Most Christians turn to the Bible to some degree or another for guidance on their ethical views and perspectives on social agendas. For those who read it closely, the Bible can be problematic ethically. Most people realize there is a problem with the endorsement of slavery in the Bible (both Old and New Testaments); few have ever seen that there is also a problem with what today we think of a “family values.”
In my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, now in its eight edition with Hugo Mendez (Oxford University Press, 2024), I address these issues very briefly in a couple of those side-bar boxes I’ve mentioned in the two previous posts. Here they are!
The side bar boxes have always been my favorite part of this book.
Me too. It’s crazy hard to get students to read them, even when you say, “I’m tellin’ ya, they’re the most interesting parts!!”
My understanding is that a reasonable interpretation of the letter to Philemon is that Paul is asking Philemon to give Onesimus to him as his personal slave. What do you think?
So far as I know, I’m the only scholar who has proposed that. But if I’m wrong — and others have before me — I’d love to know! I discuss it only in my textbook The New Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction. disabledupes{e4243d3d651f4be701976f8e3984c9fa}disabledupes
Interesting. It may be that I’m simply repeating your opinion back to you through a third party. The view that Paul is asking for Onesimus to be freed seems anachronistic given what we know about attitudes then and Paul’s expectation of an imminent Parousia. So let me take a different tack. Were there abolitionists of any stripe in the ancient world? The only one of which I’m aware was the third century Indian emperor Ashoka who converted to Buddhism and consequently suppressed the slave trade.
Thanks
As a complete amateur, I’d love to buy your textbook for an insight perhaps greater than in your “popular” writings. I might even have to overcome my otherwise exclusive use of ebooks. I’ll start saving.
In this blog post you cite Q as a source: .”Consider the words preserved in Q: ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and even his own life, he is not able to be my disciple’ (Luke 14:26;Matt 10:37).”
However, when you started this thread on October 23rd, you acknowledged a change in your view of Q: “… this past year I published the 8th edition of my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the New Testament (Oxford University Press, 2024), but this time, … I asked my colleague Hugo Mendez to join me in editing / updating it, and …. he did the vast bulk of the work on this one. Most of the changes came in his rewriting sections that needed to be brought up to snuff with current scholarship, including the one dealing with the sources of Synoptics, since a lot of scholars (though not the majority, so far as I can tell) are inclined to think the Q source never existed (including Hugo!) …” Parenthetically, I’m surprised Richard Carrier isn’t all over that one.
Oh no, I haven’t changed my view of Q at all. In my book Hugo and I decided that in his edits he would present both his view and mine.
I think you would get kicked out of church forever, banned, labeled an Islamic terrorist for even suggesting that Jesus did not teach wholesome family values. People in the congregation would have a stroke just hearing the idea. A lot of people are there because going to church is a wholesome family value, traditionally. You either go to church with the family on Sunday morning, or skip church for the season and drink beer on the sofa watching football on the television. Mark 3:21
Bart,
About the disturbing (to some) of Jesus’ advocacy of rejecting those family members who object to the desire of some to follow “The Way” that Jesus was teaching, I have long-believed that Jesus left home around age 12 to 14, joined a passing caravan as a “camel tender,” went to India, and joined a Jewish community there. Jesus did this for two reasons: 1) “home-life” was horrible because 5 younger siblings meant he had no place and time to “sit and think,” and 2) he could see that life under Roman rule was unjust and cruel. (A lot of others had already migrated to India.) Another reason could have been that his father had died and his mother had remarried, with his stepfather favoring his younger siblings and treating Jesus badly.
Working for Jewish settlers in India would give him an opportunity to learn the language there, and read books by Buddha (some of Jesus’ teachings reflect the writings of Buddha). This would also explain why he didn’t read and write the language of his followers in Galilee. Jesus had to have became an excellent preacher to be able to attract audiences who wanted to hear him speak.
Bill Steigelmann
Speaking as one who has little knowledge of the the technicalities of NT scholarship it would appear that there is an unstated assumption that modern “family values”, which are humanistic, are superior to the ancient biblical values in the book divinely inspired by the perfect God who oversaw its transmission free of error to our present day. The commands and precepts of this perfect book are to be followed unquestioningly. Hence total obedience of chattel slaves was due to their masters in all ages that slavery existed. My observation also is that the call to gospel ministry and missionary service is often disruptive of untold numbers of Christian families. Sadly, by my observation the casualties are many.
Yes, that seems to be the assumption.
By my count there are about a dozen “anti-family” passages in the Gospels. Perhaps the most poignant is Mt. 8:22/Lk. 9:60. The usual apologetic is: Jesus says love your family, but God comes first. I think that badly misses the tone and purport, which is: reject family ties. (Not as a matter of emotion but of social obligation.) I think you have it right, Bart, but I suggest one can be more specific about the target of Jesus’ teaching. The fundamental glue of tribal societies (which all ancient societies were, at least at the level of social theory) is kinship. In rejecting kinship in favor of kingship, Jesus is proposing a truly fundamental way of re-conceiving the social polity: it abandons the consanguine/affine relationships of kinship for participation in the blood of the Lamb. That will be the foundation of universalism, which kinship prevents. It accompanies a rejection of the notion of a specific locus as the “land of the Promise” and the Temple as the center of worship. This is an attack not only on Jewish tradition, but on Roman tradition. What do you think?
I don’t think Jesus had any idea ofthe blood of the Lamb, but I do think kinship and tribal connections are not important to Jesus; being human is.
My first comment since I joined, so here it goes. Slavery never being condemned in the Bible has always concerned me. However, I have been told by other Christians that slavery in the bible is not the same as what we saw, for example, in the American South. I have seen passages in the Old Testament where it clearly instructs slave holders how to treat their slaves. Many say slavery practiced by the Jews in the Old Testament was like endured servants in colonial days, and is no way like what was practiced later. Nevertheless, what I’ve read myself, still sounds like slavery.
It certainly different from slavery in the American south. It still, of course, entailed being owned by another human and being compelled to do what they required you to do with very serious corporal punishment in store for not doing it. And there were other differences. I’m not sure that in the American south you would find laws such as in Exodus 21:7-11, for example.
In Hong Kong, housekeepers were often forced to clean the outside windows of their “employers” high rise condos. Some fell.
In Hong Kong, Filipinos, Indonesians & other nationalities lack the same rights on the SAR as other workers there & are paid far less & have such laws.
I was reasoning w/Ai earlier this morning: @GPT-4o-Mini so you see now evangelicals of the 1970-80s became antiChiristian of after 2015 example Billy Graham inclusiveness vs Franklin Graham exclusiveness & discrimination
“What mattered was the new thing that was coming, the future kingdom. & it was impossible to promote this teaching while trying to retain the present social structure:
You think that I have come to bring peace on earth; not peace, I tell you, but division. For from now on there will be 5people in one house, divided among themselves: 3 against 2 & 2 against 3; a father will be divided against his son & son against his father, a mother against her daughter & daughter against her mother; a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law & daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law (Luke 12:51–53; Matt 10:34–46; independently attested in Gosp. Thom. 16).”