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Rightwing groups across US push new bans to limit ‘obscene’ books in libraries
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
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The Bible doesn't portray it as a good thing, and considers their descendants cursed.
A large portion of the Bible is: "here's all the ways people can be nasty, don't be like them".
But do you know what it does portray as a good thing? Slavery!
Also no. It allowed servitude to pay off debts, but all debts were supposed to be forgiven after 7 years, and so it was strictly limited.
Where do you think the ideas that all humans are equal and deserve equal rights that reduced slavery in modern times come from?
Not that I think anything in the Bible can be taken at face value, but especially numbers and doubly so, the number 7.
World created in 7 days. Forgive others 7 times or 70*7. Etc etc. There's no reason to believe the law of the land was literally a 7 year limit on slavery.
Still bad, but servitude =/= slavery.
7 in the Bible is usually a symbol for completeness. The 70*7 specifically is meant to be "unending".
It is very likely to really be a 7 years limit to debts.
And I would love if the Bible-thumping politicians proposed this debt limit for modern times, but they are all just hypocrites.
Is it just me, or these don't seem to jive with each other.
My friend, biblical scholars disagree with you. Your holy book is very clear on this subject, and I would implore you to do a little research before saying shit like this.
I did study theology, but I certainly need a refresher.
Yes, the servitude can be considered a form of slavery, but I think it can be useful to distinguish as it's quite different from the more modern chattel slavery.
And I don't think it's valid today, these laws in the Bible were written in and for a specific context of time and place, and the commandments of love supersede it.
Until 300 years ago when slavery was considered OK, the biblical law on it would still be VERY progressive.
Matthew 5:17-19
The words of Jesus himself.
Not true. The bible was explicitly used by plantation owners in the Southern US to justify chattel slavery, and keep their slaves in line. They printed versions of the bible with all suggestions of concepts like freedom removed.
You keep telling yourself that what's in the bible is different than slavery, but it is not. Your book gives explicit rules on how to treat your slaves, how to punish your slaves including beating them and how much you're allowed to beat them (make sure it's not so bad that they can't recover in a few days!) It gives explicit rules on how you are to treat your Jewish slaves compared to Gentile slaves. How much slaves should buy and sell for.
You're going to lose this argument. The only out is, "actually, slavery is OK" and I've literally seen Christians say this in order to justify their awful book.
He fulfilled the law, and did not have slaves.
The example of His own actions is to read the law with the perspective of protecting the weak, the "lesser", the vulnerable.
You should maybe ask yourself why you're so eager to defend this.
You know what would be a great way to protect slave? Perhaps the best way? To take the (very fucking easy) step of saying "hey don't own people."
But instead he talked about slaves all of the time, and seemed to have no problem with them. Taken from wiki because I'm lazy:
Does not sound like the words or behavior of someone who wants to stop people from being slaves. Which is, seriously, like the lowest fucking bar on the planet.
You know what it reads like to me? A book that was written by people, of its time. And at that time, as you said, slavery was common practice. So the people who wrote it didn't' even consider that it should be on the table.