No games here! Biblical writings reflect the cultural and social realities and limitations of their time, simply because they were written in that time. It was a time of war, and in all honesty, war shows no sign of ending as long as humanity is around to keep screwing things up. Wars can be fought for good as well as bad. It’s all history, and just how it is.
Hitler was raised Catholic, and completely denounced all of his Catholic and/or Christian views later on. This is the only constant. For in fact, his philosophical views flipped and flopped as he saw fit to change them, and depending on his speeches as well. He outwardly criticized both atheism and Christianity…because he was a liar and a hypocrite. (Big shock coming from a murderous dictator, I know.) He didn’t want to explicitly train people in atheism because he knew that the church was (and still is) used as a politically conservative influence on society, which he liked.
Knowing that Hitler had had a connection with the Catholic Church in his youth, the newly-crowned leader of the Vatican at the time (1939), Pope Pius XII, did initiate a celebration for Hitler’s 50th birthday, but only as an attempt to butter him up. To attempt to maintain normal diplomatic relations with him. This was well before anyone knew what was to come.
The Nazi Party promoted a nondenominational “positive Christianity”, a movement which ultimately made no sense, as the movement rejected most traditional Christian doctrines such as the divinity of Jesus, Jewish elements such as the Old Testament, and even dependence on "faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, upon which true Christianity relies. Another example of Hitler’s atheistic, flip-floppy, utterly nonsensical ideologies.
Why do people commit atrocities and believe that God approves or will forgive their actions? The same reason that any hypocrite would. They’ve got another thing coming, that’s for sure.
I won’t go into all of the ways that the Bible explicitly condemns sexual abuse of women, because there are far too many to list here, and this is already pretty long. So let’s discuss the children.
“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” Matthew 18:6-7
Now, while there is no direct mention of pedophilia in the Bible, the abuse of children is absolutely condemned in the Bible. Observe the numerous Biblical principles that apply to the sin of fornication. Fornication, translated, is the same general idea in both Hebrew and Greek. The Greek word is “porneia”, of course from which we get the English words porno and pornography. The word in Scripture refers to any illicit sexual activity, which of course includes pedophilia of all sorts. Physical, online, anything. Fornication is among the “lusts of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16-21) and among the evil things that come from the heart of a man apart from God (Mark 7:21-23). How far from God can you get, doing that to kids? Any attempt to justify that in His eyes, even in His name? Yeah, no. That’s not happening.
The word offend in the Greek means “to cause one to stumble, to put a stumbling block or impediment in the way, upon which another may trip and fall, to entice to sin, or to cause a person to begin to distrust and desert one whom he ought to trust and obey.”
Can’t the definitions of the word “offend” be applied to a wide range of abusive actions against children, especially the actions of a pedophile? You’re darn tooting. Matthew 18 sets the record straight against anyone who would dare to bring any type of harm to a child.
You say that the Bible justifies American slavery. That is incorrect, and unless you are also part of the African-American race, kindly refrain from telling me what I should say, or do, or know as a person belonging to that ethnic group.
Slavery in the ancient world was a part of everyday life. It was a sad reality. It was a given. It’s true that the Bible not only does not always seem to condemn slavery, but at times seems to endorse it. For example, in the New Testament, when Paul instructs slaves to “obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling” (Ephesians 6:5-6)? But here he continues:
“Don’t work only while being watched, as people-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing God’s will from your heart. Serve with a good attitude, as to the Lord and not to people, knowing that whatever good each one does, slave or free, he will receive this back from the Lord. And masters, treat your slaves the same way, without threatening them, because you know that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him.”
Do you know what he really means? The term “slave” in Ephesians 6:5 is better translated to “bondservant.” The Bible does not in any way fully support the practice of bondservants, who weren’t often paid too well. However, they were indeed paid, and therefore in a state more akin to a lifetime employment contract rather than “racial” slavery. Remember that Paul very clearly states that Christian “masters” are to treat such people with respect and as equals. Naturally, countless generations of slave owners and general racists chose to ignore this. They took these passages out of context to argue their case about slavery, as if it were a divinely sanctioned practice. They still do. It’s another huge part of what’s wrong in America.
Now, here’s where translation comes in. Interpretive work. Don’t forget that even translators of Biblical texts would twist things to bend to their personal bias. For example: “When you buy a male Hebrew slave [’ebed], he shall serve six years, but in the seventh he shall go out a free person, without debt” (Exodus 21:2 NRSV). Here, the KJV uses “servant” instead of “slave.” Of the hundreds of times the word ‘ebed appears in the Hebrew Bible, the KJV translates it as “slave” only once, in Jer. 2:14. In the New Testament, the KJV never translates the word doulos as “slave.” Only the plural, “slaves,” [sōmatōn] appears once in Rev 18:14.
Enslavement of African people and racism were spreading like wildfire, and it seems that translators rejected the idea of Paul or themselves as “slaves [doulos] of Christ” (Galatians 1:10; Col 4:12). They preferred, instead, the term “servant of Christ.” NRSV translators do this as well.
Because modern slave regimes saw Africans as chattel with no relationship to the enslaved of the Biblical text, even practices such as those described in Exodus 21:2, which explicitly limited slavery, would have been completely unthinkable with respect to the enslaved persons around them. So, such botched translations supported American slave regimes by ensuring that people of African descent would not find themselves in the text, not even as the enslaved of the Bible.
Thankfully during the same time period, African-Americans educated themselves. Knowing that this was all wrong, interpreters like Nat Turner and Sojourner Truth (among countless others) took to deep analysis of the Bible, particularly the book of Exodus, and were ultimately able to arrive at a different truth: because they were enslaved, God would rescue them. How did they come to that conclusion? By a belief in God’s ultimate advocacy of liberation. So, where the church failed to accept God’s teachings due to their prejudices, African-Americans discovered the truth. Because their faith resided in the God who explicitly affirmed their humanity.
What, who, and how were “Hebrew slaves”? Well, Slavery, or “the ownership of one person by another”, was an institution everywhere in the ancient times, including the Near East and Israel, and encompassed both fixed-term indenture of citizens and permanent slave status for outsiders.
An Israelite man might sell himself or his child as a slave (“eved”) to pay off debt (Leviticus 25:39), or a court might sell him for theft (Exodus 22:2). The Pentateuch has three conflicting (as laws are) sets of laws providing for the release of such “indentured” Hebrew slaves:
1. That indenture lasts six years (Exodus 21:2, Deuteronomy 15:12), or until the Jubilee (fiftieth) year (Leviticus 25:40).
2. The Hebrew slave leaves with nothing (Exodus 21:2), receives a financial grant upon being freed (Deuteronomy 15:13-14), or retakes his ancestral property (Leviticus 25:41).
3. Women are purchased permanently as wives (Exodus 21:7-11), or the same rules as for males apply to female indentured servants (Deuteronomy 15:12).
Periodic manumission (“anduraru”) of debt slaves was practiced in the ancient Near East. Hammurabi’s Code 117 assumes that a man’s family, sold to cover debt, would be released after a three-year indenture. The Sumerian king, Lipit-Ishtar, describes how he restored enslaved Sumerian citizens to their rightful place in free society (“amargi”, or “return to mother”).
Leviticus 25 requires Israelites to be freed from debt or extended bondage and to have their ancestral property returned to them in a process called “deror”. In ancient Near Eastern tradition, a king would grant this freedom sporadically. In Leviticus, however, manumission automatically takes effect upon the blowing of the ram’s horn on Yom Kippur of the Jubilee year since, as Leviticus 25:9-10 says, Yahweh, the King of kings, built manumission into the social order of Israel.
Now, how were Israelite slaves treated compared to African-Americans? Deuteronomy and Exodus allow the Hebrew slave to choose permanent indenture by submitting to a ceremony in which the slave’s ear is pierced at the doorway (Exodus 20:5-6; Deuteronomy 15:16-17). This marking of a slave may be related to the ancient Near Eastern practice of using hairstyles unique to slaves that barbers were forbidden to adjust.
Non-Israelite slaves were acquired either by purchase (Exodus 12:44) or captured during war (Deuteronomy 20:14) and remain so permanently (Leviticus 25:44-46). Foreign male slaves are allowed to participate in religious activities and rest on the Sabbath, which appeals to the sacred history of the Holy Land and also implies a level of integration. A master who knocks out a slave’s eye or tooth must let him go free (Exodus 21:26-27). Murdered slaves could be “avenged” (Exodus 21:20-21). Likewise, a woman taken captive during battle is given time to mourn her family before becoming part of the household, and her master/husband is prohibited from selling her (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). This protects women from becoming sexual chattel while taking wartime rape and forced marriage for granted.
These examples of Biblical laws show the harsh reality of slavery, and why they were designed for the slaves’ protection.
So is the Bible altogether comfortable with slavery? No.
The prophet Amos criticizes debt bondage, referring to it as “selling the poor for shoes” (Amos 2:6). Deuteronomy 23:16 forbids the return of a runaway slave to his master. 2 Kings 4:1-7 tells of a widow whose children that God and the prophet Elisha save from being taken away by miraculously producing olive oil, that she in turn uses to pay off the creditor’s debt.
Therefore, although the Bible takes slavery as a given, it’s like a revolutionary abolitionist manual for the time it was written. It’s full of recorded behavior, not just lessons. It both records and humanize the slavery institution (as it was back then) and yet continually expresses how the world would be a better place without it.
You say you can’t be bothered to read or check facts. If I were you, I would.
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