able to conceal-carry a handgun. They were telling us about when it is proper during a robbery to use lethal force. So we started hauling out hypothetical situations: "What if the perp doesn't have a gun, but a baseball bat?" "What if he just threatened with his fists?" "What if he has a wine bottle in his hands to crack over the victim's head?" "What if he has a knife?" Ad infinitum. These are just hypothetical situations to guide us in knowing what to do. It doesn't mean they happen, though some do.

Secondly, the word "beats" is a generic word that can mean anything from punch to kill. We can't assume his utter brutality.

Third, "if the slave gets up after a day or two" could be a way of saying that there was no serious injury. After all, the text deals with the reality of serious injury: the slave gets to go free if he is in any way injured (vv. 26-27). The rest of the chapter (vv. 12-36) is giving other guidances about personal injury also. Verse 25, though specifically talking about a hypothetical situation would also be used by a judge about slavery. The eye-for-eye shows that the punishment was to fit the crime, and injury would be retributed by commensurate injury, some financial compensation, or even freedom for the slave.

> Also, you just say that the slave is a person with rights and dignity.

Sure. There is no evidence of chattel slavery in ancient Israel, and possibly even in the ancient Near East (ANE). The overall textual evidence from the ANE shows that slaves had certain rights—they could own property, for instance, or determine inheritance. Or they could become free, as the Bible allows, given certain circumstances. They were typically not bought and sold, opposite as the case in the medieval and modern worlds. The OT affirms the full personhood of these debt-servants (Gn. 1.26-27; Job 31.13-15; Dt. 15.1-18), and this passage is no exception. It affirms the servant's full personhood. If the servant dies, the master is to be tried for capital punishment. The servant is to be treated as a human being with dignity, not as property.

> You say that "property" is an unfortunate translation, but "money" also gives the same impression: Money is simply an economic tool. The passage here is saying basically that there's no real moral element to beating a slave so that they can't work for a day or so, maybe more ... the only real issue is an economic issue to do with money.

You are mistaken here. The point is that the debt-servant is part of the owner's economic template, and loss of work from a servant is loss of income as well as possible medical expenditures. It's the same in our modern world. When you're out sick, hypothetically, you work doesn't get done, and so productivity is cut from the employer. That's the sense of the passage.

It's not at all saying there is no real moral element to beating a slave. The whole passage (Ex. 21.12-36) relates to personal injury and the moral element to all of it. You can't separate the verses on slaves as if they aren't part of the context. The whole piece is talking about casuistic law pertaining to personal infractions, whether kidnapping, cursing parents, pregnant women, slaves, or animals. It is meant to be taken as a section, not lifted out of context to be misconstrued.

> I'd probably examine my beliefs more than you have.

Hmm. Where do I go with this? How deeply have you ascertained that I have studied the texts and the culture and examined my beliefs? And by what criteria do you determine that I haven't—because you disagree with me?

> Also, imagine what else these laws permit. Can you sexually abuse your female slaves? Of course.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where is THIS coming from?

> There's nothing saying you can't.

Of course there is. Dt. 21.10-14. God restricted Israelite men from using captive women as sexual slaves. If a man desired a female captive sexually, he must marry her. This restriction seems to be the first in history limiting the sexual exploitation of captives. Earlier Egyptian laws and later Roman laws prohibited rape, but only against a citizen in good standing. Female captives and slaves, well into Paul's day and even into early American history, were viewed not as citizen but as property without rights over their own bodies. This was not the case in the Bible. Verses 10-13 call for the charitable treatment of foreign brides when they are first taken; verse 14 for their charitable treatment in divorce. Biblical law protected women from sexual abuse.

> It's not going to cause them to die. I suspect that the reason it's not even mentioned was because it was so obvious that a female slave is going to be sexually abused - explaining the passages about keeping virgins after battle.

Oh my. There's nothing true about this.

Coming across this for the first time, Jim, your position seems to me to be very false.

You're trying to give the impression that these were just little paddy-whacks on the bottom, but your text reveals that you know that the expectation is that these slaves might lie there unable to work for days following the "paddy whack".

Also, you just say that the slave is a person with rights and dignity. Do you have something to back that up with, or is that more just an opinion based on something you've heard?

You say that "property" is an unfortunate translation, but "money" also gives the same impression: Money is simply an economic tool. The passage here is saying basically that there's no real moral element to beating a slave so that they can't work for a day or so, maybe more ... the only real issue is an economic issue to do with money.

You present this as a defence, but if I found myself giving such weak defences, I'd probably examine my beliefs more than you have.
Also, imagine what else these laws permit. Can you sexually abuse your female slaves? Of course. There's nothing saying you can't. It's not going to cause them to die. I suspect that the reason it's not even mentioned was because it was so obvious that a female slave is going to be sexually abused - explaining the passages about keeping virgins after battle.

> Were New Testament verses like Colossians 4:1 and Ephesians 6:9 referring to the chattel slavery of Greco-Rome?

I would guess so. Greco-Rome was Paul's cultural and literary context. The texts were a very counter-cultural expression of treating a slave the way one would treat as if Jesus were working for you—with honor and respect, in all fairness. Be a boss of integrity and honor, not just of power and the abuses that come with it. The one in authority is also under authority, and is accountable for every word spoken and every deed done. In other words, you are not the Big Boss, just the undershepherd. Those under your authority are your stewardship responsibility, not your possessions. Treat them the way you want your Boss to treat you.

God has a character of absolute righteousness and justice. Any slave (or employee) should use the same words to describe their master or boss. A master should not think God will treat him more lightly or even differently because of his privileged position. If anything, it may be just the opposite: God will hold him more accountable (James 3.1).

> Was 1 Corinthians 7:21 encouraging slaves to seek emancipation or to make good use of their servitude?

Good question. There seems to be a bit of a conflict of interpretation. The Greek seems to favor the idea of freedom, with the phrase in question being the last one: μᾶλλον χρῆσαι. μᾶλλον is "by all means," and χρῆσαι is "Make the most of; take advantage of; use it rather." How to translate it becomes tricky. "By all means use it." What does THAT mean? It could go either way, couldn't it?

It's true that Paul often went with status quo: stay were you are and be the most godly person possible. On rare occasions (and almost reluctantly) he allowed divorce, and with Philemon he possibly encouraged emancipation (Philemon 1.16, 17). About slavery as an institution Paul doesn't seem to take a stance. It's possible to take this in several ways. Craig Keener says that no ancient philosopher forced their morality on society. Every attempt at slave revolt had been brutally suppressed by the Empire, so Paul's advice is not to revolt but to remain in the situation and be the most godly person possible.

Hodge says, "As far as your status as a slave, it doesn't matter pertaining to your Christianity, so it need give no concern. It's not Paul's point that one should never attempt to improve their condition, but simply not to allow their social relations to disturb them, or to imagine that their becoming Christians rendered it necessary to change those relations."

> Does the Greek word ανδραποδισταις actually refer to slave traders in 1 Timothy 1:10?

The literal translation of the term is "men-stealers." As your link says, kidnapping people to sell them as slaves, to make money, was a common practice (also referred to in Ex. 21.16 & Dt. 24.7). That would seem to be the simplest most straight-lined way to understand the term. Robertson seems to think the term reaches beyond such a tight and restricted definition and instead branches out to include all kinds of slave trading. Therein lies the rub. How technically should we take the term? Brownson says these slave traders often served as pimps in male prostitution rings. He asserts that "Roman government tried on several occasions to pass laws banning this practice, and it was about as effective as Prohibition in the US."

Paul Copan comments, "Paul (and Peter) didn't call for an uprising to overthrow slavery in Rome. They didn't want the Christian faith to be perceived as opposed to social order and harmony. Hence, Christian slaves were told to do what was right, even if they were mistreated (1 Pet. 2.18-20; Eph. 6.5-9). Abraham Lincoln took the same approach. Though he despised slaved and talked freely about this degrading institution, his first priority was to hold the Union together rather than try to abolish slavery immediately."

So it's tough to know the answers to your questions. We wish we knew more about the terms and more about what was going on in the Empire to which Paul was referring. It does seem, however, that Paul is speaking against at least some vile parts of the slavery system, if not all of it.

Thanks for the response. I just have three additional questions:

1. Were New Testament verses like Colossians 4:1 and Ephesians 6:9 referring to the chattel slavery of Greco-Rome?
2 Was 1 Corinthians 7:21 encouraging slaves to seek emancipation or to make good use of their servitude?
3. Does the Greek word ανδραποδισταις actually refer to slave traders in 1 Timothy 1:10?

My last two questions are based on my reading of http://www.bible-researcher.com/slavery.html

It's a great question. There is no specific explanation about God's timing, but we can try to infer some things about God's decisions by looking at His patterns.

God values process. When we observe God at work through history, there are often long periods of time (oddly, almost always in the vicinity of 400 years) when He allows certain things to play out, settle in, mess up, etc., and for people to have that kind of time span to shape up, fly right, learn the lesson, or make a change.

God accomplishes important things during the interim periods. It's not always about the pinnacle events, but often about the journey between them. People's lives are shaped by the years of events and relationships. People make choices, deal with uncertainties, reorient values, make commitments—all because God DIDN'T do it right away, but "dawdled".

All along the way, by looking back at history and also by examining our lives, we have opportunities to tune our attitudes, adjust our behavior, and engage in real life. It's just possible that by jumping right in, again and again, humanity would be deprived of something valuable. And of course there's another side of the coin: humanity would also not have to go through some times of confusion and suffering. Possibly there's also some value in the valley and shadows. It's where we learn important lessons of character.

But I can't say specifically. No one can. Galatians 4.2-4 makes it sound like God had his plan of salvation timed out for optimum impact. Romans 5.6 says that it was at "the right time" that Christ died. Why didn't he send Christ back in the days of Moses? We can only speculate.

> God did set the ideal before them. In Gen. 2.24, we read that marriage was designed to be exclusive, monogamous, permanent, heterosexual, and unified both physically and spiritually. Jesus confirms that interpretation in Mt. 19.4-6. So God did give a set of laws perfectly reflecting his ideal, going all the way. This is also confirmed in Malachi 2.13-16.

Once people failed to realize the attitudes behind God's initial set of ideal laws, why didn't God promptly send Christ to exemplify the proper attitudes instead of replacing those laws with a more accommodating set of laws?

> it's just the fact that Christians typically don't approach others to offer a peaceful opportunity of conversion and threaten violence if people don't convert.


Christians don't, shouldn't, and won't. This was part of the conquest. There was never any other time in history when the Israelites were fighting offensively to gain land. In the Conquest they were commanded by God to take back the land He had given to them. There is no other time in the Bible when the Israelites were commanded to take land or to fight offensive wars. After the Conquest, their wars were always defensive, or to take the rest of the land near taken during the Conquest.

These were commands for the Conquest and for their life as Israelites. As I've mentioned, once Israel ended (586 BC), these are not commands for Christians.

> I don't see how [Jesus] could have fulfilled this specific law, unless the purpose was to preserve Israel until Christ's arrival.

He didn't. As I said, the law Christ fulfilled was the law in general—not one part of it. He fulfilled it in that He did what the law failed to do: showed the people how to live in God's presence. The part about driving the pagan people from the land is that holiness demands separation from sin and evil. Holiness also rebuffs temptation to sin. Holiness also involves only in true worship. That's why the Canaanites had to be driven from the land or incorporated into Israel.

> ...no longer applies both because Jesus fulfilled the civil law and subjugation was no longer the only effective method of conversion,

You'll remember that I backed off on this somewhat. You'll remember I wrote, "But this sentence is a bit of a misunderstanding. They weren't really subjugating the people just to teach them the gospel. That's not really accurate. Their commission was to destroy their identity as a people. That could be accomplished by several means..."

> I'll frame my question differently: Wouldn't a set of laws perfectly reflecting God's ideal will expose the Israelites' unrighteousness more effectively than a set of laws accommodating their hard hearts?

God did set the ideal before them. In Gen. 2.24, we read that marriage was designed to be exclusive, monogamous, permanent, heterosexual, and unified both physically and spiritually. Jesus confirms that interpretation in Mt. 19.4-6. So God did give a set of laws perfectly reflecting his ideal, going all the way. This is also confirmed in Malachi 2.13-16.

The text to which Jesus is referring, Deut. 24.1-4, was written to protect people, especially the woman. There divorces is not encouraged or sanctioned, but it was at least tolerated. The law was written to protect women, because there had to be clear grounds, legal procedures, and economic compensation. What happened was that men took this law and made rules about what they interpreted it was saying so they could still manipulate circumstances to their wills. Jesus shows that they were distorting it for manipulative purposes. (In the Hillel rabbinic school, a woman could be divorced for just about any reason, from burning a meal to irreconcilable differences.) But God hadn't lowered his ideal. Jesus didn't say divorce was right, or even good. In contrast, He said that divorce had never been right. As to why God chose to be accommodating on this particular issues and not on others is never explained.

> Their commission was to destroy their identity as a people. That could be accomplished by several means: (1) integrating them into Israel; (2) driving them from the land; (3) subjugating them; (4) worst case scenario and last resort: war and destruction.

I'm aware of that; it's just the fact that Christians typically don't approach others to offer a peaceful opportunity of conversion and threaten violence if people don't convert. You say that Deuteronomy 20:11-12 no longer applies because Jesus fulfilled the Law, but I don't see how He could have fulfilled this specific law, unless the purpose was to preserve Israel until Christ's arrival.

> Both. Jesus fulfilled the Law in its entirety.
> It has little to do with whether it was effective or not.

I'm a little confused here; you say the civil law (i.e. Deuteronomy 20:11-12) no longer applies both because Jesus fulfilled the civil law and subjugation was no longer the only effective method of conversion, yet later you assert efficiency has little to do with why Deuteronomy 20:11-12 no longer applies?

> quotes by Keener, France, and Lane

I believe your answers are telling me what I already know. I'll frame my question differently: Wouldn't a set of laws perfectly reflecting God's ideal will expose the Israelites' unrighteousness more effectively than a set of laws accommodating their hard hearts? If God wanted to prescribe high moral standards to highlight people's wickedness, then why not go all the way? What would have happened if God didn't include accommodations within the Law of Moses?