42 replies to this topic

[Orcseeker]

scowl, on 07 December 2012 - 05:48 PM, said:

The Jews in Egypt didn't "consent" as a race to be slaves for hundreds of years any more than Africans as a race consented to be slaves in America. Jacob surely didn't "consent" to be kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers. Your belief that Biblical slavery was just "servitude" is incorrect.

Since when was any of this fact?

[scowl]

Orcseeker, on 08 December 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

Since when was any of this fact?

Feel free to disprove it. Of course I meant Joseph, not his father Jacob (I get the "J" names mixed up).

There are parts in Exodus where the Israelites whined that slavery in Egypt was better than living out in the desert, completely ignoring that a supernatural being facilitated their escape and supports their survival but I don't think any of them ran back to Egypt asking for enslavement.

[Jinxdom]

Orcseeker, on 08 December 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

The Jews in Egypt didn't "consent" as a race to be slaves for hundreds of years any more than Africans as a race consented to be slaves in America. Jacob surely didn't "consent" to be kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers. Your belief that Biblical slavery was just "servitude" is incorrect.

Everybody is a slave, but to what you are a slave to and what choice you have in to it is what matters. That's the most important moral of the bible(Do you be a slave to man, money, or something more?).  This is the major moral plot line of the bible. Each story goes through Slavery with consent and slavery with out consent. Slavery with consent is Servitude, The bible has stories for it. The bible also has stories for just slavery with no consent(which happens to be the only thing you are pointing out not the other half). They didn't have a word for servitude so like in true fable form they tried to show the difference. It's the whole God wants people to follow him by his own free-will thing. A willing slave vs an unwilling slave. Is what they are trying to show through out the bible but a willing slave is a servant, Hence My use of the word servitude. Because choice is what makes the difference between slavery and servitude.

So yeah in those stories it isn't servitude but slavery(No consent = slavery and no consent). I'm not going to go through and take each use of the word slave and make sure the context is correct just for you on this forum. So yeah saying those were servitude would be wrong but I didn't or wouldn't because there was no consent there so it wouldn't be servitude but slavery.

I'm also not going to go and tell you which usage of the word slave is wrong throughout the bible. No consent = Slave, Consent = Servant. If it doesn't fix the context like those examples then it isn't it Servitude, it's slavery. Square peg doesn't fit in the circle hole. Word doesn't fit the meaning. It's common sense.

[Orcseeker]

scowl, on 09 December 2012 - 02:10 AM, said:

Feel free to disprove it. Of course I meant Joseph, not his father Jacob (I get the "J" names mixed up).

There are parts in Exodus where the Israelites whined that slavery in Egypt was better than living out in the desert, completely ignoring that a supernatural being facilitated their escape and supports their survival but I don't think any of them ran back to Egypt asking for enslavement.

No Bible should be taken as a history book. The integrity just isn't there. Let alone Egyptian records saying anywhere a large amount of Israelites being used as slaves.

As for all religious, pyramid constructs in Egypt, they were all built by Egyptians as it was considered "unholy" so to speak if it were built by anyone else. As for actual slaves, there were probably a few as all civilisations possessed them at the time but no large amount of Israelites as mentioned in the Exodus.

Please don't put a book (written some time after mind you) above an extensively documented civilisation of the time. Where information was actually documented during the time things actually happened instead of some time afterwards where whoever was even around is already dead and gone.

@Jinxdom
Orcseeker said that? :'(

Edited by Orcseeker, 09 December 2012 - 01:10 PM.

[Jinxdom]

Lol didn't notice what you meant until I re-read it was cause I nicked it from your post to quote from.Quote from yours, then edited it  from there forgot to change/erase your name to the proper one. Since I was lazy and didn't want to go back to the last page to nick the quote So whoopsie my bad.

Edited by Jinxdom, 10 December 2012 - 10:14 AM.

[Orcseeker]

Jinxdom, on 10 December 2012 - 10:08 AM, said:

Lol didn't notice what you meant until I re-read it was cause I nicked it from your post to quote from.Quote from yours, then edited it  from there forgot to change/erase your name to the proper one. Since I was lazy and didn't want to go back to the last page to nick the quote So whoopsie my bad.

Haha no problems mate. Interesting stuff on the servants and slaves you were talking about btw. You believe the Bible is simply a compilation of stories with morals and such attached to conform somewhat to the ten commandments?

[scowl]

Orcseeker, on 09 December 2012 - 01:09 PM, said:

No Bible should be taken as a history book. The integrity just isn't there. Let alone Egyptian records saying anywhere a large amount of Israelites being used as slaves.

Oh, I'm fully aware that the Bible is not a history book! We were discussing the text of the Bible as stories which did reflect the society that wrote them. The Old Testament has a lot of behavior and practices which we all would find uncivilized and it's hard to ignore them.

The list of events in the Bible that contradict what we know from history is long. We have found no evidence or record of an exodus and no trace of hundreds of thousands of people having lived in the Sinai for decades.

Even more disturbing to Bible literalists, there was no Kingdom of Israel, no evidence of Joshua's amazing conquests (Jericho was abandoned at the time), and absolutely no evidence of an Egypt/Israel superpower under Solomon which would have been of enormous historical significance.

All evidence and historical records suggest that during Biblical times Canaan was an area of city-states (the mythical Kingdom of Israel could have been based on Jerusalem in the south and Samara in the north) and farms with a wide range of cultures living in their own villages. Jewish villages have been identified because they have found no pig bones. There may have been raids and small feuds among the Jews and other cultures which were embellished into Joshua's victories (the sizes of these armies stated in the Bible are ridiculous).

There are other hints in the Bible. Travelers through the Kingdom of Israel regularly come across villages of "foreigners". Sounds like the borders of this mighty kingdom had been rather porous! Most likely they're describing exactly how Canaan was at the time, a mix of ethnic villages. Also 1 Samuel 13:19 says that the Philistines prevented Israel from smelting iron. If Israel really was a powerful independent nation, why were the Philistines bossing them around?

People don't like to hear that the Bible is a fabricated history to give Jews and Christians a sense of historical importance, but all archaeological evidence says that's what it is.

[Ryu]

Jinxdom, on 06 December 2012 - 05:05 AM, said:

Don't worship other gods is more like don't follow fake gods.

Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron? One fake god telling people not to follow fake gods?

Anyways...once you remove the "Don't follow fake gods" and all the religious stuff, the rest of the commandments are really just common sense stuff. You don't need to be beaten with a fairy tale book in order to learn that stealing is wrong, telling lies is wrong, hurting others is bad and so forth. In fact we heard this from our parents and from lessons in preschool. No threats from imaginary sky monsters were needed.

[Orcseeker]

scowl, on 10 December 2012 - 08:31 PM, said:

Oh, I'm fully aware that the Bible is not a history book! We were discussing the text of the Bible as stories which did reflect the society that wrote them. The Old Testament has a lot of behavior and practices which we all would find uncivilized and it's hard to ignore them.

The list of events in the Bible that contradict what we know from history is long. We have found no evidence or record of an exodus and no trace of hundreds of thousands of people having lived in the Sinai for decades.

Even more disturbing to Bible literalists, there was no Kingdom of Israel, no evidence of Joshua's amazing conquests (Jericho was abandoned at the time), and absolutely no evidence of an Egypt/Israel superpower under Solomon which would have been of enormous historical significance.

All evidence and historical records suggest that during Biblical times Canaan was an area of city-states (the mythical Kingdom of Israel could have been based on Jerusalem in the south and Samara in the north) and farms with a wide range of cultures living in their own villages. Jewish villages have been identified because they have found no pig bones. There may have been raids and small feuds among the Jews and other cultures which were embellished into Joshua's victories (the sizes of these armies stated in the Bible are ridiculous).

There are other hints in the Bible. Travelers through the Kingdom of Israel regularly come across villages of "foreigners". Sounds like the borders of this mighty kingdom had been rather porous! Most likely they're describing exactly how Canaan was at the time, a mix of ethnic villages. Also 1 Samuel 13:19 says that the Philistines prevented Israel from smelting iron. If Israel really was a powerful independent nation, why were the Philistines bossing them around?

People don't like to hear that the Bible is a fabricated history to give Jews and Christians a sense of historical importance, but all archaeological evidence says that's what it is.

Sorry I must have misunderstood you initially b

scowl, on 10 December 2012 - 08:31 PM, said:

Oh, I'm fully aware that the Bible is not a history book! We were discussing the text of the Bible as stories which did reflect the society that wrote them. The Old Testament has a lot of behavior and practices which we all would find uncivilized and it's hard to ignore them.

The list of events in the Bible that contradict what we know from history is long. We have found no evidence or record of an exodus and no trace of hundreds of thousands of people having lived in the Sinai for decades.

Even more disturbing to Bible literalists, there was no Kingdom of Israel, no evidence of Joshua's amazing conquests (Jericho was abandoned at the time), and absolutely no evidence of an Egypt/Israel superpower under Solomon which would have been of enormous historical significance.

All evidence and historical records suggest that during Biblical times Canaan was an area of city-states (the mythical Kingdom of Israel could have been based on Jerusalem in the south and Samara in the north) and farms with a wide range of cultures living in their own villages. Jewish villages have been identified because they have found no pig bones. There may have been raids and small feuds among the Jews and other cultures which were embellished into Joshua's victories (the sizes of these armies stated in the Bible are ridiculous).

There are other hints in the Bible. Travelers through the Kingdom of Israel regularly come across villages of "foreigners". Sounds like the borders of this mighty kingdom had been rather porous! Most likely they're describing exactly how Canaan was at the time, a mix of ethnic villages. Also 1 Samuel 13:19 says that the Philistines prevented Israel from smelting iron. If Israel really was a powerful independent nation, why were the Philistines bossing them around?

People don't like to hear that the Bible is a fabricated history to give Jews and Christians a sense of historical importance, but all archaeological evidence says that's what it is.

Sorry I must have misunderstood you initially but I completely agree with what you have outlined in this post.

[Jinxdom]

Quote

Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron? One fake god telling people not to follow fake gods?

Only if you believe it was written by a personified god, which I don't. It was a book written by man.
Who most likely hated organized religion for the same reasons a lot of people do all the trouble that came with it. Which is why it came out in fable form. Which had a powerful message and got turned in to the exact thing it was warning it's readers about.

Oh look up the mushrooms in the area like Amanita muscaria, that could easily explain most of the far fetched stories.

[KrowMax]

All Of the Ten Commandments are acceptable for me...I don't know about you guys...

[scowl]

KrowMax, on 12 December 2012 - 10:25 AM, said:

All Of the Ten Commandments are acceptable for me...I don't know about you guys...

The government of the Philippines is a Catholic theocracy. Adultery isn't just a Commandment where you live -- it's against the law. People are arrested and go to jail for it.

[Mr Walker]

scowl, on 12 December 2012 - 05:49 PM, said:

The government of the Philippines is a Catholic theocracy. Adultery isn't just a Commandment where you live -- it's against the law. People are arrested and go to jail for it.

That was the case in many civil governments like Australia for centuries even until the last century. I am not so sure it is a bad law.  In any other legal partnership it would constitute a breach of contractual arrangements and be subject to penalties.
If marriage, even civil marriage, is a legal contractual arangement, then penalties and legal requirements can rightly be applied to it. This occurs with property settlements, division of assets and income, and child support etc., in a marriage and divorce. Why not with sexual breaking of the contract?