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@keithprosser
It's hard to tell all the social norms surrounding slavery and how 'bad' it was to be a slave. No dout there were good and bad msaters everywhere. I note this law in Hamurrabis code:176. And if a slave of the palace or a slave of the freeman take the daughter of a man (gentleman); and if, when he takes her, she enter into the house of the slave of the palace or the slave of the freeman with the dowry of her father's house; if from the time that they join hands, they build a house and acquire property; and if later on the slave of the palace or the slave of the freeman die, the daughter of the man shall receive her dowry, and they shall divide into two parts whatever her husband and she had acquired from the time they joined hands; the owner of the slave shall receive one-half and the daughter of the man shall receive one-half for her children.Cleaely male slaves were permitted to marry the daughters of free men. That implies that slaves were not dehumanised. Nor was slavery always permanent: "117. If a man be in debt and sell his wife, son or daughter, or bind them over to service, for three years they shall work in the house of their purchaser of master; in the fourth year they shall be given their freedom."I don't know if a slave was better of in Babylon or Israel.. it probably depended on the master becuase the rules (even if they ere always followed which is doubtful) aren't substantially different. In all probability most slaves in the AME were much better off than the planation slaves in the ultra-Christian ante-bellum Southern states of America.
But all you did was reiterate the similarities.
Again, yes, there were similarities. There's similarities even in recent history with wartime practices. The American soldiers taking Japanese wives during WWII. Of course that was promoted as a rescue of women against an oppressive male-centric society, but same principle. The women may not have been forced, but were lured into promises of a better life.
I think you're mixing up the idea that any given master could be a task master, with the actual laws prohibiting abuse. And that's not at all what I'm talking about. To put some light into this idea, who's better off, a woman living in the U.S. or Britain? Or a woman living in male-centric Iran?
We would more likely say one living in the U.S. or Britain. However, if a woman in Iran had a decent spouse, and was relatively high on the social ladder, her life could be immeasurably better than an American or British woman living in the freest parts of the world who is being stalked and terrorized by a jealous husband, former husband, boyfriend, co-worker, neighbor, etc.
In other words, yes, an Israelite owner of a servant could be potentially worse than any Egyptian slave master. But this is why these laws were in place. There was no guarantee that any one individual will have a natural humanitarian tendency.
Are you actually claiming there's no significant difference between the treatment of slaves between Israel and the rest of the NME?
I think it's obvious that the Hebrew's laws are not divine revelations but entirely typical of the norms of the age. How could it be anyhthing else becauase there are no gods!
Replace gods with creator. Can you make that very same statement?
