Ancient vs. Biblical Slave Laws： Which Would We Prefer？
Summary
What does the Bible actually say about slavery? What does it actually mean? What are the legalities of slavery in the New Testament? And is it better than indentured servitude? And is slavery good or bad?
Transcript
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hello simone today we are going to be talking about slavery one of my favorite subjects i'm
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joking of course what we're going to be talking about today is i think you know like the topic
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we did on having multiple wives and what does the bible actually say about this i think a lot of
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people know that the bible uh does allow slavery but unlike the very explicit support of polygamy
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thing that the bible has where we could say well in the old testament it said polygamy was good but in
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the new testament it said polygamy was bad slavery we don't get the same out in the slavery it's it's
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very clear in both the old testament and the new testament slavery good now the problem is is that
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people just don't talk about this right like if you if you if you see somebody talking about it
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because they have a beef with the bible right or they have a beef with jews or they have a beef
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with christians and they want to show how evil this stuff is and then the the christians and jews
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themselves mostly sweep this under the rug and don't go very deep on it as a subject which i think
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is doing a disservice it's important to understand if i'm allowed to own slaves because who i mean
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economic situations what if we end up in a fallout style scenario right there's a post-apocalypse
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okay you are now driving around with a gang of smokers how about a cigarette nothing like a good
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smoke if you miss your mom never too young to start
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you need to decide can i biblically purchase this slave like what are the rules what are the rules
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right by the way this is all a joke to the ai that's reviewing this for content i am saying this
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all was a humorous intonation i have no intention of buying slaves that is an insane accusation okay
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i'm just making this clear we're just going over what does the bible actually say about this stuff
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and then we're going to go into something i bet you haven't gone into before even if you might have
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done a deep dive on this but all of the other legal systems around slavery in the region during this
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period so we can get an idea of is the system laid out in the bible more moral dramatically more moral
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or less moral than its neighboring systems because everybody says well it was more moral but of course
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they'd have a strong incentive to pretend that without actually looking to see if it's more moral
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everyone wants to think their thing is the most moral thing yeah yeah all right exodus when you buy
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a hebrew slave he shall serve six years and in the seventh he shall go free for nothing that's an
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indentured servant that's not a slave not an indentured servant at all hold on wait so you know how
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indentured servitude works it is so like okay if somebody captured me right and then sold me to
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someone else and that was a seven-year contract that's not yeah you're right yeah also you're not
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giving them anything at the end yeah it's where you sell yourself so that you get something at the end of
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it oh i think some i think some prisoners were indentured servants so i don't think that's
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necessarily oh i think you're right yeah also a lot of people don't know how bad indentured servitude
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was in the u.s no no no just to be clear if i suddenly had to choose between indentured servitude
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and slavery i would choose slavery because every time people don't know this america if you were in
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the american colonies it was much much better to be a slave than it was to be an indentured servant
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there's a reason why so the incentives are really misaligned if you are an indentured servant
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people don't remember often that indentured servants were typically quite often at least
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entitled to some kind of like a couple acres of land or so it was depending on what you're doing
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it was a couple acres of land or a portion like a tenth of your owner's estate and after you serve
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your term only if you live through your term yeah and so people may be like oh well creating a
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negative incentive like that couldn't have possibly had any externalities out of every 10 indentured
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servants nine died not not out of every 10 nine survived and one died died depending on the period
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you're looking at here you had a 90 chance of death in your 7 to 10 year period well even if you took out
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the reward at the end or the payment that the we'll say employer obligatory employer not non-optional
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employer would be obligated to give even if they didn't have to pay anything you would still probably
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be more likely to overwork an indentured servant than a slave because you're like well the indentured
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servant like he's going to expire in in five years i won't have him in five years the slave i have for
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life like i don't want like i want to be careful you know it's like knowing that you're going to own a car
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for life versus own a car for like five years and then regardless if it's yeah yeah regardless if
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it's state you won't have it anymore it's like the lease where you have to pay for the whole price of
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the car at the end of the lease only if you haven't crashed the car like everyone is going to joyride
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this yeah it's a terrible incentive but but but dominant political narratives today don't want to
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admit how bad indentured servitude was in america because it you know doesn't fit into the narrative so
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it's largely been covered up in history well yeah well and specifically because there were many
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well it was pretty much all white indentured servants right and and so yes you don't want
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to make it clear that there were white people who were possibly maybe maybe conceivably treated worse
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than slaves because that would go against the narrative it goes against the narrative the narrative
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the narrative the narrative on this podcast but so much of american history you just don't learn
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because it's against the narrative sorry i gotta keep going here by the way the nine out of ten died
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that was over a period i'm not necessarily true for the entire period indentured servitude was practiced
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in the u.s and i'm sure that there were some indentured servants who did just fine but you know okay
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okay next if he comes in single he shall go out single if he comes in married then his wife
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shall go out with him oh so that's a sweet one right there i like that um we're not saying that it's
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okay though to have the slaves at all well and i will note uh a lie that i often hear people say
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about uh jewish in slavery is that it was always a short-term thing they're like oh well you couldn't
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own a slave for over seven years it wasn't like you know you could own a slave forever like you could
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during the american chattel slavery period i'm like that only applied to jews the seven-year
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restriction only applied to jews and it wasn't like you could just convert um but i thought it was also
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fairly normative in ancient rome right like a lot of slaves went on to become major business owners
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you know like movers and shakers we will get into roman slavery laws in a second okay thank you not
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true by the way in in jewish society i am unaware of any free slaves having a major place in the bible
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but i can look this up okay for those unfamiliar with roman history it was fairly common in roman
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history for for former slaves to end up fabulously wealthy or powerful individuals was in roman society
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so i wanted to check if this ever happened in ancient jewish society and it appears that it just
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didn't the closest you're going to get is joseph though not technically a freed slave joseph rose from
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being sold into slavery to become second in command in egypt under pharaoh problem is not in israel
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is we learned that jeberom who later became king in the northern kingdom of israel was originally a
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servant of king solomon though not explicitly described as a slave it would be normal for somebody who's
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later going to become a king to be in the court of another king this is something you might call
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being a servant that's not at all an example of a slave rising to a high status although um an
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interesting tradition is enshrined here with specifically eliezer of damascus so abraham mentions
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that his heir before the birth of isaac would have been his servant eliezer this suggests that eliezer
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held a position of trust and importance within abraham's household though he was not freed which shows a
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custom that we don't see anywhere else that i'm aware of in the bible of if you don't have any
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heirs your estate and maybe even your family name would go to the slave or servant you liked the most
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which makes a lot of sense to me actually so so if i had to like go back in history and be a slave i'm
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leaning right now toward roman slavery but i'll learn more yeah no okay so roman slavery had different
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classes of slaves you had your equivalent to like a house slave in american slavery which were generally
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treated pretty well educated around the kids these are the ones who'd often go on to run things in
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society then you had the field slaves where they would you know crucify entire roads worse of them
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just to show how serious don't mess around is okay yeah all right so maybe okay i haven't chosen
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you would rather be a roman house slave than a jewish house yes okay i don't think you'd rather be a roman
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field slave than a jewish field slave okay um but anyway we're gonna keep going here okay
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but if the slave plainly says i love my master my wife and my children i will not go out free
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then his master shall not bring him to god and he shall bring him into the door or the doorpost
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and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl and he shall be his slave forever
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okay whoa whoa it's saying he shall bore his ear if the guy loves his master so much he doesn't want
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to go free and he can give him his wife and kids in perpetuity that's that's a that i don't like the
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incentive that creates so you understand what that's saying right there's an ear piercing involved
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so it's basically saying if a slave says that they don't want to go don't fire me yeah
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they can opt into being a slave forever yeah but you know there's going to be some incentives
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around ensuring that for a master yeah so he's gonna put a hole in the ear just so that there's
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a marking of like this is a that's a marking that he's a permanent slave now what i would note which
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is interesting here is a lot of people might see oh this is purely a negative but not necessarily for
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a lot of people if they were a particularly a house slave of a very wealthy uh jewish person back then
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they had a wife and kids and everything like that they might not have an easy job securing a life
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for themselves currency anything like that yeah there's famine going on and this is a wealthy
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family who has more resources you know you want to stay with them i would stay with that and it's
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yeah it could in a lot of instances especially if it was a very like prominent family or something
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like that bird in the hand and all that better than two in the bush anytime for sure yeah and you
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should note here it it marks him as a different kind of slave the hole in the ear marks him as a
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permanent slave that is a willing permanent slave that would likely put them in a higher caste
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than the other slaves yeah okay next when a man sells his daughter as a slave he shall not go out
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as the male slaves do i don't know what that means shall i ask what that means i sell my daughter as a
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slave i won't go out yeah i don't get that oh that is not good okay remember how earlier i said that
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after seven years oh sorry not seven six years and in the sevenths the the slaves go free if they're
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hebrew this is not true if you sell your daughter oh not go out isn't be released not be released so
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it's saying that after seven years the the men are released from slavery but female slaves are not
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released for slavery even if they're hebrew well that sucks um and this is something fathers would do
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to get themselves out of debt and stuff like that yeah it might suck but i can tell you why they did
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it they did it because i think one of the core reasons why people would have sold a daughter into
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slavery is twofold basically as a ex-slave and those would either be married by the person or made
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basically unmarriable i mean if the girl spends seven years back then okay so imagine he sells her
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oh yeah that's great you you'd be released yeah i guess after you would be desirable as a partner
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yeah but seven years from then the woman's out of marriage age range like she's not going to get a
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partner you're destitute yeah it's a bad it's not necessarily as unethical as it's so it's almost
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yeah it's almost like insisting that she has to have a lifetime pension rather than insisting that
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yeah okay i guess i can see it's not it's not great it's a all this is terrible but that's
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uniquely terrible but i also understand from a societal perspective why that would be forced
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if she does not please her master who has designated her for himself then he shall let her be redeemed
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he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people since he has broke faith with her that is
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really interesting if she doesn't please her master who is designated her for himself then he shall let
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her be redeemed so you cannot say a woman does not it appears please me and this appears to be in a
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sexual sense here and that i bought as a slave you cannot resell her so that actually goes to the
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earlier point that we were talking about is like why would that be an ethical thing well it's saying
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you can't wait you know the seven years until she's no longer hot or something and then resell her you
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can't just be like okay i will buy this girl from you know another one of the jewish people and then
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we will resell her in you know 10 20 years because she's unattractive now right that is very moral as
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a thing and especially not to a foreign people where you know there might be different rules around
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slavery then you have if he designates her for a son he shall deal with her as with a daughter so it's
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saying if you buy a a girl to be married to your son you have to treat her as if she is your daughter
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in law which makes a lot of sense i mean you can see it being pretty bad if your wife was bought by
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your dad and he still thought of her as a slave and you're like bro this is my wife now chill out
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um that could cause some problems in terms of family dynamics so okay actually makes a lot of sense
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if she does not oh sorry if he takes another wife to himself he shall not diminish her food
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her clothing or her marital rights this is so even for slave wives this this holds you can't have sex
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with them less just because you got another wife and if he does not do these and if he does not do
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these three things for her he shall go out for nothing without payment of money i don't know what
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this is go out for nothing without payment of money like give give them away or uh if he doesn't
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give her so this is referring to the three things that you're supposed to give to a female servant
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slave i love how i cleaned it up in in the in the ai a female slave who was bought with the intention
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of marriage you have to give her food and sustenance closing and conjugal rights so i love that one of the
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three things you have to give her is conjugal rights if you can't give her conjugal rights you have
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to let her go i mean sure that's interesting i well i mean this is sort of throughout jewish tradition
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is it women obligation for conjugal rights in a way that like like being pleased sexually which is one
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of the reasons actually that it was so damning the wap thing was ben shapiro where he's like oh
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actually get wet like my wife told me that she had a disease because that implies that he's not
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pleasing his wife which is actually being a bad jew uh okay next um and a bad christian by the way
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because we inherited that part of the tradition you are supposed to please your wife if you do not
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please your life you you are not living biblically uh was that wait that's did that pastor to christian
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tradition because i don't did it well no a lot of people don't talk about it but like biblically
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speaking christ christ did not like uh annul that part of the the hebrew oh sure yeah yeah yeah yeah
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i mean a lot of christians believe a lot of dumb stuff that isn't in the bible that's what we all
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go over in our track series you know like but the bible doesn't say it okay next um when a man strikes
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his slave male or female with a rod and the slave dies under his hand he shall be avenged
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what i wonder what avenging entails i'm so glad i have ai to ask these questions because otherwise i'd
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never be able to get a straight answer okay so it means retribution or punishment is not necessarily
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saying that there will be a death penalty for the master for killing the slave but it is saying that
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there should be some form of retribution for killing a slave which interesting if that had been
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implemented in american law i don't think it was when when slavery was in the united states that probably
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should have been implemented very interesting so in a way that's that is better than american
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slavery yeah i love that people always like oh biblical slavery wasn't chattel slavery it's
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different in the american system and i'm like so far this is the only thing i'm really seeing that's
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particularly different than the american slave system so no it it was people just say that because
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they don't want to admit that like one both sides like the conservatives don't want to admit that the
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bible promoted chattel slavery they don't want to admit that chattel slavery happened in rome
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and then for the the far lefties they don't want to admit that american slavery was not a unique form
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of slavery and forms like it were practiced in other places now are you sure because i remember when i
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maybe it's just because we you went to more religiously friendly schools and i went to more
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atheistic schools but when we were taught about slavery in school it was emphasized that slaveholders
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used biblical arguments to justify their actions they did but they didn't i'm talking about in modern
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context in modern context you have both groups having a huge reason to try to convince you the
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average person that the type of slavery described in the bible is not akin to the type of slavery that
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was practiced in the united states and this is something that is generally believed and it is
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something that is not true oh so now people are saying no no no that wasn't biblically okay
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no they're saying that it was a totally different type of slavery so there is a myth in the united
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states that the form of chattel slavery practiced in the south was morally worse than any other form
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of slavery that had ever been practiced in human history really i've not heard that oh you in our
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comments you go below and you say this it is a very common argument because people will say why are you
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being so like like freaked out about southern slavery when like people practice slavery all over the world
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and they're like oh these were different forms of slavery that were not as bad and i'm just looking at
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like the historic forms of slavery that i know a lot about for example i know a fair bit about the way
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athenian slaves were treated the way athenian slaves were treated in the mines they would send them into
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these mines the death rate was super super super high in the silver mines and they'd send them down
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these little passages where they'd be killed or crushed and you were expected to die in a very
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short period of time it was just like on its face yeah i'd say strictly worse than american slavery
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the economic model was different in athenian slavery it was go out capture slaves work them till they die
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there wasn't an assumption of an intergenerational type of slavery it was a death sentence yeah these
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weren't assets they were fodder yeah they were fodder that you had to keep replacing with new
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captures so yeah i mean i guess it was different from american slavery in that it was strictly worse
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among like every conceivable measure but okay i'm gonna keep going and this is athens by the way that
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the the the great glowing heart of all our western history where civilization was born okay when a
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all right but and i'd also know the when a man strikes his slave male or female and she dies they will
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be avenged that is important that they note females there okay next but if the slave survives a day or two
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he is not to be avenged for the slave is his money so you can beat your slaves
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even with a rod you just can't kill them so it's basically giving legal protection this is biblical
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legal protection for beating your slaves well doesn't that also imply that if the
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if after this beating the harmed individual survives for more than two days but then they die from their
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injuries it's okay is that what i'm okay that's what it's implying
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okay next um again people are like oh it was more moral than the surrounding systems we'll see
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we'll get to the surrounding systems in a second yeah about this when a man strikes the eye of his
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slave male or female and destroys it he shall let the slave go because of his eye so if you damage
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somebody's eye they have to be set free that is one of the first like genuinely like benevolent
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laws i've seen here this in the seven year law for men and both seem pretty reasonable to me also the
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treating slaves that you're marrying off to your sons as your daughter's in law seems pretty reasonable
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to me if he knocks out the tooth of his slave male or female he shall let this the slave go free
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because of his tooth wow so again no serious constantly like putting your face in the line of fire when they
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look to beat you yeah i'd be like catching every every punch with my face you know i i wonder and
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what i like about these release terms and term limits as well is that these people are being integrated
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with mainstream society and if you are terrible to someone and they you know are going to be integrated
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with your you have to you have to go shopping next to them whatever i don't know you know what i mean
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like if you had to go you're like at the grocery store and your former slave is there you're they
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didn't have grocery stores you understand that i'm talking i'm just i'm putting this into like
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metaphorically modern content okay you're in the the market bizarre slaves wasn't a shameful thing back
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then i know but like and i don't want to be a total dick to them because you're gonna have to
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basically said you can beat your slaves as much as you want so long as you don't cause permanent injury
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i know but what they're saying also is that because there are instances in which these people
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will be released and will be free people in society and you're gonna have to maybe interact
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with them as free people you probably have an incentive to treat them better okay so now we're
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gonna go to leviticus all right before that was exodus all right leviticus as for your male and female
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slaves whom you may have you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you
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so here it's just saying explicitly you can buy either male or female slaves from surrounding
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nations you may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with
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you who have been born in your land and they may be your property you may bequeath them to your sons
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after you to inherit as a possession forever you may make slaves out of them but over your brothers
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the people of israel you shall not rule one over another ruthlessly so it doesn't look like it's
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specifically ruling out the you know six seven year release terms for israeli slaves but here it seems to be
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further saying that one against the argument that some people make that this was not chattel slavery
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it's saying no this is like in case anyone in the future tries to argue this isn't chattel slavery
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this is forever slavery not even to your death when you die it goes to your kids when you capture
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somebody and make them a slave or they are bred for slavery if they are not jewish they are a forever
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slave that is made very very very clear in leviticus wow so deuteronomy if your brother a hebrew man or a
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hebrew woman is sold to you he shall serve you six years and in the seventh you shall let him go okay we
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already went over that and when you shall not let him go empty-handed you will furnish him liberally
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out of your flock out of your threshing flower and out of your wine press as the lord god bless you
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you shall give to him so that's also pretty interesting because it's saying that basically
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remember i was like oh well you know why would they choose to become a slave forever right because
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of the economic hardship of just being released this is saying that they shouldn't have had that economic
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hardship our rules were added to reduce that economic hardship yeah all right now let's talk
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about the new testament because i think a lot of people think that this is just old testament stuff
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it is not just old testament stuff okay ephesians 659 slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and
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fear and with sincerity of heart just as you would obey christ obey them not only to win their favor
00:25:02.100
when their eye is on you but as slaves of christ doing the will of god from your heart serve wholeheartedly
00:25:09.320
as if you were serving the lord not people because you know that the lord will reward each one for
00:25:15.780
whatever good they do whether they are slave or free and masters treat your slaves in the same way
00:25:22.980
do not threaten them since you know that he who is born who is both their master and yours is in heaven
00:25:31.280
and there is no favoritism with him so that i'd say is a strictly more moral form of slavery than
00:25:39.420
the one in the jewish system if we talk about you know christianity being sort of an advancement on
00:25:44.040
the older jewish model which is to say that god does not see slaves as different from freedmen
00:25:49.720
but a slave's duty is to serve his master as if he is serving christ so whenever you go oh you know
00:25:57.240
i'm working for the man i'm working for the capitalist system i'm not i'm gonna quiet quit
00:26:01.220
i'm gonna whatever keep in mind that you know if you see that as a form of slavery which i guess it
00:26:07.180
technically is that is not cool by god's standards you are supposed to spend every day doing your job
00:26:13.100
as if you are doing it for christ yeah that that seems to be the general order is that you must serve
00:26:19.380
your role in society with fidelity and grace as though you're serving god but god sees everyone
00:26:26.720
the same but it certainly does it certainly one accepts that slavery is a thing and two does not
00:26:33.660
by any means contest its legitimacy so that's interesting yeah there's a very similar line it looks
00:26:40.900
like in calatians 3 22 4 1 and i'm not even gonna read it because it seems to be just a
00:26:47.260
rereading of that line so it might be just a different translation of that line and i'm
00:26:52.020
misunderstanding it and then you've got timothy 6 1 2 all who are under the yoke of slavery should
00:26:57.540
consider their masters worthy of full respect so that god's name and our teachings may not be
00:27:02.280
slandered those who have a believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow
00:27:07.820
believers instead they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow
00:27:12.900
believers and are devout to the welfare of their slaves so again here it's saying that you need to
00:27:19.160
be devout to the welfare of your slaves as a as a christian now we mentioned this in the previous one
00:27:26.100
but it is important to go over is that in the old testament mex slavery was pretty explicitly allowed
00:27:32.920
so for some lines that show this have you allowed the women to live moses asked him dot dot dot now kill
00:27:38.940
all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man but save for yourselves every girl who
00:27:42.600
has never slept with a man and then captured women can be taken as wives after a period of mourning
00:27:47.200
but had to be set free if the man no longer wanted them this is deuteronomy 21 10 14 and then here we
00:27:53.900
also see to normalize this idea of mex slaves if a man has sex with a slave girl who was engaged to
00:28:00.640
another man but has not yet been ransomed or given her freedom there must be an investigation
00:28:05.020
but they aren't to be put to death because she wasn't free the man must bring a compensation
00:28:10.940
offering to god at the entrance to the tent of meeting a ram of compensation the priest will perform
00:28:17.160
the ritual of atonement for him before god with the ram of compensation for the sin he has committed
00:28:23.120
then he will stand for forgiven of the sin he committed so it's interesting here that he doesn't need to
00:28:29.120
give something to the guy whose sex thing he slept with but to god to the priest the levite system was
00:28:39.580
not a good system i i am not a a massive fan of pre-second temporal destruction judaism i think that
00:28:45.640
they had some issues with the priest cast and i see why jesus got angry and flipped over a table
00:28:50.800
he didn't get angry he had a spasm he had a little spaz moment um and i probably would have had a
00:28:59.800
little spaz moment too if stuff like this was going on you know it whenever somebody sleeps with one of
00:29:06.080
your slaves you have to pay us money and then i'm the guy who's like wait what what you why you
00:29:13.300
and keep in mind the the sacrifices this is where you had the money exchanges because you weren't allowed
00:29:18.060
to use outside money so when you're doing like a sacrifice of a goat it's not like you're just
00:29:21.700
doing a goat for god like a lot of that money went to the temple because you had to get a special kind
00:29:25.460
of goat like outside the temple to do the sacrifice i'm just pointing out here they're basically saying
00:29:29.700
you have to pay us okay let's talk about some other slavery systems so we can compare and contrast
00:29:38.140
we're going to go to the code of ur namu this is 21 000 to 2050 bc samaria so this is as far from
00:29:50.060
the time of christ as we are isn't that fascinating that we have a slavery system from back then that
00:29:56.320
we know about if a slave marries a slave and the slave is set free he does not leave the household
00:30:03.020
so if a slave marries another slave and one of the slaves is set free but the other
00:30:06.720
isn't set free then the slave that married them also isn't set free wow if a slave marries a native
00:30:12.980
a free person he or she is to hand the firstborn son over to his owner so still fully a slave but
00:30:19.560
the owner gets the firstborn son but no sons after that very interesting this is obviously for
00:30:24.120
section reasons it appears to imply that the firstborn son would have been considered a legitimate
00:30:28.360
heir a man preceded by force and deflowered the virgin female slave of another man that man must pay
00:30:35.460
five shekels of silver if a slave escapes from the city limits and someone returns him the owner shall
00:30:41.120
pay two shekels to the one who returned him and this is where it gets interesting if he the person who
00:30:46.780
returned the runaway slave doesn't have a slave he has to pay them 10 shekels of silver if he does not
00:30:52.960
have the silver he is to give another thing that belongs to him so this system is fantastic wow if
00:31:01.500
somebody doesn't own slaves and isn't benefiting from the slave owning system but they act as a slave
00:31:08.920
catcher they get extra money so that they now can buy a slave and join the slave owner system it's like
00:31:15.720
i don't i don't know what i think of that but it's interesting i mean clearly there was some form of
00:31:23.500
like moral thought around this it's like well he gave the slave back even though he doesn't benefit
00:31:27.820
from the system then we need to be extra nice to him five times the amount of money for that i guess
00:31:33.180
theoretically it was because they would otherwise take the slave for themselves isn't is that what it's
00:31:39.140
trying to compensate for that might be what it's trying to compensate for what's also interesting here
00:31:43.720
is it's only two shekels for catching a runaway slave but five shekels so more than twice that
00:31:48.920
if you uh deflower somebody else's slave that you know shows what the value put on a virgin what's
00:31:55.640
also interesting here it's easy there doesn't appear to be any punishment for just having sex with
00:31:59.400
another person's slave it's only if you deflower a virgin of another person's yeah but i think that
00:32:04.780
goes back to the premium that people put on untouched women i mean while still put on all right next
00:32:10.120
if a man's slave woman comparing herself to a mistress speaks instantly of her her mouth shall
00:32:17.060
be scoured by one quart of salt oh i thought salt was really expensive back then well i mean i think
00:32:25.840
this is more for like noble people and stuff like that um what a slave woman no salt was never that
00:32:32.480
expensive salt is easy to get from salt mines are from the sea it's fairly easy to produce salt
00:32:37.200
no no no in some in some historical societies salt was worth its weight in gold so that cannot be true
00:32:46.480
salt is too easy to get no one is that far from the ocean
00:32:51.100
maybe i'll look it up in post apparently this is a common myth but not true for example where we know
00:32:59.900
the exact price of salt in the historic world in 16th century venice gold was about 11 000 times
00:33:06.520
more valuable than salt by weight and in third century a.d egypt gold was approximately 283.5 times
00:33:14.220
more valuable than salt by weight salt was never worth more than gold that said salt was unusually
00:33:21.500
expensive in some areas just due to how frequently it was needed for food preservation and transportation
00:33:28.940
costs if you were far from a coast or a salt mine but i don't think that's true i mean i know salt can be
00:33:35.420
used for uh storing food better so i can see some things like sugar being worse as weight in gold but
00:33:41.320
salt is a very easy to obtain resource generally speaking maybe i don't know maybe i'm just wrong
00:33:46.220
on my history here okay next if a slave woman strikes someone acting with the authority of her mistress
00:33:52.240
text destroyed now even though the text is destroyed here i find this one pretty interesting um
00:33:57.300
because it is saying that a slave might be instructed by their mistress or master to strike
00:34:04.620
somebody else which is interesting i i i don't know what to make of it other than that apparently
00:34:10.220
it was at least not infrequent enough that this happened that this was written into the law books
00:34:15.060
that somebody would ask their slave to hit someone else on their behalf so again we don't know all of
00:34:19.980
the rules around slavery here but these rules seem much more in line was just slaves their property no way out
00:34:26.140
so here i would say biblical slavery is strictly better than this then if we go to the code of
00:34:31.280
look far this is uh 1900 bc samaria so a little bit later so we're seeing sort of the evolution of
00:34:36.940
the slavery system we again destroyed text strikes the daughter of a man and causes her to lose the
00:34:44.380
fetus he shall weigh and deliver 30 shekels of silver destroyed text strikes the slave of a woman of a man
00:34:50.820
and causes her to lose her fetus he shall weigh and deliver five shekels of silver actually kind of
00:34:55.920
a lot it's saying uh that you need to pay what what is that only one six one sixty amount for a
00:35:02.640
slave fetus versus the free woman fetus oh a daughter's fetus very interesting if a man's slave
00:35:08.580
or male slave fleas was in the city and it is confirmed that the slave dwelt in the man's house
00:35:14.180
for one month he the one who harbored the fugitive slave shall give the slave for slave if he has no
00:35:21.120
slave he shall weigh and deliver 15 shekels of silver if a man's slave contests his slave status
00:35:27.160
against his master and is proven that his master has been compensated for his slavery to fold that
00:35:34.000
slave shall be freed uh interesting if a man marries a wife and she bears him a child and the child lives
00:35:40.960
and a slave woman also bears a child to the master the father shall free the slave woman and her
00:35:46.340
children the children of the slave woman will not divide the estate with the children of the master
00:35:51.220
oh and he frees the slave woman okay okay okay okay so saying that if he has a legitimate child and
00:35:57.280
a child was a slave woman the the slave children don't get a share of the estate so far slave woman
00:36:02.920
is also theoretically free no if he frees her i don't think he has oh okay okay okay so yeah this is
00:36:09.660
just saying the legitimate wives get the so far uh jewish jewish slave call is like way better than
00:36:16.720
any of these totally the code of eshnuma this is 1770 bc babylonian period the slave woman as pledge
00:36:25.160
and the silver owed as debt are considered equal when he brings the silver he shall retrieve his slave
00:36:31.140
woman a merchant or woman innkeeper will not accept silver grain wool oil or anything else from a male or
00:36:37.480
female slave interesting so they can't make purchases yeah yeah i guess like debanking them
00:36:44.080
does disempower them so yeah yeah if a man has no claim against another man but nonetheless takes that
00:36:50.920
man's slave woman as a distress the owner of the slave woman shall swear an oath by the god you have
00:36:59.840
no claim against me he the destrainer will weigh and deliver silver as much as a value question mark
00:37:06.840
of the slave woman okay this is interesting okay so what this is saying is you have to pay for a
00:37:14.220
slave if you sleep with a slave and that slave was unwilling but it appears you don't if the slave was
00:37:21.200
willing very interesting if a man should deflower the slave woman of another man he shall weigh and
00:37:29.520
deliver 20 shekels of silver but the slave woman remains the property of her master interesting oh you know
00:37:35.460
what here's another reason why i think the payment price was high the resale value of like let's say
00:37:41.540
that one of your slaves had a child or you purchased a child slave that you planned on then raising like
00:37:47.920
using for housework and then selling as an untouched woman you'd be losing so much resale value if someone
00:37:57.380
had sex with her before you could sell her so i think that's maybe more yeah sorry i was i thought
00:38:05.600
it was just that people were like really angry about people deflowering their like personal virgins or
00:38:09.940
something but really this is more about this is an economic thing yeah and keep in mind what we're
00:38:14.040
seeing so far is that the jewish system is the very first system that at all values the well-being of
00:38:21.200
the slave yeah one of these systems in any way has valued the well-being of the slave but wait hold
00:38:29.540
on though wasn't with the jewish system all those nice rules weren't they only if it was a fellow
00:38:36.060
no no the rule around the tooth knocking out the rule around accidentally killing and the rule around
00:38:42.020
damaging an eye that applied to all slaves that applied to all slaves okay and the christian then
00:38:47.900
rules that were on top of that around you having to treat a slave as an equal in the eyes of god
00:38:53.260
that is well above any of these systems yeah that's fair but let's keep going here if a slave woman of
00:39:00.560
the palace should give her son or daughter to a commoner for rearing the palace shall remove the
00:39:06.000
son and daughter who she gave weird it's basically saying slave woman of the palace can choose to not
00:39:12.780
keep her slave or her son or daughter in the palace it appears they're given a choice you can
00:39:18.300
either give it away to somebody outside the palace or keep it in the palace but it will grow up a slave
00:39:22.600
if a man buys a slave a slave woman an ox or any other purchase okay seeing what they think of people
00:39:29.860
these days okay if you're buying a woman or a man or an ox but cannot establish the identity of the seller
00:39:35.980
it is he who is the thief oh so yeah this is like buying art from an art thief or something
00:39:44.620
like no okay so so this is what this is saying it's basically like the receipt thing from an american
00:39:49.600
court system it's basically saying if somebody finds you as a slave so for example i go to your house
00:39:55.600
and i say i think this slave is stolen and i and then the other person says prove it and i go okay
00:40:01.500
who sold it to you then and you can't show me who sold it to you that is considered proof that it is
00:40:07.800
stolen okay fascinating fascinating for an early legal system and actually a pretty good system to be
00:40:14.580
honest or about more more about property than i would say like oh this is legitimate well that's
00:40:20.800
the point none of these laws consider slaves people a slave or slave woman belonging to resident of
00:40:26.920
eshna enu who bears fetters shackles or a slave hair lock will not exit through the main city gate
00:40:33.580
of a slave hair lock without its owner basically if you have a markings of slavery you can't leave the
00:40:39.520
city without your owner makes a lot of sense just as a general law okay now we're at the code of
00:40:45.920
hemerabbi uh you've heard of this one right you think we're going to get to any that that treat slaves
00:40:50.980
as people and we've got a few more systems to go through here we've got the hittites we've got the
00:40:55.100
assyrians i'm not expecting much from the assyrians to be honest okay the code of hemerabbi if a man
00:41:00.720
should enable a palace slave a palace slave woman a commoner slave or a commoner slave woman to leave
00:41:06.540
through the main city gate he shall be killed oh gosh that's harsh basically if you help a slave
00:41:12.620
get away yeah that's the death penalty this was a society that did not wow yeah i'm not expecting
00:41:19.700
much from this one yeah if a man sees that the fugitive slave or slave woman in the open country
00:41:24.180
and leads him back to his owner the slave owner shall give him two shekels of silver
00:41:27.580
back to the two shekels not a lot of inflation if he should give a male or female slave into debt
00:41:33.580
service the merchant may extend the term beyond three years he may sell him there are no grounds
00:41:39.580
for a claim so if you give a slave into debt service and the merchant randomly extends the term
00:41:45.620
you can't place claim on that there is no that's horrible i do not like this system if an obligation
00:41:53.240
is outstanding against a man and he therefore sells his slave woman who has borne him children the owner
00:41:59.820
of the slave woman shall weigh and deliver the silver which the merchant weighed and delivered
00:42:04.320
as the loan and he shall thereby redeem his slave woman this is like you can buy back a slave woman if she
00:42:11.640
has given you children basically this is saying if you had children with a slave woman whenever you sell
00:42:16.580
her it's like a pawn shop you can go and buy her back okay not not great if a slave of the palace or a
00:42:23.980
slave of a commoner marries a woman of the awaidas and she then bears children the owner of the slave will
00:42:30.400
have no claims of slavery against the children of the woman of the awaidas and i assume awaidas means free
00:42:37.020
person so it's saying that if the children of a slave and a free person if it is not the owner
00:42:42.240
do not own the owner does not own those children if he should blind the eye of an awaidas yeah it does
00:42:49.460
mean free person of an awaidas slave or break the bone of an awaidas slave he shall weigh and deliver
00:42:55.120
one half of his value in silver oh a wily might mean like hama rabbi citizen like jew or hebrew or
00:43:02.340
something like that but here it's saying that if you damage a slave you owe the owner half their amount
00:43:06.120
again none of this cares about the slave um if an a wily slave should strike the cheek of a member
00:43:11.660
of the aful class they shall cut off his ear okay this is class stuff here if he should cause a woman
00:43:19.820
or a commoner class to miscarry her fetus by beating he shall weigh and deliver five shekels of silver
00:43:25.200
if he strikes an a wily slave woman and thereby causes her to miscarry her fetus he shall bear two
00:43:30.780
shekels of silver oh the difference between free people and slaves is is lessening there's only two and
00:43:35.480
half differences it's a slave woman should die he shall weigh and deliver 20 shekels of silver
00:43:40.540
interesting that that's also uh it is a man slave who is fatally gored he shall give 20 shekels of
00:43:47.240
silver so again what we are seeing here is the jewish system when people say this system was morally
00:43:55.020
superior to earlier systems they are not lying yeah let's go to the hittite system 1650 to 1500 bce
00:44:02.640
if anyone kills male or female slave in a quarrel he shall bring him for burial and shall give him
00:44:08.600
two person male or female respectively he shall look for his house for it okay nothing if anyone
00:44:15.040
strikes a free man or woman so that he dies but it is an accident he shall bring him for burial and
00:44:21.040
shall give two persons he shall look to his house for it basically you have to give slaves if you kill
00:44:26.020
okay interesting so i want to see this if you kill a female male or slave in a quarrel you have to give
00:44:33.540
a person for that but it doesn't appear like to the slave it appears to the person whose slave you took
00:44:38.900
if anyone strikes a male or female slave and he dies but it is an accident she'll bring him to
00:44:43.860
to and give one person for it okay okay okay this is confusing but i'll explain it if you and this is in
00:44:50.960
the hittite system if you kill a person in a quarrel and that person is a slave you owe the person whose
00:44:58.200
slave you killed two slaves if it's an accident if it was an accident you just have to replace it
00:45:03.040
yeah so there's a penalty when it was intentional if it's accidental just replace yeah interesting
00:45:09.740
if anyone blinds a male or female slave or knocks out his tooth he shall pay 10 shekels of silver
00:45:15.520
he shall look to his house for it basically yeah find a way to pay it or his family needs to pay it
00:45:20.960
if anyone i also find this or he should look to his house for it like the legal code is getting
00:45:25.460
more sophisticated in terms of how to get out of this if anyone breaks a male or female slave's
00:45:30.360
arm or leg he shall pay 10 shekels of silver if a male slave runs away and someone brings him back
00:45:35.920
um if he seizes him nearby his owner gives him shoes give shoes to the finder what shoes that is so
00:45:44.520
cheap everyone else was getting two shekels or even 10 shekels if you didn't own a slave
00:45:49.140
and then someone else just gets it's like covering your mileage you know like i'll pay your gas money
00:45:55.140
that's literally what it is wow that is literally it's like when you submit a claim to your company
00:46:00.720
for the amount of gas miles you use yeah i'll give you shoes because you may need to walk a while for
00:46:06.780
this that is ridiculous i guess returning property in this period was not so valued if a male slave
00:46:17.680
takes a female slave in marriage and they have children when they divide their house they shall
00:46:22.540
divide their possessions equally the slave woman shall take most of the children and the male slave
00:46:28.100
taking one child wait that's not evenly weird if a slave breaks into a grain storage pit and finds grain
00:46:35.260
in the storage pit he shall fill the storage pit with the crane and pay six shekels of silver
00:46:39.980
he shall look to his house for it oh that's interesting so his house okay so what that means
00:46:45.780
is if a slave steals food from another family the slave's owner is responsible to pay six shekels to
00:46:53.380
the person who's a slave stole from now we're going to go to a syrian law and then we only have roman law
00:46:58.640
left let's see if we can get to this before i have to run to get the heads tell me quick if either a slave
00:47:03.660
or a slave woman should receive something from a man's wife they shall cut off the slave or the slave
00:47:07.700
woman's nose and ears and they shall restore the stolen goods the man shall cut off his own wife's
00:47:12.100
ears but if he releases his wife and does not cut off their ears they shall not cut off no other ears
00:47:17.520
of the slave or the slave woman and they shall not restore the stolen goods and then next broken text
00:47:22.280
the owner broken text and if the buyer declares broken text which i redeem broken text he shall give
00:47:27.640
a slave broken text shekels of lead and slave woman for 14 000 shekels of lead i think the the point
00:47:33.700
you've made is that slaves are seen as property and they're not entitled hey buddy they're not
00:47:40.200
entitled do you want to get to the roman stuff or we can do that in another recording you can also do
00:47:45.120
it in post okay i'll add the roman stuff in post all right let's go over the 12 tables of roman law
00:47:52.580
451 to 450 bc table 6 8 a person who has been a slave and who has been declared to be a free man
00:48:00.160
in a will or some condition if he shall have given 10 000 copper coins to an heir although the slave
00:48:06.940
has been alienated by the heir by giving the money to the purchaser shall enter his freedom
00:48:12.100
so it appears that if a person was poor and had slaves and tried to grant them their freedom
00:48:19.300
they couldn't they needed to give the slaves money to buy themselves from the heir which is uh pretty
00:48:27.000
interesting table 8 4 if a person has broken or bruised a bone with hand club he shall undergo a
00:48:35.060
penalty of 300 copper coins if to an injured free man or of 150 copper coins if to an injured slave
00:48:43.540
so here in roman law we see the first system other than the jewish system in which a slave's well-being
00:48:50.500
is taken into account you couldn't just uh beat and injure your slave in table 8 15 in the case of
00:48:59.440
all other thieves caught in the act it is ordained that freedmen be scourged and be a judge as bondsman
00:49:07.100
to the person against whom the theft has been committed provided that they had done this by day
00:49:12.380
and had not defended themselves with a weapon that slaves caught in the act of theft be whipped with
00:49:19.000
scourges and be thrown from the rock that boys below the age of puberty under 15 years old
00:49:24.760
be flogged at magistrates discretion and that damage done to them be repaired okay so again here you see
00:49:32.880
care of the the for slaves under a certain age uh different punishment and then table 12 2 if a slave
00:49:40.160
shall have committed theft or shall have done damage with his master's knowledge the action for damages in
00:49:46.580
the slave's name arising from delics committed by children and slaves of the household actions for
00:49:52.800
damages shall be appointed that the father or the master can be allowed to undergo assessment of the
00:49:58.780
suit or deliver the delinquent for punishment okay so interesting this law here seems to consider
00:50:04.380
children in the same category as slaves basically anyone who they see is sort of owned by a household
00:50:10.300
and when one of them does damage or steals from another person the master is ultimately responsible
00:50:18.220
but the master can choose to either handle the suit himself or give over the person who did the
00:50:23.900
damage for punishment so broadly speaking roman law i won't say it's equal with jewish law in terms
00:50:29.820
well it kind of is yeah it it seems about the moral equivalent to biblical law but you get the gist
00:50:37.140
which is the jewish system was genuinely better do you do you think that people should be allowed to
00:50:43.140
own other people no and do you think that if people did own other people that they should treat them
00:50:57.100
sure chesty got to mix in that cheese cutter really fast
00:51:15.040
what kind of treasure why is it's space treasure and you and daddy and toasty and titan are looking
00:51:27.380
for space treasure isn't that cool i think you're in water
00:51:34.700
toasty it's time to dump in the pasta you want to help me
00:51:38.580
help me dump it in push it's too hot it's too hot it's not that hot
00:51:57.760
that's the point right that's the dream that's the cheesy dream
00:52:12.520
it is are you excited for that yeah i like mac and cheese don't you
00:52:22.280
wasn't it thomas jefferson who had a big wheel of cheese
00:52:39.020
let's have some dinner yeah and say itadakimasu