Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Christianity…

The bible does not condemn slavery, Jesus for instance instructs slaves to obey their masters.

.

Below is some evidence....not actual proof, but evidence....as we discussed before... There is much evidence in God the Bible that strengthens our Faith in the hope for things promised and unseen.....that is all I've got.

Robert Van Voorst studied the opponents of early Christianity and concluded clearly:
“[N]o pagans and Jews who opposed Christianity denied Jesus’ historicity or even questioned it.” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, p. 15)
He elaborates:
“[I]f anyone in the ancient world had a reason to dislike the Christian faith, it was the rabbis. To argue successfully that Jesus never existed but was a creation of early Christians would have been the most effective polemic against Christianity … [Yet] all Jewish sources treated Jesus as a fully historical person … [T]he rabbis … used the real events of Jesus’ life against him” (Van Voorst, Jesus Outside, pp. 133–134.)
Jesus’ enemies unintentionally did Him a great service: they corroborated the accounts written about Him. They used the real events of Jesus’ life against Him, which you only do when you cannot deny that those events happened.

More.....
On the Sea of Galilee, Christ’s childhood town of Nazareth is still active today. In addition, ancient harbors matching the biblical record have been located in recent drought cycles. In fact, a first century Galilean fishing boat was recently unearthed from the mud and preserved. Although we have no idea who the boat belonged to, it matches the biblical record for the vessels used by Christ’s disciples.

Capernaum, a town often visited by Jesus, is widely excavated and protected. Specific sites of interest include the synagogue at Capernaum where Jesus cured a man with an unclean spirit and delivered the sermon on the bread of life, and the house of Peter where Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law and others.

Other archaeological sites involved in Christ’s ministry include Chorazin (where Jesus taught in the synagogue), Kursi (the swine miracle), Tabgha (loaves and fishes), the Mount of Beatitudes (Sermon on the Mount), Caesarea Philippi (Peter’s confession), and Jacob’s well where Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman.

Thanks for the put-down....

Thanks...ridiculous to you but not to me...It was still bad now that we look back.....for context, do not forget the times Scriptures were written....most slave were the indentured type...the institution of slavery was so deeply rooted in ancient culture that it could not be dismantled overnight. Old Testament scholar Gleason L. Archer notes: “As to the moral status of slavery in ancient times, it must be recognized that it was practiced by every ancient people of which we have any historical record: Egyptians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Syrians, Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Greeks, Romans, and all the rest.” Furthermore, Christian apologist Paul Copan states: “During the first century A.D., approximately 85 to 90 percent of Rome’s population consisted of slaves.” Slavery was viewed as playing a critical economic role for society. Nevertheless, the Old Testament Mosaic Law limited and regulated the practice and sought to correct its inhumane abuses (Exodus 20:10; 21:20-27). Unlike with slavery in other cultures, the masters in a biblical context did not have absolute rights over their slaves. Forms of slavery and servitude were permitted in the Old Testament, but it was never considered the moral ideal (Deuteronomy 15:18).
Servitude and slavery practiced in a biblical context bear little resemblance to the tyrannical type of slavery found in the American antebellum South and in other modern Western countries. Certain moderate forms of “servitude”—for example, indentured (voluntary) servitude—were considered morally beneficial before God under certain circumstances in the Old Testament. Examples of this are seen in voluntary indenturement in order to earn a living or to learn a trade. It could also include the indenturement of a criminal in order for the offender to render restitution. But in none of these moderate cases, nor even the more extreme case of foreigners captured by the Israelites in war, would the so-called slave or servant be viewed as a mere piece of property without human rights. Nor would the time of servitude be constituted as a life term of bondage (Deuteronomy 15:12-13). Many slaves in the ancient world, and especially those held by the Hebrews, were able to earn their freedom.

I said to all that Christians cannot prove the scriptures in God the Bible.

The Ten Commandments, the original Western core values.

Wrong. That was Paul that said that. He was always sliding something in that contradicted Jesus.

So why believe it? There's so much immorality in the bible that it's not a good aspiration to lead your life against anyway.

We have nothing from Jesus, whatever is written in the new testament purports to speak on behalf of Jesus and God;

''Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath; instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. 5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6And do this not only to please them while they are watching, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.

. Every church has a Paul that comes in and tries to usurp authority, and almost always strays (purposely) away from Jesus' message.

My question would be what exactly did Christianity bring to the table that wasn't already there?

It was this New Covenant brand of love that began to change the world. The citizens of the Roman Empire began to internalize this and embrace it. The empire began to change and then the world began to change. Something that was unprecedented happened. Something that had never happened before happened.

In his book, ‘The Triumph of Christianity’, Bart Ehrman…a world renowned New Testament manuscript scholar, but also an atheist…said, “Christianity not only took over an empire, it radically altered the lives of those living in it. It opened the door to public policies and institutions to tend to the poor, the weak, the sick, and the outcast as deserving members of society. It was a revolution that affected government practices, legislation, art, literature, music, philosophy, and—on the even more fundamental level—the very understanding of billions of people about what it means to be human. However one evaluates the merits of the case, whether the Christianization of the West was a triumph to be treasured or a defeat to be lamented, no one can deny it was the most monumental cultural transformation our world has ever seen.”

Maybe try Richard Tarnas- Harvard...He paints
a somewhat different perspective...and attributes
much change in the world to the secular breakaway/
growth and Pagan principles Xtianity adopted in
science and Law. Etc.
With 'heretic' greats like Copernicus ,Galileo, Kepler ,
Newton ,forging ahead with science despite Xtian
church resistance and persecution for defying their
wonky world progress debilitating theology.

It's really a 50/50 split whether the Roman empire became Xtian or Xtians became Greco-Romanised.

Wrong. Paul went off the reservation and came up with a bunch of stuff Jesus never said at the time he (Jesus) was walking the earth. Every church has a Paul that comes in and tries to usurp authority, and almost always strays (purposely) away from Jesus' message.

Socrates expressed the golden rule long before Christianity.

....

Yeah, millennia of indoctrination and forced belief never made any of it true. Thank god secularism (through science and recently governance) has brought us into better times.