Christian Explanation

[Samson]

Just wanted to let you guys read a post from a Christian who did everything they could to make up excuses for slavery within the Bible...Talk about trying to ribbon bow tie.....And yes, I've already replied, just haven't received anything back yet....

Sink your teeth into this one and tell me what you think:

Jesus himself considered himself a servant, and commanded US to serve, so the whole idea of God condoning slavery in the sense you're talking about is false.

Slavery was permitted in the Bible because of sin in the world. It existed before the Jews were formed as a nation and it existed after Israel was conquered. God allows many things to happen in the world such as storms, famine, murder, etc. Slavery, like divorce, is not preferred by God. Instead, it is allowed. Where many nations treated their slaves very badly, the Bible gave many rights and privileges to slaves. So, even though it isn't the best way to deal with people, because God has allowed man freedom, slavery then exists. God instructed the Israelites to treat them properly.... Read More

•The Bible acknowledged the slave's status as the property of the master (Ex. 21:23; Lev. 25:46).
•The Bible restricted the master's power over the slave. Ex. 21:20).
•The slave was a member of the master's household (Lev. 22:11).
•The slave was required to rest on the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10; Deut. 5:14).
•The slave was required to participate in religious observances (Gen. 17:13; Exodus 12:44; Lev. 22:11).
•The Bible prohibited extradition of slaves and granted them asylum (Deut. 23:16-17).
•The servitude of a Hebrew debt-slave was limited to six years (Ex. 21:2; Deut. 15:12).
•When a slave was freed, he was to receive gifts that enabled him to survive economically (Deut. 15:14).

And regarding the bible. The fact is that the Bible has not been rewritten. Take the New Testament, for example. The disciples of Jesus wrote the New Testament in Greek and though we do not have the original documents, we do have around 6,000 copies of the Greek manuscripts that were made very close to the time of the originals. These various manuscripts, or copies, agree with each other to almost 100 percent accuracy. Statistically, the New Testament is 99.5% textually pure. That means that there is only 1/2 of 1% of of all the copies that do not agree with each other perfectly. But, if you take that 1/2 of 1% and examine it, you find that the majority of the "problems" are nothing more than spelling errors and very minor word alterations. For example, instead of saying Jesus, a variation might be "Jesus Christ." So the actual amount of textual variation of any concern is extremely low. Therefore, we can say that we have a remarkably accurate compilation of the original documents.