5 OBJECTIONS to Old Testament SLAVERY ANSWERED

When we address the reality of debt- and chattel-slavery in the Hebrew Bible, we find that there are a number of relatively common objections that arise in response. This video will seek to address these objections, and they are listed with time stamps in the description below. Enjoy!

Question #1 (03:18): "Don't verses like Leviticus 19:33-34 and Exodus 12:48 demonstrate that foreigners were given the same rights as Israelites and were to be treated with love and kindness? How could God condone slavery and also give these commands? We must be misunderstanding passages like Leviticus 25:44-46."

Question #2 (12:22): "Doesn't the word "olam" just mean an indistinct period of time, and not "forever?" I mean, terms like "forever" and "eternal" can only be attributed to God. Thus, "olam" in Leviticus 25:46 must mean simply "slaves for an indefinite period of time," and could really just mean "slaves for a six-year period of time."

Question #3 (18:06): "Doesn't Leviticus 25:47 and the situation described there show that all things were equal for Israelites and foreigners?"

Question #4 (19:22): "I looked up the verb 'you will take' in Deuteronomy 21:11 in the Greek, and my Bible program says that it is in the "subjunctive mood." When I look into the subjunctive, it tells me that verbs that are in the subjunctive mood are "contingent," and that the subjunctive mood expresses contingency. Doesn't this mean that the 'taking' of a captive virgin as a wife was 'contingent' on her agreeing to be taken, since the verb is contingent?"

Question #5 (23:04): "Doesn't Leviticus 25:41, where the children and the debt slave are released in the Year of Jubilee, contradict Exodus 21:4, where the children are not released upon the slave's release?"

Scholarly Quotations (25:15): Here we provide numerous scholarly quotations from peer-reviewed sources concerning various aspects of Old Testament slavery.

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Sources cited in video:

Gregory Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Sheffield, 2009).

Michael Fox, Proverbs 10-31 (Yale University Press, 2009).

Tikva Frymer-Kensky, "Anatolia and the Levant: Israel" in Raymond Westbrook (ed.), A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (2 vols. Brill, 2003) 975-1046.

Erhard Gerstenberger, Leviticus (Westminster, 1996).

R. K. Harrison, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary (Intervarsity, 1980).

Harry Hoffner, "Slavery and Slave Laws in Ancient Hatti and Israel" in Daniel Block (ed.), Israel: Ancient Kingdom or Late Invention? (B&H Academic, 2008) 130-155.

Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law: A Study of the Changing Legal Status of Strangers in Ancient Israel (Sheffield, 2009).

Bernard Jackson, Wisdom-Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1-22:16 (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Jan Joosten, People and Land in the Holiness Code: An Exegetical Study of the Ideational Framework of the Law in Leviticus 17-26 (Brill, 1996).

Bernard Levinson, "The Birth of the Lemma: The Restrictive Interpretation of the Covenant Code's Manumission Law by the Holiness Code (Lev 25:44-46)" (JBL 124, 2005) 617-639.

Carol Myers, Exodus (Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Richard Nelson, Deuteronomy (Westminster, 2004).

J. Edward Owens, Leviticus (Liturgical Press, 2011).

Anthony Phillips, "The Laws of Slavery: Exodus 21.2-11" (JSOT 30, 1984) 51-66.

Jeffrey Tigay, The JPS Torah Commentary: Deuteronomy (Jewish Publication Society, 2003).

Raymond Westbrook and Bruce Wells, Everyday Law in Biblical Israel: An Introduction (Westminster, 2009).

[beccahawkins]

This is awesome. I like how this looks at first like an “evangelical apologetics” video but is actually defending good and honest scholarship instead.

[HConstantine]

Slavery by its very nature demands hypocrisy (amongst other things). Aristotle said "Slaves are Slaves by nature." Yet he was perfectly aware that Diogenes had been a slave, that there were Athenian citizens who had become slaves (e.g., captured by pirates and sold in Carthage).

[salamut]

Very informative, well backed and professionally presented. I choose to believe you did this whilst wearing no pants.

[timsmith]

Your content and presentation is getting better and more easily understood. Dr.Josh and Megan should be congratulated for their information into Near Eastern religions and beliefs.

[intellectualiconoclasm]

This is your sexiest editing job yet. GREAT JOB on the visual presentation. It so perfectly fits with the verbal presentation. You folks get better all the time and it's so fun to be here already, the future of your content will be quite grand.

[TheRachaelLefler]

But you're talking about a book that's supposed to be inspired word of God, who is defined as eternal, perfect, and unchanging throughout all of the human perception of the scale of time. So why would something be moral according to such a God centuries ago and not moral today? Don't you know people get the idea that it's still okay or even necessary to do terrible things because the Bible says it is (for example, an unapologetic wife beater I saw on Maury once used the Bible's passages about women to justify treating his wife as property)? People aren't looking at it and saying "this was a reflection of it's time" the way we might talk about Shakespeare or Kipling. This is presented as an infallible document on which all human laws and morality must be based.

[iamvmanonkongregate]

Fantastic! I always enjoy a new upload. I particularly enjoyed the quotes from other people towards the end of the video, allowing us, the audience, to hear other voices on the matter. Thank you for your hard work!

[Importantfeelings]

Dr. Josh, the clearest exposition yet, including the difficulties, out of the many times you have covered this topic. Thanks.

[NM_rocker]

Another great video. I love that I can get unbiased educational info here. Thank you

[andresvillarreal]

I loved your debunking of the false dichotomy whereby everything is either loving and good or hateful and bad. You can be a loving, caring slave owner if there is no doubt in your mind, not even in the darkest depths, that slave owning is correct and moral, and that you are doing the best that you can for your family, community and slaves. It is immoral, but not necessarily hateful, to have well treated slaves even though you understand that they should really be free. There are lots of alternatives apart from love and hate.

The message about the Bible that we should defend is that no book, whoever wrote it and whatever it says, can be true and moral through the ages. That is, unless the book miraculously changes with the times, and gives the same message to each reader, self-adapting the words and the meanings and the metaphors so every reader will get the same message.

[ChristianLight]

15 "You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. 16 He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him. (Deuteronomy 23:15-16, ESV)

[jrojala]

I really enjoyed this presentation, thank you

[vivahernando]

Great video Dr. Josh .... the issue is often in these Christian vs atheist debates Christians will use moral/cultural relativism against the skeptic all the while ignoring the relativism in the case of biblical slavery and claim a nebulous higher unchanging form of morality.

[laurajarrell]

Digital Hammurabi, not only are these informative, you allow for nuance. And I especially love your intro! It must be so hard, knowing how hard our own language is, to know how the writers meant things. To me, it is just further proof that these books were just basics for establishing governance of an increasing population. And done so, with the norms of their times. This, to me, shows that no god had anything to do with these books. Certainly not any form of god that people think of today. 💓✌👍👍

[scienceexplains]

Another way to explain the subjunctive in other languages is to say that the “If” is conjugated in the verb. So the English translation “If you do X” is sufficient, because If is all we need in English to convey the meaning.

[thomasfplm]

Another example of the use of a term meaning forever nowadays for something that wouldn't actually be forever is in Portuguese, the expression used for life sentence in prison is "prisão perpétua", even if it is obvious that no one keep the corpse in the prison after the person died.

[aaronchizmar]

In response to question 4, Hebrew does not even have a separate mood for the subjunctive. Rather the imperfect is used to indicate modality.

[gingercore]

Im loving your work! I am trying to make an RPG videogame based on history and mythology of the world... And i need to take onto consideration a few things... What i am trying to find about right now is if there was something similar to a prison at the time, and what types of punishments were common in history as in mythology too... The idea is to make the game just for adults, and try to show it in as close to the brutality of their reality and myths as possible, is there any sources you could tell me about so i can do my research? Myths are pretty easy to come by, but i havent find anything about how criminals were treated in general, just things that "should pay x money" or "should be killed" but not much about how they got to confirm or dwny if the guy is guilty and things like that

[dma]

Interesting as always. Thanks for always addressing the question in depth.

[vikingmusings]

To me judging the past by our morals is not about condemning+ them its about learning from the past and what we are going to advocate for future laws. For example seeing slavery as evil and what has been done to slaves. Teaches us the evils of slavery without having to enslaved anyone to figure this out. That we see the evils of slavery we then can push for liberty and liberation of those who are enslaved.