The Problem with Christians

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Don't feel like dealing with all quotes, there so I'll sum up briefly:

1) The tradition comes from the society at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and the stories are part of the apocrypha that were found along with it. There was a church legend of the heritage Ol' Elz's lineage, and the apocrypha seem to back up the source of that legend. If the only things you know about how your legends were formed is based on what came out on the other side of the editor's table, then your knowledge will only reflect what someone deliberately wanted you to think. Doesn't that frighten you a little?

2) Most African slaves were not kidnapped by us, but were part of the conquests of Colonial wars, as we backed one group against the other in an attempt to gain control of the resource-rich nations to plunder. They were then sold by their fellow Africans (of other nations/tribes) to the European/American shippers, who then brought them to the auction blocks throughout the Persian Gulf region and the Americas. And you are out of your mind if you think that it is reasonable to conclude "they shall be your possession" or "to be an inheritance to your children" means anything other than personal property... chattel slavery.

3) The slave trade in North America continued long after it was technically banned:

The United States Constitution, adopted in 1787, prevented Congress from completely banning the importation of slaves until 1808, although Congress regulated it in the Slave Trade Act of 1794, and in subsequent Acts in 1800 and 1803. Knowing the trade would end, in the eight years from 1800 until December 31, 1807, the states of Georgia and South Carolina reopened their trade and traders imported about 100,000 enslaved Africans into the country. Numerous states individually passed laws against importing slaves after the Revolution.

By January 1, 1808, when Congress banned further imports, only South Carolina was still importing slaves. Congress allowed continued trade only in slaves who were descendants of those currently in the United States. The domestic slave trade became more profitable than ever with the expansion of cultivation in the Deep South for cotton and sugar crops. In addition, US citizens could participate in the international slave trade and the outfitting of ships for that trade. Slavery in the United States became, more or less, self-sustaining by natural increase among the current slaves and their descendants.

Despite the ban, slave imports continued, if on a smaller scale, with smugglers continuing to bring in slaves past the U.S. Navy's African Slave Trade Patrol to South Carolina, and overland from Texas and Florida, both under Spanish control. Congress increased the punishment associated with importing slaves, classifying it in 1820 as an act of piracy, with smugglers subject to harsh penalties, including death if caught. After that, "it is unlikely that more than 10,000 [slaves] were successfully landed in the United States." But, some smuggling of slaves into the United States continued until just before the start of the Civil War.

(ETA: Citation - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in...ted_States )

And yet, as we all know, the sales of slaves not only continued but was regulated by Southern state laws up until the Civil War, after which Jim Crow laws spent a century doing everything the leaders could sneak past, to try to find new laws to use to maintain slavery-while-technically-prohibited.

It's also one of the reasons any person of color (and/or of reason) should be afraid when people start grumbling too much about the federal government and promoting "state's rights" arguments now popular in conservative circles.