What IS good, and how do we determine it?

[abaris]

Because the OT is not all torture stories. There are many good life lessons in the OT. It just isn't complete.

Jesus has never condoned slavery. You must be taking some things horribly out of context. Everything about the entirety of His teachings points to being against  treating people badly and that would include enslaving them.

Because you understandably fail to see the context of the OT. It was written by and for a half nomadic people, which really went on brutal raids, owned slaves and did women treat like cattle to be sold off to the highest bidder. It's kind of a set of law for an archaic paternalistic society. These weren't very civilized people, even more so, if compared to their contemporary neighbours.

As for slavery, Jesus didn't call it good, but he didn't condemn the practice either. Paul on the other hand outright asks slaves to obey even brutal masters. Here's an apologetic article trying to do the mental acrobatics, making these issues look good. I don't know the author, but it's obvious that he either doesn't know his history or willfully ignored the parts not fitting his narrative when it comes to Rome and slavery at the time in question. Without turning this into a history lesson, there was a big difference between house slaves and slaves working the fields. And house slaves being treated rather well is due to the fact that they were mostly highly trained professionals and therefore an expensive commodity.

But here's the article, that at least doesn't deny there is a slavery issue in the bible.

http://www.gty.org/resources/bible-qna/B...nd-slavery