No Bible text however sweet should be looked at except through the lens of texts like Exodus 21:20. God prescribes punishment for whoever beats their male or female slave and the slave dies under the beating. But if the slave is still there two days later there is no punishment "since the slave is their property." You look at the wonderful soup through the lens of the fly in it. And isn't the Bible supposed to be soup for the sinful human heart? Somebody suffering because of and at the sight of an evil text does not give you the right to just care about getting good feelings from a book that validates that text. You are not the slave who is beaten to death albeit having lingered for two days. You are not the slave who was literally killed during the beating and put in a room while everybody in the house says you are in a coma to get away with it. You are not the female slave beaten by the master who has male strength and privilege.
We can be sure that the same rule applied if the master let somebody else attack the slave. If Jesus beat up a female slave how would you feel about him?
Jesus claimed that anybody saying any law in the Old Testament is wrong or even inferior will be punished for not a line will pass away from it for it is all meant to be fulfilled and honoured. Matthew 5. That was despite or because of it spending chapter after chapter spelling out how God wanted people to be enslaved and controlled. He attacked the Jewish leaders for many things including washing hands too much. He was very vicious towards them as you can see from Matthew 23 especially. There he oddly backed up their slave keeping by saying that nobody should doubt their teaching and the only problem was that they signed up to it and did live up to it right. He said they made up laws that God did not authorise and he condemned that. But surely they had rules that oppressed slaves even worse than they already were? Not a word from Jesus about that! Yet he said he came to make sure the law of God was understood correctly without people putting in their own interpretation and rules so that it could be fulfilled!
Jesus approved of slavery when he recommended us becoming slaves to one another. We are to be slaves to God for we are to serve him for his sake and not for any benefit even if there will be any benefit. And God could thrust you into Hell forever for a sin committed on your deathbed even if you lived a near-perfect life.
The Law of God which blessed slavery and which gave few protections to a woman slave than a male was the only guidebook Jesus endorsed. The argument that God only tried to regulate and control slavery for the people would not give it up is nonsense. The Bible does not say that. And was heavy-handed with them. And he is clear that he could make the covenant with them for they were righteous. Moses sprinkled them with blood.
Jesus explicitly approved the commandments one of which forbade coveting the neighbour's wife or slave! The commandment should simply have said ,"Do not be jealous when your neighbour has something you do not." Why did it have to put wife and slave in? Because it wanted to sanction patriarchy and slavery in the heart of the Law, normalise them in the core principles.
Jesus did not rescue abused slaves or take them on his travels.
His disciple Paul wrote that there is no slave or free for it does not matter who you are to God. That may seem nice. But it is underpinned by this toxic notion. The notion that slaves are loved by God and have blessings they do not see and which we do not see so that despite appearances they are as well off and will be as well off as their masters. In other words, "Who cares if they are helped or not for God has done it and is doing it? We don't want to hear complaints from them".
When asked if the oppressed Jews should pay taxes to Caesar Jesus said that one should give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and give back to God what is God's. Persons were property then. Don't imagine that the taxes were all in cash form. And the Romans were able to make temporary slaves for Jewish passerbys were forced to carry their packs. Jesus condoned that too and said the Jews when forced to go one mile should go two.
Christians approve of the New Testament God’s approbation of slavery but say that the reason for his approval was that the slave system was too deeply woven into the fabric of society for anybody to pick out. But this is untrue for God gave laws that the people hated far more than that. No hostels for runaway slaves were set up which proves the point. Thought God has the power to melt the frozen heart? His Christianity is full of unwholesome and shocking ideas like Jesus dying as a human sacrifice!
The Magnificat, the prayer recited by Mary at the Visitation and which is the most important prayer to Christians next the Lord’s Prayer, hints that slavery is right. Mary calls herself God’s slave-woman meaning she classed herself the lowest of the low in that Roman society she was part of and handmaiden is just a polite but inaccurate translation (page 99, Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine). Jesus never calls her mother but woman and once disowned her by saying it is those who obey God who are his mother or whatever. Her downgrading is consistent in the Bible.
The New Testament ratification of slavery was unavoidable because Jesus condoned all the evil of the Torah, the Law of Moses, because he understood this book as the word of God. Slavery was blessed under the Law of Moses which is the word of God according to Christians and Jews. My New American Catholic Bible of 1971 contains copious notes verifying that the Old and New Testaments permitted slavery. The New Testament went as far as to require that slaves be better slaves! As the Christadelphian booklet, Christ and Protest observes, slaves were never even told by the Bible prophets and authors and God to ask good masters for their freedom (page 3). Christadelphians argue from this that it is wrong to be assertive and that one must not defend oneself but that presupposes that slavery is wrong. The Bible commands assertiveness in the cause of Christ so they are wrong - the Bible thinks that slavery is lawful.
Jesus could have protested against abuses in the Temple outside but no he went in. The gospels say he lost control there and rioted. He targeted the sacrifice market where money was exchanged for animals for sacrifice. The Christians say Jesus just threw over a few tables in the Temple. That amount of violence would not have made any difference or any impact but it would have got Jesus into trouble. Jesus had to have done more than thrash up a few stalls. John 2 says he did a lot of damage and even got the animals out of their pens. These pens were strong. He didn’t do that with a whip. He must have had an axe with him as well. The John gospel is not telling us everything – but we will not be taken for fools by it. The animals probably got hurt as well over him. "He made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle".
The people he attacked were slaves who were forced to do the buying and selling and cheating for their masters who wanted to maintain their "good" image.
"There were innumerable slaves of the emperor and of the Roman State; the Jerusalem Temple owned slaves; the High Priest owned slaves (one of them lost an ear in Jesus's arrest); all of the rich and almost all of the middle class owned slaves. So far as we are told, Jesus never attacked this practice. He took the state of affairs for granted and shaped his parables accordingly. As Jesus presents things, the main problem for the slaves is not to get free, but to win their master's praise. There seem to have been slave revolts in Palestine and Jordan in Jesus's youth (Josephus, Bellum, 2:55-65); a miracle-working leader of such a revolt would have attracted a large following. If Jesus had denounced slavery or promised liberation, we should almost certainly have heard of his doing it. We hear nothing, so the most likely supposition is that he said nothing." MIchael Martin, Is Christianity Absurd? The Secular Web.
Jesus had to have met slaves who needed healing as their masters were allowed to over-work them and beat them. No record exists except one exception. He only helped for the Roman slave master, a centurion, expressed a level of faith that surpassed that of the Israelites. This does not ring through for surely there were holy Jews around! Did the slave's healing last long? Who knows? I think Jesus helped no slaves at all.
Jesus could at least have condemned the Temple for having slaves. He said nothing despite violently and publically objecting to it making money.
The subject had to have come up. Jesus then must have said slavery was right. Saying nothing would add fuel to the fire for him for people would wonder why he was not addressing it. He was already thought to be about upheaval. Saying nothing was about him trying to gain peace for himself without even trying to help those people and children who were trapped in a degrading system.
He must have had slave-owners following him and he accepted what they were doing.
He must have accepted donations of money from them, the profits they got from trafficking in human flesh.
Jesus could have got more followers by backing slave liberation or at least improving their conditions.
Jesus was never reported to have given away his dinner to the poor or to hand a slave some money.
It was all about the master. Slave culture was extreme patriarchy. The slave craved praise for there was nothing else and the alternative was being beaten or sold to a monster.
Normalising slavery in his parables sent the message that it was meant to last and not pass away. He could not even encourage others to rethink slavery.
His warning that society should worry about faith and nothing else for the world was about to end was guaranteed to keep slaves where they were. He knew he was being irresponsible for many like him had predicted an impending apocalyse that never happened.
There is no information at all on Jesus as a worker or as an example for workers. An itinerant celibate over-devout shouting preacher cannot be an example for the rest of us.
Human nature has always liked horrible twisted news stories and the gospels and the Bible provide plenty of them. Jesus' example is not good enough. People like to make themselves feel good by glorifying a poor role model. The role model is no real challenge to them but they pretend it is.
Jesus was guaranteed fame by siding with the slaves. He didn’t but sought fame other ways by doing his magic tricks. To attack slaves to get fame shows exactly how little he valued slaves. It has never occurred to people that the woman he racially abused for being from another nation and who he called a dog may have been a slave. Slaves were called dogs and dogs were seen not as pets but as mere instruments for dealing with vermin. He could at least have stood up for child slaves. Many slave masters in the past did not tolerate enslaving children. How nasty and low was he?
Jesus in Matthew 23 told Jewish leaders in public that they were murderers and would kill the prophets if the prophets were alive and told them to go and finish him off. These men had wives and children and slaves. By trying to inflame the violent against them meant that the ones who really mattered, the wives and children and slaves were going to suffer. He could have told them, "As religious leaders even if others should have slaves you should not. Depend on God and be the slave of the people and nourish their faith." The silence is deafening.
Jesus told a mob that a woman he and they made a show of in public by exposing her adultery in John 8 that if they had no sin to go ahead and stone her. He wrote on the ground. Nobody is mentioned as seeing what he wrote. It was not meant to interest anybody. Was he calculating her price? Was she a slave? Was his problem not that she deserved to live but that the poor master would lose his property if she were slain?
Jesus, as did Paul his mouthpiece, lived alongside and tacitly enabled the norm. The norm was opposition to religious freedom. Nobody then believed that all faiths should be tolerated and no two agreed on what faiths should be banned or put up with. Having certain religious views could draw down a vicious attack on you and your children. Both individuals endorsed the ten commandments. Look at the commandment that "YOU shall keep the Sabbath day." It is a detailed one. The you is you as potential slave-master. It decrees that part of your own worship is making sure that your slaves must be made to obey it. Slaves also must worship and rest on the Sabbath to honour how God rested on the seventh day of creation. This opposes their having alternative beliefs. It opposes their having pagan beliefs and practicing paganism. It opposes religious liberty. Remember how Exodus allows beating slaves as long as they are not killed by the beating there and then. There is no grace where people are forced or pressured. Yet we are told that Christianity is about the gift of freedom and mercy from God.
BOOKS CONSULTED
ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE, John W Haley, Whitaker House,
Pennsylvania, undated
BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND CHURCH DOCTRINE, Raymond E Brown, Paulist
Press, New York, 1985
CHRIST AND PROTEST, Harry Tennant, Christadelphian Publishing
Office, Birmingham, undated
CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Editor John Warwick Montgomery,
Bethany Fellowship, Minnesota, 1973
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon,
1996
JESUS AND THE FOUR GOSPELS, John Drane, Lion Books, Herts, 1984
JESUS HYPOTHESES, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977
NEW AGE BIBLE VERSIONS, GA Riplinger, Bible & Literature Foundation,
Tennessee, 1993
THE HOLY BIBLE NEW AMERICAN VERSION, Confraternity of Christian
Doctrine, Washington DC, 1970
THE JESUS EVENT, Martin R Tripole SJ, Alba House, New York, 1980
THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Kittel Gerhard and
Friedrich Gerhard, Eerdman’s Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 1976
THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION. Robin Lane Fox, Penguin, Middlesex, 1992
WHEN CRITICS ASK, Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, Victor Books,
Illinois,1992