How the Bible Supports Slavery

apologists will say well let's just start off by making it clear that slavery in the Bible is nothing like slavery in the American South leading up to the Civil War and the problem is that's just not true if this is about the the protection of women it seems interesting that it's only about the protection of virgin women the women who slept with the man they get put to the sword the ones who haven't these are the ones who are offered to protection if an Israelite man sees among those captives a beautiful woman and he wants to take her as a wife here's how you do it he brings her into his house has a ritual where he trims her nails and shaves her head changes clothing into new clothing and then she's given 30 days to mourn her dead family just pause [Music] welcome to within reason my name is Alex O'Connor and my guest today is Dr Joshua Bowen Josh Bowen is an asteriologist a YouTuber and author of the book did the Old Testament endorse slavery a work which is currently in the process of being updated and reissued so I thought it was a good time to sit down with Dr Bowen to discuss that question does the Old Testament endorse slavery and if it does what kind of slavery are we talking about we sometimes hear from religious apologists that this isn't the bad kind of slavery that comes to mind when we think of the Antebellum slavery of 19th century America for example but Josh Bowen wants to argue that this is a mistaken idea I was astonished by this conversation and found it to be greatly enjoyable and I hope that you do too Joshua Bowen thank you so much for coming on the podcast ah thank you for having me I'm excited to sit down and talk to you I saw on Twitter that you were working on a an updated version of your book did the Old Testament endorse slavery I wondered sort of I mean we were just talking off camera and you said that this book has sort of expanded greatly since the original Edition why is this something that you wanted to write about I think probably because one I I end up talking about this far more than anyone would hope or dream to talk about it uh it's it's something that Christian apologists tend to um Buck against much more than I think they need to um but you know there are more fundamentalist leanings I think often take them that direction and so when a skeptic brings up slavery uh you you hear I think very dangerous apologetic arguments and I remember a couple years ago you ran into some of those um with Alan Parr and some of the responses that came to your response one in particular by a gentleman by the name of uh John McRae I think what do you mean you know he he was really the reason that I I got into this uh because a defense of slavery in the Old Testament and what I mean by that is defending the slavery itself as saying things like it's the nice kind of slavery or it's like owning a credit card uh or it's like having a job uh these are the types of defenses uh that I think could lead to very dangerous consequences and I talk about this in the book it's one of the things that I go into a little bit more in the second edition is often you'll hear and I think even you heard uh apologists will say well let's just start off by making it clear that slavery in the Bible is nothing like slavery in the American South leading up to the Civil War and the problem is that's just not true um and when you compare the laws in the Hebrew Bible to the laws that were on the books leading up to in the Civil War they're not only very similar but they have the same legal rationale and so ultimately I think a defense of Old Testament slavery in that regard can very easily be a defensive Antebellum slavery and ultimately just having slavery again so that's why I think it's a really important topic yeah I remember I had made a response video to Alan Parr a number of years ago because he'd made a sort of quick informational video about the fact that if you look at the Old Testament it appears that in a a great number of places we have an implicit endorsement of the practice of slavery and he was trying to argue I mean I remember in the video I went in thinking I was about to watch an argument that said no the Bible doesn't defend slavery and instead what we get is something like well it does defend something called slavery but it's not the kind of slavery that that you have in mind is this not the case I mean I hear this this so commonly that when we look at the Old Testament and we look at what's being referred to as slavery here what we're really talking about is something like indentured servitude something like uh you know people willingly entering into a relationship with a master where they'll work with them for a number of years to pay off their debts and and that's nothing like the kidnapping of of human beings and and shipping across to a different continent in fact I I remember or I know that in in the book of Exodus where we find some of the verses that are often cited by Skeptics as defending biblical slavery we also find that the the Old Testament forbids the kidnapping of people and forbids uh forbids their sale um I I have it in my notes here it's Exodus 21 16 anyone who kidnapped someone is to be put to death whether the victim has been solved uh sold or is still in The kidnapper's Possession so here we have some indication that the kind of slavery that we're talking about in the Old Testament can't be exactly like uh the slavery in in America and in the 1800s Antebellum slavery uh at least for this reason but but you seem to suggest that they are more similar than these apologists often claim yeah so a couple of things to note about it first of all uh any type of discussion that talks about slavery in the Hebrew Bible or in the Old Testament uh should very quickly take into account uh slavery as it was practiced in the ancient near East in general and what I have found uh with a Christian apologists online is that they're very quick to say oh yeah laws of Hammurabi laws of warnama laws of vashnuna middle Assyrian laws these are all genuine slavery um well lo and behold it's also illegal to kidnap people there right it had been illegal to kidnap free people and reduce them to slavery for thousands of years as long as long as we've had you know those types of law collections from Mesopotamia so there's nothing novel in the Old Testament about that um and yes there was uh in a form of a contract slaver right indentured servitude um my first response when someone says that to me generally is yes and um therefore what right so so you're okay with someone being the property of someone else as long as it's only for a period of six years by the way in the laws of Hammurabi it was only for three years that someone uh was uh taken as a debt slave and then their their debts forgiven so you know if if we were uh if we were a Babylonian apologist uh we would say oh look how much better the laws of Hammurabi were than the Old Testament laws because they only kept them for three years the you know the laws in the Bible are twice as bad um of course that's I think it's sort of a silly position to come down either direction but um so yes there absolutely was indentured servitude and it was slavery once you signed up for it and it was voluntary that type of slavery was voluntary throughout the ancient near East but that was it right you're in it's not like you can wake up the next morning and go you know what I'm I'm actually not down with this there are contracts from uh newsy for example that talk about people voluntarily entering into a type of slavery where they would be adopted by the the master and his wife often and the contract I mean we have these contracts and I go through them in the second edition but the contract stipulates that you know so and so slave will become the son of these two people and they will take care of them and be careful to obey them for the rest of the lives of the parents the adopted parents um and when they die they will perform the correct burial rights and mourn them and all these things and then that that sun will inherit a portion of land but then the contract has Clauses that say if such and such you know son says I'm I'm out right I'm no longer their son he has to pay I think it's something like 10 minutes of gold and 10 minutes of silver uh or it might be it might be a hundred meters I mean it's it's some sort of crazy amount to give you an idea Amina is 60 shekels um and so that's a a person might make 10 shekels of silver a year so if you're making that's that's six years times ten just in the silver part I mean it's it's a it's probably 60 years uh worth of wages at any rate so endangered servits who does not all that it's cracked up to be right your freedoms are gone for that period of time and you are at the uh at the discretion of corporal punishment of uh the master but that's not the only type of slavery that we see in the Bible and that's the second maybe more important point if you look at places like Exodus 21 2-6 where the the famous passage that apologists like to go to where they say oh look I only served for six years and then you know they get set free and well this is the same passage where a debt slave is given a wife by the master and if that he and his wife uh have children the wife and the children belong to the master even after the the debt slave goes free and so he can then sign up for chattel slavery lifetime servitude uh and he has his ear pierced and he is marked as a chattel slave and that's exactly what shadow slavery is it's slavery that is uh somebody being owned and it's not dependent upon the repayment of a debt um you also have this of course in the famous passage in Leviticus 25 44 to 46. uh foreigners are not taken as indentured servants uh they're taking as chattel slaves and they serve for life they're passed on his inheritance uh so yeah you also have and I'll stop because I know I've gone on for a bit but you also have sexual slavery uh in the Hebrew Bible now they might not have considered it such right in the way that we would but when someone is kept as property and is at the disposal of the master and has no uh consent uh no right to uh to um you know refuse uh the use of their body for sexual purposes both male and female slaves uh fall into that category at different points so um you know this idea that it's only indentured servitude and that you know the fact that Exodus 21 16 and Deuteronomy 24 7 Outlaw kidnapping and reducing of a free person to slavery you know you can't steal a car all right you can't steal somebody else's car and make it your own but that doesn't mean that you can't own a car um so yes and and the last thing that I'll say is slavery I think in 1808 was officially outlawed in the United States uh sorry not slavery uh kidnapping uh and taking people on the America the African slave trade I think was in 1808 it's not my area of expertise but I think was was was outlawed and so that this actually caused problems in the American South um it it made people uh made the laws Elevate the humanity and the treatment of slaves but part of that was because they couldn't so easily replace them with someone from you know the African slave trade but of course slavery continued in the American South so you know this idea it's sort of a in my opinion sort of a non-sequitur or a red herring um depending on how it's used I suppose uh because kidnapping does not equal slavery and it's not required for it yeah so I want to talk about some of the verses in question here we've sort of mentioned them in passing because I'm sure that many of our listeners will be familiar if they've listened to these debates that people have had about slavery in the Bible but even then they might need a refresher and some people listening might not know what we're talking about at all they might have heard that oh yeah the Bible endorses slavery but what are we talking about here where can we look in the Old Testament we've mentioned Exodus as well as a couple of other uh books what's the nature of these verses what are they being again what's their sort of genre are these like laws are these suggestions are these descriptions of historical events and and what is it we actually find in Scripture that tells us that God himself is condoning the ownership of human beings yeah so there are three primary legal sections that we find in the pentateuch that deal with slavery the first is Exodus 21. uh and that covers um taking male death slaves and what to do with you know families that uh develop during that period of service uh it talks about physically uh punishing and disciplining [Music] um a slave a debt slave what to do if abuse happens if murder happens uh on the part of the master uh then you have sort of a uh you know slightly adjacent law that talks about if an ox Gore is a slave to death uh what is to happen there but those are all in Exodus 21 in Deuteronomy 15 which is a later text uh you have a sort of a development I think is pretty clearly argued um in the scholarship Deuteronomy 15 develops Exodus 21 in some ways and one of the ways that it does is it provides a supernatural uh layer to the slave laws so there's still six years and they're released in the seventh for Israelites not for foreigners um but when they're released in Deuteronomy 15 they are required to be provided for the slave is to be provided for liberally with food and Provisions so that they don't fall back into debt slavery now there's a reason for that uh theologically speaking but the big thing is that it's it's to be supernaturally uh uh accounted for right God is going to take care of that uh and and then in Leviticus 25 that's the the latest um section of legal texts that deal with slavery and this is part of the Holiness code and this is where uh you have slavery for Israelites essentially outlawed they can no longer keep Israelites can no longer keep fellow Israelites even as debt slaves they have to be kept only as hired workers now of course there's some debate about is this sort of a a roundabout way of making things actually worse for slaves um by keeping them as what are called anti-creative pledges but we don't have to get into that but the the law itself on its face says you can't keep an Israelite as a debt slave anymore however it then answers the question well where do we get slaves from if we can't get them from Israelites where do we get them and the text says starting down into verse 44 you're to get them from the Nations around you uh you can get them from tenant foreigners or tenant Farmers that are living in the land of Israel itself these are kept as permanent slaves passed one as inheritance to your children uh they they serve for life you just can't do that to Israelites and these uh sort of land with this um unless you want me to develop that further uh the there is debate among critical Scholars as to the nature of these legal sections as a whole any of the laws in the law collections that you see in the Bible not just the ones that deal with slavery but what what is uh the decalogue like what are the Ten Commandments uh what are these you know these laws that are laid out in places like Exodus 21 Leviticus 25. and the debate sort of it's been assumed for Millennia uh I think that these are you know what we would consider to be legislation that this is God this is Yahweh and on Mount Sinai handing down the laws that he wants the people to obey now if you hold to a more Evangelical or fundamentalist view of the text that's kind of where you have to come down because if you believe that Yahweh was there talking to Moses on Mount Sinai there aren't a lot of other ways that you can go with that uh but you know critical Scholars that don't adhere to that sort of divine source for these texts would say are what are these things and if you look back at places like the laws of Hammurabi or the laws of ashnuna or the laws of lipid Ishtar or nama these law collections have a um a very propagandistic uh tone to them they're they're put on parts of Royal inscriptions so it's the king is essentially saying look how great I am I'm a a wonderful judge I make sure that Justice is in the land and that no one is oppressed and here's how I did it look at all the laws that I in a major uh that brought Justice to people and so there's this debate are these uh is this part of Royal propaganda is are these just as you sort of said suggestions or wisdom literature uh are they if you want to live your best life you know YOLO and if you want to really make it happen the way you do it is to obey these types of laws sort of like Proverbs um all those things are debated but uh apologists have have tried to gravitate toward this and just sort of grab hold of it and to say well well if they're if they're not legislation if it's not actual laws that the people had to abide by well I mean then you can't really attribute them to God right because you know uh and God can't be held morally responsible because it's just like it's just like part of the story but the problem is that you can't then say we believe that Yahweh gave these things to Moses on Mount Sinai because you can't have a foot in both camps and you can't have your cake and eat it too right uh you either have to say they didn't come from Yahweh they're not a supernatural origin and so they could be one of these other things or they are and their legislation that Yahweh wants and requires the people to uphold yeah so we we do seem to have some like you mentioned potentially conflicting reports here as well if we look at Exodus 21 which will be our sort of earliest scriptural Source here the very beginning of uh Exodus 21 the second verse if you buy a Hebrew servant he has to serve for six years but in the seventh year he shall go he shall Go free without paying anything and as you have mentioned some people point to this as evidence that even if we are dealing with something like slavery here it's not a permanent slavery and it's uh something like a sort of temporary work contract uh it says in verse 7 that if a man sells his daughter as a servant she is not to go free as the male servants do can you tell us about that yeah so uh verses 7 through 11 deal with uh the Hebrew word is AMA and it's a it's a female slave and the female slave is very often taken in concubineage uh and and this is again not just in the Hebrew Bible this is throughout the ancient Aries you have female slaves taken as concubines even here if you look in in the verses it says if he takes another wife to himself he can't just you know disregard this female slave that he's taken as a probably as a concubine um but the the law here is explicitly saying that using the same sort of verbiage as what is seen as you pointed out in verse two uh that female slaves are not to go free and the reason for this is is oddly a protection for them uh and apologists like to jump on this and uh it's it's when I hear it I want to say things like sick Flex bro you know like if this is what you're if this is what you're camping on and uh and and having Stand Out is a great thing this isn't this isn't all that great uh the reason that she can't be uh or she is not to be set free is because uh you have devalued her that the Israelite had devalued her uh by having intercourse with her and of course her value um having been you know deflowered or whatever um you know term that we want to use there to maybe nice it up and I send it up uh you know she's she she no longer carries the same value that she did as a virgin uh so it's when you get to passages like uh Deuteronomy 15 which seem to be updating other aspects of Exodus 21. there's sort of a debate as to whether um this particular law is being updated and so when you get there I think down in verse 18 uh it might not be that that far down um it says uh you are to also do this for your female slave and that is the the do this is to release her after six years or to allow her to serve for life as a shadow slave if she wants to uh and so it it seems highly highly you know very possible that uh this is trying to turn Exodus 21 7 on its head and say no um this is this is going to be across the board male and female slaves are going to get released after six years it's also possible that it's a different type of slavery being uh assumed here in Deuteronomy 15. so certainly the slavery that's being assumed in Exodus 21 is not just uh you know regular household slavery she's being taken for sexual purposes right she's being taken as a concubine um and so it may be that Deuteronomy 15 is envisioning something else here either way um the reason that it's it's saying that in in Exodus 21 7 is to try to protect her from being just sort of disregarded notice that uh if she if she does become displeasing to her master he can't just sell her to a foreign people um he has to allow her to be redeemed and essentially that means that the father who went into debt or the brother that went into debt that then sold her um as this female slave has to be allowed to purchase her back to to pay the debt that um he was forgiven by by selling her well here's the uh here's the NIV uh if a man sells his daughter as a servant she is not to go free as male servants do if she does not please the master who has selected her for himself he must let her be redeemed he has no right to sell her to foreigners because he has broken Faith with her if he selects her for his son he must Grant her the rights of a daughter if he marries another woman he must not deprive the first one of her food clothing and marital rights if he does not provide her with these things she is to go free without any payment of money um just so that we have a clear grasp on what the text actually says I mean is it not it it seems so strange to us now to imagine a situation where where being in this sort of circumstance would would offer a level of protection but if the scripture is saying explicitly that if you can't provide for this woman if you can't give her marital rights if you can't give her food if you can't give her clothing then she has to go free can't we take this as an indication that this isn't just a verse that's supposed to protect the rights of men to take uh concubines as slaves but rather to protect women uh from from being as you say completely disregarded is this not a plausible argument sure um the thing that I would want to Nuance it with is that it's nothing new in the Bible as the types of laws these types of laws appear throughout the legal collections in the ancient near East and this is something that I think people Miss just generally speaking certainly apologists miss it um they have this picture probably because the Bible in the Old Testament paints everybody else all these Canaanites and Hittites and jebusites cinemalekites it's all these horrible horrible people yeah they weren't they they weren't uh relatively speaking they weren't so bad right um and one of the things that is Paramount for a king who is uh is ruling in a Mesopotamian City uh is that he's supposed to be a good shepherd to his people he's supposed to protect the vulnerable and they they explicitly say this over and over again uh no one was oppressed under my rule the orphan the Widow The Foreigner right these people whether this played out this way or not as sort of irrelevant to the point here right um because it would be you'd have to ask the same question of the biblical text um but the way that these uh rulers set themselves up is they are to care for the vulnerable people uh under their domain and so uh you know contracts even like practical actual contracts that we have uh from uh you know from the old Babylonian period from you know the the third one in the second Millennium the first one in BCE uh you often have Clauses that are placed in there that protect the the woman when she's being sold right um and and marriage contracts function in very much the same way uh so so if you're going to make that argument or if one were to make that argument well look this is a protection like I agree you see the same thing I'm sure as we're going to talk about down in verses 20 and 21. this is a level of protection for the slave um but you have to then follow that up with therefore what um because if you're if you make that argument where you have to then make the argument for these other ancient near Eastern cultures that that come before and you have to say well they were doing the same thing they're really protecting women and uh and I I don't think apologists are going to to go down that that path um I suppose I'm imagining uh how we we begun we began this discussion by comparison between the kind of slavery we're talking about in the Old Testament and something like Antebellum slavery in the United States and one difference might be for example that it seems quite obvious that the the laws in place regarding uh slaves in the American South didn't have this level of well look if you can't provide for your female slaves if you can't give them marital status and food and shelter then they have to go free without any payment it seemed very clearly you know these are these are just your property with whom you can do what you like this in other words seems like maybe a way in which we can say that this is different and perhaps a less grotesque form of slavery it's not to say that it's permissible and certainly not by modern standards but it's it's much how I've heard an analogous argument being made about polygamy sometimes when a religious scripture talks about men taking multiple wives we might look at that today and think of a man who just wants multiple wives when we don't recognize that this comes from a time when having a husband was one of the best ways to protect yourself as a woman in a world where you're not able to very easily sort of fend for yourself and that might not be the case in the modern age but if you're living in a time where that is the case this might be something that's actually good for you now I think it's a harder case to make for slavery than it is for something like polygamous marriage but at the very least we might be looking at something that's not so grotesque because these are just your property with whom you can do what you like but rather these are human beings who have some some moral restraints on what you can do with them in fact you need to provide for them otherwise they have to go free this seems much less grotesque than than uh you know American slavery he said let me um let me just the value of that notion uh a little um and this is something that was incredibly surprising to me because when I first came online uh and started talking about slavery and somebody would say to me oh well you know this is totally different the American South I would go yeah yeah but so what I mean like it's still slavery um you know and I have no formal expertise no formal training in like American uh you know history so you know no or certainly not nothing uh regarding the laws in the American South I have no expertise there uh however I I feel like I've provided the scholars uh in in my work uh to establish this and of course I cite the laws themselves um so with all that being said uh the law there was a tension a fundamental tension with the lawmakers in the colonial period and getting better toward the Revolution and certainly post-revolution the laws got more Humane uh and the the fundamental tension that um legislators and judges grappled with was on the one hand the right of the master to be able to discipline and physically beat his slave in order to get him or her to do the work uh that he required them to do and on the other hand the humanity of the slave and the slave's right to not be abused and murdered now that sounds bizarre because we know what happened in the American South right um but if you go back and read the laws the laws are very clear again particularly as you get closer to the Civil War and and in the South I'm talking about not just in the North um you you weren't allowed to abuse your slave now how they defined abuse was anything more than moderate physical correction but you weren't allowed to dismember them you weren't allowed to uh like you know knock out eyes and teeth you're not allowed to do that stuff you're certainly not allowed to kill them and in fact if it was determined that you had murdered a slave uh in in several States and ultimately I think Most states by the end um the punishment was essentially as if you killed a free white person so this idea that apologists put forward that oh they're you know in the American South the laws just let them do whatever they want well that's nonsense uh the laws were very similar uh and often reference you know like in these in these discussions they'll say things like a no good Christian would uh you know disregard the humanity of a slave uh so so much to to abuse them right but but the master has to be able to physically discipline them and so how did they how did they do that well they they said um you know no master can be held liable uh for uh sometimes even the death of the slave as long as it was done under moderate correction well you know surprise surprise Exodus 21 20-21 if a man beats his male or female slave with a wooden rod and they die immediately up abuse abuse they're to be killed right the punishment is the punishment is severe but if they survive a day or two well now this is determined to be moderate physical correction right this is the master disciplining his slave and the benefit of the doubt is given to the master and so there is no punishment because they're his property his sales property once again the uh from the NIV Exodus 21 verses 20 to 21 anyone who beats their male or female slaves with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result but if but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two since the slave is their property and interestingly here what seems to be at first may be an indication that this isn't uh as bad as we once thought because we say well look if if they beat their slave with a rod and that slave dies they they get punished so this isn't just abject slavery and ownership but it is immediately followed up with the idea that as long as they get up after a day or two and you can imagine the kind of suffering that has to be inflicted where it takes days for the slave to recover they're not to be punished and as you say why because the slave is their property so and it's interesting that when we imagine firstly if we imagine that well look and this is another thing I think Alan Parr said in his video that I responded to he said look God did not condone slavery so much as he regulated it and a lot of people often say that like God's kind of writing for the people of the time if you just try to completely abolish slavery instantly it would have caused Havoc there's there's no way that it could have practically manifested and so instead we place regulations and the idea is maybe God is sort of hinting that he's not all cool with the slavery thing but recognizes it can't be gone uh can't be done away with entirely I mean he seems quite quite liberal and is doing away with other forms of practices in their entirety and so I'm not sure how much Credence I give that but even so the kind of regulations we're talking about still pretty grotesque they still have humans owning other human beings as property and allowing them to beat them mercilessly to the extent that they can't get up for a number of days as long as they don't die and it's only then that they'll be punished but we explicitly say that they're not punished as long as they get up yeah that's the see that's the thing the Hebrew itself um is a little tricky there because certainly the NIV is translating it that way that they recover after a day or two but the Hebrew doesn't require that as a matter of fact many scholars would say that they survive a day or two meaning they they last a day or two before they die oh sure because of course the verse says they're to be punished if the slave dies as a direct result yeah and literally that it's under his hand and that's the idea it's like there and and you know even early interpreters like Philo um the way that they read this uh was was to say this is sort of a litmus test for like how do you determine malicious intent and this is something that's very common again to the engineers you know the laws of Hammurabi think is 116 says if somebody just strains uh a a free person's um child for example and beats them to death well the Master's child is put to death as a result right so you like this idea that oh the Hebrew Bible if you're killing the master my God this is like this is crazy this is new this would never happen to the engineers no it's it's it's right on it's right online in line uh with what you see in the ancient near East I wanted to ask how you think we can square this with what almost immediately follows in Exodus 21 which is uh verses 26 to 7 an owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave Go free to compensate for the eye an owner who knocks out the tooth of a male or female slave must let the slave Go free to compensate for the tooth now again it's it's not clear to me that the law is specifically saying here you can beat your slave however you like except specifically if you knock out an eye or knock out a tooth then you have to let them go for free it seems maybe here we're dealing with something more uh like saying look if you if you cause serious physical permanent damage to your slave this is not allowed and in fact will will result in you losing the slave altogether now a moment ago when we're talking about anyone beating their slave with a rod we kind of have this image of somebody just just mercilessly beating a slave however they like as long as they don't die but immediately following us we have some indication that actually no you can't just cause physical bodily damage to them and then instead the the kind of uh physical damage that we're talking about previously must be sort of much milder than what we had in mind what do you think about this how can these be squared so a couple of things to note first I agree um and it's something that I I talk about in the book um these laws just as 21 7 to 11 were intended uh to be a protection these are intended to be a protection for this this is very likely uh almost certainly a debt slave um and debt slaves had a higher uh a higher level of Rights in the in the ancient near East when it came to the way that they were treated um and so the fact that they go out free without payment uh is sort of one of the things that indicates uh or is an indication of their debt slave status but it's it's more complicated than that but so what we have here is uh someone who is a debt slave probably talking about an Israelite debt slave probably similar to what we saw in two to six um and the master has to be able to do corporal punishment that's what the law is I think going for but he's he he can't just abuse them just like you see in the laws in Antebellum South just like you see in the laws in the ancient near East the master can't just do whatever he wants to them but the the problem is how do you determine that and so uh I think the way that they're doing that in 20 to 21 is if he dies immediately well that's an indication that this was abuse if he dies after a couple of days um you know we've got to give the the master the benefit of the doubt something else could have intervened uh you know an infection of course they wouldn't have thought in those terms but like something else may have intervened um and killed the slave then you come to 26 and 27 there's a damage to an eye damage to a tooth some people read these things and apologists do this all the time they say something as insignificant or as minor as knocking out an eye or a tooth and they'll even do those sorts of hand motions and eye rolling right uh silly it's it's silly uh so if I have an entire appendix in uh the the second edition to the Old Testament endure slavery that looks at all of the battery laws from all of the ancient Aries and law collections including those of the Hebrew Bible and it Compares them uh not only amongst themselves in their in their individual collections to see what is the most severe and what is the least severe and how do they rank uh type of battery that can be inflicted upon someone but then comparing them between you know to the to to each other based on the type of um battery being uh you know performed whatever and and I and a tooth and a nose uh these are all very severe um uh parts of the body that draw very severe punishments if if damage is done to them it's not it's not something small um and you see this consistently throughout the collections uh and and so this is where like the whole eye for an eye tooth for a tooth thing came from right is because these are not minor things and so I think you're right I don't think that it's limited to uh well they they have to put out an eye or they have to put out a tooth um however they are specific for a reason I think probably in that class would be like you know breaking a bone uh that would be probably pretty significant those are pretty significant in the collections um and so I think what's Happening Here is a debt slave is being abused and suffers significant damage and is therefore released from his debt now this is what I want everybody to hear in the and you can read it if you want in verses 20 I think it's uh 23 and 24. you have one of the sections where it talks about eye for eye tooth for tooth and for hand foot for foot um burn for burn wound for wound yeah uh but if there is we have uh 21 verse 23 but if there is serious injury you are to take life for life if I tooth for tooth hand for hand foot burn for burn wound for wound bruise for bruise following on that so that's you know what we call the law of retaliation or Lex talionis whatever is you know if if we're to free people and you put out my eye well now uh I have the right to your eye and what that often translates into is you saying hey hey I tell you what um if you don't take my eye I'll give you a million dollars right I will pay you x amount of money for you to allow me to keep my eye and there's a lot of discussion about that and how that worked but it's to try to assess value in those circumstances but the critical point is that those two verses follow on those two verses uh sorry 26 and 27 follow this eye for eye foot for foot burn for burn hand for hand and all these things dyslex talionis if the slave we're on the same legal standing as a free person what we would expect to see here is and if a master puts out the eye of a slave then his eyes shall be put out but that's not what we see instead that slave is to be released from his debt which probably is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of at most what 30 shekels of silver right I mean like it's those those sorts of things are hard to know um but he is the key is that he is not do the law of retaliation he cannot say to his master all right let the bidding start right how much will you give me for put for your eye for me to not take your eye he's not he's not given that um he's simply set free from his um from his debt yeah verse verse 22 we're talking about if people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there's no serious injury the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows uh it then follows that but if there is serious injury you ought to take a life for Life eye for eye tooth for tooth and so on and she say immediately following this an owner who hits a male or female slave in the eye and destroys it must let the slave Go free to compensate for the eye so there are sort of there's like a parallel law here in in the one instance eye for an eye tooth for a tooth in the other instance if I knock out your eye well I tell you what you know you're free to go and we'll we'll call it quits yeah I suppose that does seem quite different there's also a differential treatment not only between um sort of slaves and non-slaves here but as you've mentioned before different kinds of slaves we seem to have chattel slavery versus indentured servitude but also we seem to have differential treatment for Israelites versus foreigners uh in The Book of Leviticus a verse that you referenced earlier but I'll I'll read out again from the NIV uh Leviticus 25 verses 44-46 your male and female slaves are to come from the Nations around you from them you may buy slaves you may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their Clans born in your country and they will become your property you can bequeath them to your children as Inherited property and can make them slaves for life but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly so I think it's worth bearing in mind I mean here it seems clear that what we're saying is there's a totally different rule for Israelites than there are for others I think it's worth bearing in mind that when you see a verse that seems to suggest that we're not talking about a particularly grotesque form of slavery we have to be careful to understand are we talking about all slaves here or are we talking about just Israelites or are we talking about just indentured servitudes and not uh servants and not those who are sort of sold into chattel slavery for Life there seems to be a lot of differential treatment here and I think that one of the ways that we can often get a bit sort of Blindsided is by people saying look at this verse which suggests that slaves have to be treated nicely but we're really talking about Israelites who are who have voluntarily entered into indentured service as opposed to Slaves captured from the Nations around you yeah and and this sort of thing plays out uh of course Leviticus 25 is like the the big Passage um but this sort of this sort of treatment of foreigners uh you can see very clearly in other passages and again we can come back to Leviticus 25 and talk about as much or as little as you like of it but in in some place you know places like um Deuteronomy 21 which talks about a captive bride here the picture is if you read back through the previous chapter Deuteronomy 20 10 to 14. it talks about what how the Israelites are to go to war um and we know uh you know from this passage but also from others that all of the the Nations that are living in the land of Canaan in the promised land there to be annihilated right there to be wiped out they are under What's called the ban however uh the question then becomes well what about other nations because Deuteronomy sets up Israel as the head of the Nations right and they're the ones that are supposed to be in charge they're supposed to be the best they're supposed to be the most powerful they're supposed to create facile you know create vassals all around them so how do they do that what is the what are the rules for Warfare and so it says when you go to war against Nations or cities that are very far away from you uh you're to offer them Shalom is what the text says peace right and what that equates to is a vassal treaty as you can as you see in the next verses uh and basically the text uh explains that you if they accept if they say we're good will be your vassal then uh the people in the city become your corvae laborer and you can you can muster them as you like to do you know building projects so you see Solomon doing however if they close their Gates and they say no way Jose right and they put up a fight then you're to kill all of the men in the city all the Fighting Force and you're to take the women and the children and the livestock as plunder and that's what you do to the cities that are around they become your property right so then chapter 21 sort of in this context says okay if an Israelite man sees among those captives a beautiful woman and he wants to take her as a wife here's how you do it he brings her into his house has a ritual where it trims her nails and shaves her head changes clothing into new clothing and then she's given 30 days to mourn her dead family just pause um because I shouldn't be laughing but I I feel like I laugh sometimes at horrible statements well it's it's difficult it's difficult not to again from from the Lord's own mouth and this is Deuteronomy 21 verse verses 10 onwards when you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her you may take her as your wife bring her into your home and shave her head trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured after she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month then you may go to be her and then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife I mean I don't see a a way of reading this that can be that can be reconciled with the attitude that I often see in in popular apologetics that we're not really talking about you know slavery here we're talking about something like people entering into a voluntary work contract no this is this is captives of War who the captors find attractive give them a month to mourn for the people who presumably were killed by their new husband and now they're yours to keep again the verse you mentioned earlier just because I want to make sure that our listeners hear it from the Bible itself so they don't think you're distorting things uh earlier in Leviticus 25 verses 44 onwards sorry sorry Deuteronomy uh 2010-14 yeah yeah so that we were talking earlier about Deuteronomy uh chapter 20 verses 10 onwards when you march up to attack a city make its people an offer of peace again it seems like make them an offer of peace that sounds like a good thing but it says here if they accept and open their Gates all of the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you some peace if they refuse to make peace which you know uh how dare they as they engage and they engage you in battle lay Siege to that City when the Lord your God delivers it into your hand put to the sword all of the men in it as for the women the children the livestock and everything else in the city you may take these as plunder for yourselves and you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies yeah you may use the plunder and of course the plunder is referring to the livestock you know the uh the the property and of course the women and this is Alex this is precisely what we see in the the very often uh this discussed passage numbers 31 yes um and what people miss about this is the the Christian apologists that they they they have this way of sort of um is spinning this in a way that uh and it makes me sad frankly um but numbers 31 is that these these virgin women uh are are they're not only taken but they are numbered and counted along with the other Livestock in the chapter I think it's probably down in like I can't remember 17 and 18 somewhere around there but um it might be even further down than that but it but it it says you know such and such number of sheep or in such and such number of cattle and such such number of women right like it and they're divided Out Among the tribes so um this this is something that what I hear all the time that makes me ill and I remember Mike Winger if you're familiar with him had a discussion yeah with Skylar fiction um several years ago on this particular passage and I think it's the last time he's spoken with him um and and Mike uh it just blew my mind uh because he's he's saying essentially things like well yeah like this is this is a protection for the woman if that's what you get out of that Passage um I don't know it betrays it tips your hand what cards you're holding right what your position is um because the scene that you're describing would be akin to if someone were to break into my house right now and were to kill me uh and to kill Megan and to set the house on fire and to take my five children as as captives right and keep them in the basement in their house while this house burns down and keep them there um and and but to feed them right and to clothe them and to to to give them homeschooling right and to teach them to play the violin or what whatever else we would say would certainly no apologist would come to the defense of the the captor the kidnapper and say well I mean it was it was a protection for the kids to take them out of that burning building right this was for their benefit um but what was he supposed to do just leave them there to die well I mean like I again sick Flex bro you know like this this isn't the flex that you think that it is um this woman not that women had uh consent uh you know or gave consent in marriages that wasn't really a thing um but certainly this this woman is is not giving consent either directly uh uh or or even if you want to make the argument um that she would would have wanted it she would have wanted it under duress in the same way that my kids would have wanted the guy to take them instead of letting them burn alive um I'm and I'll be quiet but like I I picture um that movie uh about um uh oh my gosh that's so terrible the the the holocaust movie that's so famous I can't remember the name um I can think of maybe Schindler's List Schindler's List that's it and there's a there's a scene where uh the women in the concentration camp are simply trying to not be shot in the morning and so they like slap their cheeks to make them a little bit redder you know a little bit Rosier so they don't look so gaunt and so pale um and when that guy comes by that that that you know officer walks by and doesn't shoot them you know or if if he were to say hey come with me um you're gonna be my wife would they have wanted that instead of being shot by the next officer yeah hell yeah right uh but does that mean that they consented to it of course not does that make it okay of course not um and so the logic here I think it just it just betrays that you're starting with your conclusion as an apologist and you're saying this has to be okay this has to be okay and I have to make that okay now I don't know what Mike Winger in particular has said I haven't listened to that debate at least I don't think so I am familiar with him but but we were talking earlier generally about this approach to the to the problem specifically of female slavery that this is somehow for the benefit of the woman that this is for their protection and like you say this is an absurdity but it's also worth bearing in mind um if we look at numbers 31 this is after the the midianites the armies of Moses just essentially genocide the midianites and Moses commands his troops Now kill all the all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man but save for yourselves every girl who has not slept with a man again that's the niv's translation if this is about the the protection of women it seems interesting that it's only about the protection of virgin women the the women who slept with the man they get put to the sword the ones who haven't these are the ones who are offered the protection if there is some kind of argument to the to the in the tone of saying this is somehow for the benefit of the women it's worth bearing in mind why it would only apply to the virgin women why do you think that might be yeah I mean certainly because they're the only ones that would be viable as wives right it's it's kind of like what I'm wondering here is that being someone who's sort of written a book on this and engaged in a lot of debates about biblical slavery is have you heard anything that's sort of given you an indication that maybe we're mischaracterizing this I mean there's clearly there are clearly a lot of people in the world who think that the Bible or the Old Testament is the word of God and that God is a benevolent being that they must have there must be some way in which this is to be made sense of in all your research and all your debates have you come across anything I mean what's the best argument that you think uh not just an apologist but also just a Christian believer who might be listening to this I mean this might be the first time that they've encountered some of these verses and they might be thinking in their heads well this sounds very bad but you know I'm hearing this from atheists we're sort of plucking quotes out of the Old Testament without reading the entire books what are some of the things you've heard and are there any that are successful do you think in in defending these verses as not as bad as we're making them sound yeah um I guess one thing to say uh to again to to be fair um and this is this is the sort of go away from a more fundamentalist approach to the text but like passages like numbers 31 like the overarching picture that the that the text is painting the narrative is painting is the reason that they're spared is because they didn't sin right that was the point that's why the the um you know the virgin women are spared here um but but overall with these passages just like in The Wider ancient near East these laws are are set in place in order to protect the vulnerable that's generally what they do and so if we're taking a step away from this more fundamentalist approach to the text and we're just saying looking at the ancient Israelites of the ancient Assyrians of the ancient Babylonians or whatever and saying were these like horrific you know horrible nasty terrible immoral people well I mean like that's going to depend on the standard that we use right and I'm not an ethicist but um the laws that they're putting in place are intended to protect that's what they're intended to do the problem becomes as you well know much better than I that when someone says I'm gonna ground my morality either in the nature of this Divine being or in the laws that he sets if you believe that these are the laws that are set forth well you know that's what they say they're bad right um so in that vein the best I think the best argument that one could make um is a much more Progressive argument that says um yes slavery in the Hebrew Bible was bad slavery in the Old Testament was bad by our standards right we should not be doing that that's slavery but as you sort of alluded to earlier God is sort of meeting people where they are right now there are some serious problems with this and I'll talk about those in a second um but the argument sort of goes God is is sort of you know condescending to the people in the ancient Aries and in ancient Israelites and moving them forward incrementally and when you get to the New Testament when you get to the early church you know now you're starting to see verses like Galatians 3 28's neither male or female slave nor free right um we're all one in the body of Christ um you're seeing things like first Timothy 1 10 which is you know slave Traders are part of a like a list of sins you have Pat you know like the book of Philemon uh which one interpretation you know has it that you know Paul's arguing to set this slave free and and even things like you know Jesus coming to set the captives free um and one of their main arguments is based on Matthew chapter 19. and in Matthew chapter 19 Jesus it talks about divorce as it's laid out in the laws of the Old Testament and it says that God allowed you Moses allowed you to put away your wives to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard you had sinful Hearts but it wasn't this way from the beginning and so what they do is they extrapolate from this like a a general principle that there are lots of things in the law in the Old Testament that weren't God's ideal um and slavery is one of them but he just sort of you know he he lets them do that because of the hardness of their heart but then by the time you get to the New Testament he's he's given new commands he's given new sometimes subtle commands or suggestions uh that slavery is bad okay that that's the argument I deal with it more in depth in the book um but there's some some main problems with this first of all uh the idea that God has to condescend particularly on the issue of slavery is not borne out by passages like Leviticus 25. in Leviticus 25 God had said Yahweh had said leading up to this in both of the earlier law collections you can keep Israelites indentured servants right as death slaves but in 25 he says you can't do that anymore right no more slavery for the Israel it's got to keep him as paid hired workers and what I've said in the past is well if if God had stopped there and said like okay can't keep people as slaves anymore then I then I would say all right fine like I can see that forward progression um but the fact that he then goes on to say here's how you get slaves right take them from the foreigners now someone might argue and people have well that's that's that tiny step forward Josh it's the tiny step forward the problem is that the rationale behind this is very often that the economy wouldn't have supported it had you sort of alluded to that I think as well it would have just fallen into chaos their economic system would have just crashed down they needed slavery and so that's why he's he's trying to get rid of it just for Israelites but they still need the foreign slaves to be able to do that but he's going to work that out eventually the problem is that it was still a financial problem it was still an economic problem to not keep Israelite debt slaves and the text talks about this and it says I Yahweh says I will I will bless you I will take care of you if you obey the commands I will provide for you in that same chapter he talks about the letting the land life fallow every seventh year and the people are like how are we supposed to do that and still eat let the don't grow anything for a year and God says don't worry I will bless you so much supernaturally that you'll have two years extra worth so God is is saying he will supernaturally step in and provide both in Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25. so the idea that he couldn't also supernaturally step in and provide for them not having foreign slaves from an economic standpoint I think it's just the burden is on the person making that argument um two more problems and I'll I'll stop um one is you have to sort of argue for moral progress in the Old Testament at least a little bit and it's really hard to do um there are people there's a guy named Webb who wrote I think in 2014 that sort of makes this argument that he's trying to show moral progress in the Old Testament laws when it comes to slavery it's just not there right outside of these Supernatural Provisions um it's just not there uh and so so you don't see that moral step forward in the Old Testament but I think the bigger issue is these verses that are cited so often in the New Testament and again I deal with them in more detail in the book um they don't say what apologists need them to say for example the book of Philemon it's highly debated what it's even about um but Scholars that write on Philemon say unequivocally this is not a condemnation of the social institution of slavery it's talking about one guy right and and and even in a best case scenario for an apologist that's saying hey I set him free so he can come work with me right um it's not this condemnation that they wanted to be passages like first Timothy 1 10. it's about slave trading right and the illegal practices that you see that slave Traders did at the time the problem is even if you think that's a good thing which of course it is but even if you think it's like the Bible is doing this this great new thing in the New Testament it's not that slave I mean that um that sin list you know evil evil acts list is pulled from um uh writings the other earlier New Testament writings uh from the period that are uh that are not from the New Testament right so you would have to argue uh that oh well okay it's illegal in places other than the New Testament to but what because the New Testament is informing that somehow no because the new testament's borrowing from it so um first Timothy 1 10 doesn't really get you anywhere and the last one Galatians 3 28 where there's neither Jew nor Gentile slave nor free uh male nor female this is a spiritual statement it's not a condemnation of the social institution of slavery any more than um Paul is saying that there's no social distinction between men and women yes that would be a hard sell um I think to try to convince me that that Paul thought that that there was no social distinction anymore between men and women of course there was but what he's saying is you're all in Christ so spiritually uh that there's equality that the big thing this is the plane is landing I promise sorry um when you go to the early church what you would expect to see if the New Testament writers were saying slavery bad condemned slavery you would expect the early church to pick up on this they don't um they write things like even like John Chris has done when he writes he he he he says that like you shouldn't own so many slaves but it's not because slavery's wrong it's because he's saying stop being so lazy right all right maybe have one slave or at most two I'll allow you to have two but like come on like God gave you two hands right Adam didn't have slaves and he was just fine so the early church and and people like um Jennifer glancy and Ronald Charles they write about this in the New Testament the early Christian Church uh and it's just it's it it's just not there in my opinion um to show this moral progress and this condemnation of slavery in the New Testament yes uh again just for those listening who who want the actual references that we're talking about uh you mentioned First Timothy uh chapter 1 verse 10. uh or well it's it it comes after a list of things uh but in verse 10 we get the sexually immoral for those practicing homosexuality for slave Traders liars and perjurers again the NIV and whatever else is contrary to sound Doctrine implying that slave trading is maybe contrary to certain Doctrine but I think you've maybe traded one problem for another there and having to also include homosexuality in that list uh it's also I believe disputed as to where the pool is actually the author of First Timothy which is a whole other a whole other problem that I don't think we really have time to go into now not that it matters of course because as you say this this isn't really that much I mean if this is an important message you think at the very least it would be more clear it's not to say it would need to necessarily show up more times but it would probably be clearer and you wouldn't just get it from the the mouth of pool but probably more clearly from the mouth of Christ himself as you say uh we also have Galatians chapter 3 verse 28 there is neither Jew nor Greek there is neither Bond nor free is how the NIV puts it there is neither male nor female for you were all one in Christ Jesus but as you say there's just no way to interpret this other than essentially a spiritual metaphor even the New Testament here doesn't really help us out um and and and Alex think about it like in Luke 17 Jesus is talking to his disciples and I don't remember which verses it is um but he says essentially which one of you having a slave serving out in the field all day when the slave comes in at night would say to him here sit with me eat no you would say go in and cook my you know get get your uh some some sort of apron I think um make my dinner and come out here and serve me and then when I am done then you may eat and even after all these things you would say he is just a worthless slave because he's just doing his job and that metaphor is used to to talk about the apostles or about the disciples and it's so hard to think that Jesus is going to say which one of you and use this as an example and not say well obviously you're not going to have slaves because this is wrong how atrocious right he uses it just like he does all throughout Luke um yes again the metaphor is is strong here I mean it's worth bearing in mind why it is that Jesus is saying well who among you would do this um this is Luke 17 chapter 7 sorry chapter 17 verse 7 who among you would say to your slave who was just coming from plowing or tending sheep in the field come here at once and take your place at the table would you not rather say to him prepare supper for me put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink later you may eat and drink do you thank the slave for doing what he was commanded so you also when you have done all that you were ordered to do say we are worthless slaves we have only done what we ought to have done this is this is sort of a message about why would you be thankful for things that you ought to have done anyway and almost unthinkingly the example that Jesus used is that of a slave now look if if Jesus wanted to abolish slavery and there were some considerations about why that might not have been possible potentially again we're talking about how this would have been too you know disruptive it seemed strange to me that he would seemingly unthinkingly use slavery as a metaphor here and as part of his spiritual guidance um yeah there is of course the reference in Ephesians uh that that pool makes which in uh chapter 6 verse 5 we we get slaves obey your Earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart just as you would obey Christ and Paul also writes of obeying Masters not just the not just the the good ones but also the ones who are who are harsh so it seems even if we start incorporating New Testament verses and looking at the letters of Paul we're still left with a bit of a way up and if we're trying to think of Paul as somebody who wishes to see the end of slavery or abolish slavery or is at least carrying the message of the Christ who wanted to see the end of slavery where it does seem to be condemning slavery we'd want something a bit clearer and we probably wouldn't also want the presence of these other verses which seem to explicitly condone it um before uh before we finish up here do you know much about the so-called slave Bible have you come across this yeah not a lot um as far as the specifics um it is used quite often in apologetic arguments and the way that it's used I'm sure as you know is the slave Bible removes uh I think three quarters of the the Bible the the content of the Bible almost all most of maybe the Old Testament the the slave Bible uh it's its full name is Select part of the Holy Bible for use of the I'll say black slaves in the British West India islands and this is essentially a censored Bible that was produced I think in around 18 was it 1807 I think it was I put in my notes 1807. and uh it was specifically designed for slaves in the British West Indies and it it retracts a few as I say it's censored it takes out a number of verses including some of the ones we've talked about it takes out Exodus 21 16 anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death it takes out Deuteronomy 23 verse 15 if a slave has taken Refuge with you do not hand them over to their Master let them live among you wherever you like wherever they like and in whatever town they choose do not oppress them again a hint in Deuteronomy that uh of at least some sort of beneficial uh attitudes towards slaves and that's not something we talked about actually and I had meant to ask you about interestingly these are sort of taken out of this slave Bible and this Bible was was read out including all the verses we've already talked about in order to essentially let these slaves know that this is their place in the world and that's because God says so what I find strangely ironic about a censored Bible being produced for supposedly the benefit of slaves and teaching them what their natural place is the fact that it was considered necessarily censor it at all now this kind of argument might actually work against our purposes here or our uh our thesis here which is that if the Bible so obviously condones slavery and there's basically no way to interpret it as not doing so then why would it be that the Bible That's read out to slaves and the British West Indies would have to have this censored version there seems to be at least some suggestion here that there is some indication in the Bible that slavery isn't uh you know completely fine and that's the only verse I think I have written down here that we haven't mentioned yet perhaps we can do just before I let you go which is again Deuteronomy chapter 23 verses 15 to 16. if a slave has taken Refuge with you do not hand them over to their Master let them live among you wherever they like and in whatever town they choose do not oppress them if slaves are essentially the private property of other individuals why would God not command here that the slaves be returned um so let me let me say one quick thing about uh the slave Bible that I think is important to recognize here and again like I I haven't I haven't studied it um so take what I say in in that light but as I understand it uh the passages that are taken out are not excised right it's not like you get 20 Deuteronomy 23 you know 12 13 14 and then 15 and 16 are kind of pulled out right it's it's that The Exodus story uh the these narratives these large sections of the text are removed and the reason I think um without getting into the minds of you know the the the people that redacted the text [Music] um is because the story of The Exodus and the freedom that the Israelites um you know received ultimately uh from Egypt is a foundational story throughout the Old Testament particularly in those early chapters or in those early books and so you you can't I don't think many of us listen to songs that we really like and that speak to us and drill down into well what exactly did Sam Hunt mean when he penned this right what what's the specific situation he's referring to now you just hear sort of General things that speak to you right it's sort of a reader response type of interpretation um and the the idea that's the same reason that my father when he uh was out building you know building houses swinging a hammer would sing oh my Lord knows the way through the Wilderness all I got to do is follow and he's not thinking about the historical context of when that song was written and he's probably not I you know trying to say I think I'm actually in ancient Israelite and I identify as an ancient Israel right right he's just thinking this is a story about my God and from my Bible and God wants me to be free right and and so if we're looking at the overarching message that people hear when they read through the stories that is a very different conversation from what the text said and meant in its original context yes and the reason that the reason that the latter is important is that what apologists want to do is take you back to the original context and say see homosexuality bad right it's not the overarching message that God loves you and that God wants to you know have a relationship with you that that's that's not and God wants you to protect the vulnerable right that's not those they want to drill down into those things um and so I I think I think it's very important to recognize uh that the overarching message of the stories and how they were heard and understood removing those so that people don't get the idea of we should be free while also taking out these these verses in the laws that talk about slavery that they that somehow speaks to um the individual laws I don't think that was a on their mind at all it was just we have to get these Old Testament stories out of here about slavery and uh and the release from slavery in the Exodus so I think that's probably what's what's going on here yeah I think there's about 10 of the Old Testament is included in the slave Bible and about half of the New Testament and the story of The Exodus is taken away as well as the stories of the Psalms uh even the Book of Revelation in the New Testament doesn't appear and and this is thought of I I I've got a quote which I think I believe is from uh a man called Seth Pollinger or Pollinger who is the curatorial director at the Museum of the Bible in in Washington DC saying that the Publishers of the slave Bible thought that these sections quote could instill enslaves a dangerous hope for freedom and dreams of equality so this isn't just about sort of specific verses being taken out but that entire narratives of the Old Testament in particular I suppose The Exodus just leave this feeling of redemption and God's Liberation from slavery is a good thing and that's why it was taken away yeah um now as as far as Deuteronomy 23 15 to 16 is concerned um this is a passage uh that Scholars have recognized for quite some time isn't just about any slave that runs away and if you read through uh and sort of read carefully through the verses there are several things that you'll notice um first of all the slave that escapes is to be allowed to stay wherever he wants in their Gates now the reason that that is uh important to notice is that Israelites were allotted land they were allotted property and so the idea that an Israelite slave let's say uh Israelite Jim takes Israelite Frank as a dead slave right and Frank runs away if Frank goes somewhere he's going back home he's going back to his land the idea that the text would say let him stay wherever he wants among your Gates it doesn't make any sense and that's what's you know Scholars have picked up on um what this is particularly in the context of Deuteronomy particularly this section of Deuteronomy uh this is talking about foreign slaves that are escaping from foreign countries into Israel and the reason that they are to have notice that they're not to take them in to their homes and to care for them or anything like that they're just supposed to have a hands-off approach don't oppress them let them stay wherever they want and the reason is um that very often lots of examples I cite several of them in the book of treaties parody treaties in between nations and when you have parody treaties in between nations they often have extradition Clauses so if slaves run away they're to be brought back it's how it works well if you have a vassal treaty if you have that sort of clause generally it shows that the vassalage is going you know the the power is one way right so the vassal has to return these slaves right and I think this is the idea and this is what Scholars think is going on here uh is that Israel is not supposed to make these parity treaties with the Nations around them we saw it earlier in Deuteronomy 20 right there to create vassal treaties and so they're not supposed to then set up these extradition Clauses where they're going to return slaves as if they have some equality with the Nations around them they're just supposed to take this hands-off approach and let them be now the problem that we face I think when it comes to this verse and we being like legal Scholars uh or people that work in legal text uh is that we don't always have one-to-one correspondence um in in the law collection so for example you know if we have we have nice eye for eye tooth for tooth stuff right but if we have one text that talks about you know what do you do if um uh somebody I don't know jumps off of a building and drop kicks you know somebody else and and they go unconscious for three days and you if you don't have that law in the other collections you just have it in this one well you can't do comparative analysis right it doesn't work so that was a really weird example sorry um but I can come up off the top of my head um but when we don't seem to have anything like this uh considering like a foreign slave escaping into um what would be somebody that's not supposed to have a parody treaty we don't seem to have that direct correspondence in the other uh law collections so in that sense it's Unique seemingly unique in the biblical text but this is not the big point this is not a situation where any slave can run away in the moment that they do everything's done right this is uh almost certainly foreign slaves escaping into Israel they're not to be returned to their foreign Masters I think that in all of these instances where we have a verse that seems to maybe suggest that the Bible doesn't endorse the kind of horrific slavery that we think of when we consider Antebellum slavery but also that was present in the ancient world my hunch is that if the Bible could be used to to Advocate against the institution of slavery it shouldn't be so easy to use it to do the exact opposite thing too I don't think that we should expect to find in a book whose author is the Divine moral author and wants people to understand that slavery is a bad thing I don't think we should find it so littered with verses that can so easily be compiled into a book designed to be read to slaves in the West Indies to teach them that that's what their natural loss is I don't think that we should find it littered with verses that tell us exactly how to treat the captors of War including the taking of virgin women quote for yourselves uh you know it's it's interesting offering an analysis and sort of looking at these verses and what they might mean in some of the different interpretations that are offered by apologists but I don't know I really struggle to see how this isn't one of the biggest problems for somebody who thinks that the Bible is the inspired word of God or indeed in the Old Testament perhaps the word of God itself um before we depart I wanted to give one more opportunity for you to present perhaps some advice to somebody who like me is is hearing this and of course you know I've been familiar with these verses but it's it's good to speak to someone who really knows what they're talking about I mean I've been greatly surprised by some of the things that I've learned from you today some people might be listening to this sort of in distress because of course they think that what we're hearing is horrible but we know that the Old Testament is littered with with terrible things that you know I mean Exodus in in the same place that we're talking about these verses about slavery Exodus also says that anybody who who disrespects their father should be put to death but nobody takes seriously the idea that this is sort of really what at least not what God would want for us today and so people might be listening and either thinking I'm really troubled by what I'm hearing and I don't know what to do or listening and thinking yeah but that's kind of just the Old Testament it doesn't really apply anymore what advice would you have to somebody who's coming across this for the first time and is deeply disturbed by what they're hearing but doesn't really know how to fit it into their uh Christian or Jewish worldview yeah I mean the first thing that I would say as always is don't take my word for it um there's a reason that I put these books out um and whether it's to the Old Testament adore slavery or either volume of the atheist handbooks of the Old Testament um that they are jam-packed with citations that's the whole point is to give scholarly consensus on these issues so uh you certainly don't have to get my book to verify what I'm saying but pick up really any uh good commentary on the book of Exodus or on the Book of Leviticus just you know go look at these things for yourself go read the secondary literature read the citations um sort of a sort of a Shameless plug that's come to mind here because the New Testament is not my area of specialization uh it is bard airman's uh if you're familiar with Bart and uh my wife is the host of his new misquoting Jesus podcast uh is that right yeah I've been I've been listening to that to that podcast uh quite a lot I mean for anybody who's made it this far into a sort of hour and a half podcast about uh the specificities of slavery in the Old Testament perhaps they deserve a slight sort of Early Access to launch that bottom and is is an upcoming guest on this podcast so perhaps I'll get an opportunity to talk to him about some of these issues I'm not quite sure what I'm going to talk to him about yet but but that's a that's a fantastic podcast I didn't realize it was uh it was your wife who who hosted it yeah that's my wife yep Megan Lewis um yeah he uh uh he's just obviously a brilliant scholar and she's a brilliant scholar she's an a seriologist as well like I am um and so that I think they have a really great Dynamic but you know his podcast as you know um deal with a lot of the New Testament context and so I think just just listening to those sorts of things and getting a a more broad uh understanding of of the New Testament then coming to these verses coming back to these verses that we've talked about in the New Testament say oh okay that makes more sense now in that context but I think ultimately what I would say and I've said this I go into a a channel called myth Vision podcast hosted by Derek Lambert I feel like I talk about this a lot but the one thing that I say whether we're talking about slavery uh in the Old Testament or genocide passages like first Samuel 15. flooding the world and killing all of the people including babies like you know if you hold to an interpretive model that is more Fundamentalist then yes you should be sitting and squirming in your chair um but I think what I would say is you don't have to take that interpretive model of a fundamentalist in order to be a Christian Megan is a Christian right my wife is a Christian she's Anglican um certainly does not hold to uh you know these types of fundamentalist tenants and there are good ways to think about God interacting should a God exist God interacting with people and texts like the Hebrew Bible being the result that don't require inerrancy that don't require infallibility in this type of inspiration that that evangelicals want to want to you know hold to now all of that being said I am obviously an atheist and the reason that I'm an atheist uh or one of them at least in this regard is that while I think it's possible that a God could exist and interact with humans in a way that would lead to this book being the product I don't think that's the likely scenario um and so I think however you're hearing this whether you're hearing it and saying oh my God I can't believe this stuff is in here I don't believe in this God anymore or I do believe in this God how do I reconcile these things it seems impossible um I think that either position is you know reasonable maybe not is the right word but certainly possible um there are certainly ways that you can adapt your interpretive model uh in order to make those things work I think what you're going to find if you do that is that you'll hate fewer people you know which isn't a bad thing certainly not uh Josh Bowen where can people find you online um so uh digital Hammurabi is our Channel h-a-m-m-u-r-a-b-i um I don't go on there too terribly much anymore this it's sort of become Megan's thing which is great because she does a much better job than I did I often spend my time on channels like myth fission or um The Atheist Network group uh but if you want any of my books uh you can go to Amazon and type in Joshua Bowen and they'll all pop up b-o-w-e-n this one this second edition uh of the uh this labor book should be out by this fall I'm just doing uh the the editing of it now um and it's gone from 200 Pages roughly in its first edition to it's going to be over 700. oh so there's a lot more in it now so I'm excited they can also if they want those books go to the links in the description where I will make sure uh that that these are available Josh Bowen thank you so much for your time and thanks for coming on the podcast that was absolutely my pleasure thank you for having me did you enjoy that conversation you must have done at least a little bit because you made it to the end well you can find more full episodes of the within reason podcast by clicking the link that just appeared on your screen or click just below it for clips from that podcast don't forget to subscribe and if you really like the content support us on patreon for Early Access as well as to really help this podcast to grow thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Alex O'Connor

Views: 231,073

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, atheism, within reason, podcast, within reason podcast, religion, debate, Alex J O'Connor

Id: MFE_qz47zjY

Length: 99min 37sec (5977 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2023