Truth Unites - Atheist INCONSISTENCIES on Slavery in the Bible

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund responds to several atheist critics about slavery in the Bible. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

A few weeks ago, I put out a video on slavery in the Bible, and I was grateful to see some responses. I want to respond to one of them here. I'll put up a thumbnail of this video. It was over three hours long, so I won't go through it line by line. I just want to respond to a few points, and I am happy to dialogue further. They had talked about that. You know, we should talk, and I actually would really like to do that. I actually really like these guys, despite the fact that they're clearly exasperated in this video. So, but here for this video, what I want to do is basically two things. First, I want to work through and argue that there's inconsistencies in their critique of me. And then second, I want to pull back and look at the big

picture and say, was their refutation in the big picture, in the grand scheme of things, was it a successful response to me? So first, we'll kind of be in the trees, and then we'll kind of pull back and try to see the forest, if that makes sense. Feel free to skip ahead in the timestamps if you want. So the first inconsistency that I would want to point out here is this issue of listening to the other side. These guys are clearly irritated that their view is not being listened to sufficiently. And I'm sure that's true in many cases, you know, but they're very irritated. Josh Bowen, Dr. Josh Bowen, one of the people there is dropping F-bombs and holding his head in his hands. And he's clearly, you know, he seems to be almost breaking down with frustration at one point.

Like, the idea, you can hear, you could make, I just, you're going to, don't cry, Josh. Dr. Kip Davis calls me and others who make these kinds of arguments that I'm making a clown. We love to hear slavery is bad, so keep it up. But these guys are responding to our clowns. I can't say I disagree. Now, as much as I think this is not how we want to do dialogues across. our differences. I know they're not directing that at me personally. I actually understand how this can happen. I get the impression these guys, especially those two, Derek, maybe a little bit too. He's the

other one, that maybe they've been having these conversations for a long time. They've been making these points a lot. Probably, in fairness to them, they haven't been heated sufficiently in many conversations. And so the irritation can come in. And I understand this when you feel like you've made a point like, you know, 100 times and you're making it for the 100 and first time. And so I happen to be maybe the 101st occasion for something like that. I think part of how I probably gave offense is I didn't engage with Josh's book, so I feel kind of bad about that. So I bought it, and I've been working through this.

I haven't finished it, but I'm working through it. So, you know, it's a good book. I don't agree with the content, obviously. I'm going to argue against its content, but it's well organized. It's clearly written. It's definitely an important book for those of us on my side of this to engage with. So if I gave offense there, I'll try to engage his work more in the, in the future. But the inconsistency here is that in their irritation about their points not being

granted or listened to, they're not listening as carefully as they could be to the points that they're responding to. And I get the impression that, you know, it's like when you're just trying to scorn and mock and be contemptuous of something, you often will actually not understand it well. You won't listen very well. And that really happened here over and over, they're playing a clip, then they're responding, but they're not really actually listening carefully. I mean, so out of the gate, they're saying they think I have a PhD in philosophy, and then people in the comments are saying, you know, ah, living proof that a PhD in philosophy provides absolutely no expertise in ancient Irishman studies or textual criticism, which I had to

chuckle at, because I don't have a PhD in philosophy. I have done a little bit of work, not as much as Josh Bowen or Kipp in the Old Testament, but done some publishing in this area. So that was kind of funny. But this is the kind of thing, like, you know, those kind of factual errors just point after point. They're not listening carefully. They're playing a clip and then they're responding. But it's like, wait, you didn't actually listen and you're not responding to what I actually said. So just to draw attention to some examples of this, you know, the first substantive point, right out of the gate,

I was making a point about where does our sense that slavery is wrong come from? I went on for three or four minutes about this saying, in the ancient world, it's assumed as normal everywhere, Plato and Aristotle just taught that, of course, slavery is the natural way of things, people are fit to be slaves, this kind of thing. I'll play the tail end of my point, and then listen to how they respond to this. If you say, for example, well, it's just obvious. You know, I just sometimes people respond. They say, it's just obvious. Of course we can see that slavery is a bad thing. But I think that's naive about the problem here. That wasn't obvious to the vast majority of human culture throughout history. Most, we only see that as obvious today because of a

very specific process of evolution in human civilization. And that process differentiates us from most of pre-modern humanity and certainly from the animal kingdom. I mean, this is the challenge for the atheist is in our long evolutionary history, where did this idea of like universal human rights? That was never a thing. Where did that suddenly come in? Where do you get that from? I'm going to come back to that at the end, not necessarily trying to resolve that point right. I'm trying to kind of flag that because what I want to start arguing now is that Christianity has played a catalytic role in the process of us coming to see slavery is obviously wrong, especially through its doctrine of the image of God and also through its understanding of the gospel.

What it says is the good news of Jesus Christ. And so the concern just to make visible here is if you don't believe in that, you do that have to give some other alternative. for what do you ground this belief in human equality in? And I'll come back to that at the end. I just kind of want to flag that at the beginning here. In other words, another way to say this is, you know, it's a fair question to ask, how could the Bible tolerate slavery? That's what I'm going to try to address now.

But it's also fair to ask, how did it ever come to be that there's a society that doesn't tolerate it? That's a bit of the story I want to tell in this video. So... Um, is it just me? Or was that, and I didn't catch this the first time around, or the second or the third time around, but is it just me? Or is it kind of a strange point to make that one of the things that separates humans from the animal kingdom is slavery? Like, that's a good thing or something? Well, like the way he had, the way he had had, uh, yeah, so the way he was, he was, um, uh, couching that.

It sure sounded like, uh, like the, uh, you know, the animals, what one of the things that separates us from animals is that we don't, we don't pursue slavery. So, so, but I don't know. It was weird. I thought that was weird. And everyone should know anytime you're starting your argument with Gleason Archer. So listen, listen, no shade on Gleason Archer. He was a, he was a fine Old Testament scholar, did his work at Harvard. But guys, this was back in the 1940. A lot has happened since the 1940s, Josh.

I mean, you've published two books on slavery since 1940s. So number one, Gleason Archer did not write that article in 1942. He wrote it in 1982. This is, you know, I'll put up the quote I put it up on the screen. The date is right there. But more basically, the larger point that Gleeson Archer is making is not time-sensitive. nothing has changed in the scholarship on this point. So bringing up this is a few decades old is kind of irrelevant.

And then there's this response where he's saying, you know, Kip Davis was saying, is it just me or is it a strange point to make that one of the things that separates us from the animal kingdom is slavery? And it's like you just get this awareness. They're not listening. The point was not that animals and humans are different

with respect to slavery or something like that. You could just, you could go back and watch the full clip, I didn't want to bore people right out of the gate here by showing like a five-minute clip. You can watch the full thing. The point I was making is actually a really worrisome question that everybody should think about. Everybody should lose sleep over this question. It's so important. Why do we think that slavery is wrong?

Where did that come from and what grounds that? That's a really tough and important question. Because basically, that conviction is extremely rare prior to the modern West in our pre-modern human cultures, and our evolutionary history, et cetera. So it's totally fair to say, where did that come from? That's an extremely important question. Of course, you know, this is, Tom Holland makes this point in Dominion. I'll talk about him.

I've talked about him before. Jordan Peterson is in his debates with Sam Harris is always talking about this. The values of the modern West have a certain context. It's not obvious how they survive outside of that context and so forth. This is a really important question, and they're just gliding over it. They're not really taking this with sufficient seriousness. They're not really listening because they don't really get into that very much. And this kind of thing happens a lot.

Let me give another example. When they're going through the various exegetical points of these Old Testament laws about slavery, so often they're not really listening to what I'm saying and they're not aware of what I'm responding to. So, for example, they don't notice that I'm frequently responding to specific claims made by atheist YouTubers. For example, Mind Shift had a point where he was basically saying Hebrew slavery and transatlantic slave trade are the same thing to a T. So he just said it. The transatlantic slave was unjust. That is exactly to a T what the Israelites were doing.

They're not taking from within their own country. They're going to a different country or tribe or people group or ethnic group, etc. They're going outside of their own area to take people and make them slaves as property. It's the exact same thing. How can anyone excuse that? And so this is one of the things I'm responding to, and I'm saying no. You know, Hebrew slavery and the transatlantic slave trade, slavery in ancient Israel, slavery in the American South before the Civil War, they're not the same.

Slavery in the Bible was not that sinister as the transatlantic slave trade. And I pointed out reasons for this. You know, it's not race-based. It's not man stealing and so forth in the Bible. And Mindshift, Mindshift in his response, Brandon from the channel Mindshift, he didn't admit it, but his response to me did actually seem to concede that he had overspoken about that because ultimately the position he was defending in that video was more careful, didn't have these kinds of overstatements, or another one of the claims he was making was this one.

The things that were allowed to happen to these individuals, you could beat your indentured servants as long as they got up the next day. You could totally mess them up as long as you didn't dismember their body. You could rape them. You could force them to do anything you wanted to. Very, very few rules. And you got to do that for seven years. So I'm responding and saying, no, you can't just treat your slave any old way you want. You can't just rape your slave and that's fine and so forth. It's not that sinister. And I gave arguments for this like Job 31, for example, clearly reflects an understanding. You can't mistreat your servant. And the rationale in verse 15. is that we have the same maker.

This is a passage. I don't think Mindshift really treated with sufficient seriousness, because its inclusion in the Hebrew Bible tells us about the values and the norms of the Israelites. Then I talked about Exodus 21 and how this, verses 26 and 27,

and how this is a prohibition of physical abuse against a slave. By the way, on this point, let me make a point about Exodus 21 now, even though I'm going to come back to this at the end, we talk about the big picture. These are case laws. I talked about this in my initial video.

Case laws are designed to be representative, not exhaustive. So it's a terrible reading of these case laws to say, oh, well, you know, so you can't knock out the tooth or the eye, but you can harm other parts of the body or do other things. You know, you can harm the nose or you can cut off a finger or you can treat them any other way you want. The only thing that's prohibited is those two body parts. This is a very cynical and just bad reading. And this was reflected in Josh and Derek and Kipp's video as well. I agree that this is an Iron Age ancient Near Eastern form of attempting to protect against abuse.

100%. That's the purpose of the law. But let's be clear about what's being said in the law. You can't knock out an eye. You can't knock out a tooth. You can't hit him in the face. or you know you shouldn't be hitting him in the face right and if you do and you get caught there's a consequence for that but there's so many ways so many ways to inflict injury and harm

and irreparable irrevocable abuse on people without knocking out a tooth or an eye i mean starvation could be one think about it's no law against that you don't get to eat for the next four days, five days. I'm not feeding you because you did this on top of hitting you on your back, your legs, your butt, your feet, whatever other area I can do. You know, imagine, you know, I'm just being totally creative and thinking of ways that other than that, it's not in the text. It's not in my law.

You can't imagine people weren't doing it. I'm sure it's there. Now, the reason this is a cynical reading is because case laws are not compiled as an exhaustive guide. So it really isn't as sinister as, they're making it. This would be like saying, well, Exodus 2112 says that whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. Therefore, they were allowed to kick a man to death or shoot him with an arrow or poison their food and so forth. And this is not how we read Old Testament case

laws. When Exodus 21 prohibits the tooth or the eye, this is representative of physical harm. Here's how one commentary on Exodus puts it. Modern societies generally have operas. for exhaustive law codes. That is, every action modern society wishes to regulate or prohibit must be specifically mentioned in a separate law. Under the expectations of this exhaustive law system, state and or federal law codes run to thousands of pages and address thousands of individual actions by way of requirement or restriction or control or outright banning of those actions.

By this approach, all actions are permitted that are not expressly forbidden or regulated. And then it talks about how people will, you know, therefore be able to use this to find technicalities or loopholes and so forth. And then it continues. Ancient laws did not work this way. They were paradigmatic, giving models of behavior and models of prohibitions or punishments relative to those behaviors and they made no attempt to be exhaustive. Ancient laws gave guiding principles or samples rather than complete descriptions of all things regulated. Ancient people were expected to be able to extrapolate from what the sampling of laws did say to the general behavior, the laws in their totality pointed toward.

Ancient judges were expected to extrapolate from the wording provided in the laws that did exist to all other circumstances and not to be foiled in their jurisprudence by any such concepts as technicalities or loopholes. And it goes on about that for a while. And then it's basically saying, to finish off this long quote, God's revealed covenant law to Israel was paradigmatic. No Israelite can say, the law says, I must make restitution for stolen oxen or sheep. but I stole your goat. I don't have to pay you back. And he gives several other examples like this.

And it goes on for a while. If you want to check out that quote, you can see the book there. It's good. And it's talking about how Jesus is then right to sum up the entire law as love for God and love for neighbor. Here's another commentator on Exodus 21. Only injury to an eye or tooth are mentioned, but these terms clearly are meant to refer back to the fuller expression of the law of retribution in verses 23 to 25. I'll put up these verses where you can see the immediate context, which is identifying various forms of injury. Now, if you might wonder, well, why a tooth? If you're going to choose certain body parts that are representative of the whole body, why that one? Here's how Chris Wright puts it.

Exodus 21, 26 to 27, protected a slave from bodily harm, the mention of a tooth, shows that it was not just because of the slave's work capacity was impaired. There is here a deeper concern for the personal. humanity and physical integrity of the slave. In such circumstances, a slave could appeal to the court of elders against his own master. This too would be a unique right in the ancient world. More on Exodus 21 to finish, but for now you can see what is happening here. Okay. So here's the chain of events. Mind shift is over speaking. And he's saying, oh, you know, the transatlantic slave trade and ancient Hebrew servanthood are the exact same to a T. Or at least Leviticus 25, foreign slaves,

are an exact same to a T. You can rape your slave, no problem, and so forth. And I'm pushing back and saying, no, look at Exodus 21. It wasn't that sinister. Now, so then what Kip and Josh and Derek do is they come along and they overlook the fact that I'm responding to mind shift.

And they take my words, it's not that sinister, as a kind of general statement about slavery, as if I were saying, oh, slavery's not that bad. And then they're saying, oh, this makes our skin crawl and so forth. In our notes here, it's not so sinister.

This made my skin crawl. Yeah. Right. So I wrote a note to cite some of the antebellum laws and follow them with, It's Not So Sinister. So then they go through a bunch of antebellum slave laws and they're making fun of this, It's Not So Sinister line. And to me, this comes across like just wanting to score points rather than wanting to have an honest

back and forth exchange because they're ignoring the fact that my comment, it's not so sinister, this was a response to the various overstatements that I've just documented. Okay. So in other words, if you think of it like this, like imagine 10 is the worst form of slavery, absolute no rights whatsoever for the slave, worst conditions imaginable, and one is the mildest form of slavery, just very voluntary indentured servitude kind of thing. Just for the sake of argument, suppose that, debt slavery among ancient fellow Hebrew people was a five. Now, you might say it's a nine or it's a two,

but just for the sake of argument, say it's a five. And then suppose someone comes along and says, it was a nine point nine. Well, you're allowed to say, no, it's not a nine point nine. It's not that sinister without someone coming along and saying, oh, so you're saying five is a great thing. You see, the intention is not to minimize the issue here. The intention, mention is historical accuracy. It's just this simple. When someone says something that's an overstatement and kind of rhetorically loaded like transatlantic slave trade, ancient Israel, Leviticus 25, exact same thing to a T, were allowed to respond. And so I think that was very clear. So this is, again, an example of they're not, they're not really, if I may say, retreating the opposing position

with sufficient respectfulness, carefulness, they're kind of gliding over the nuances. Here's another example of not listening. Yeah. You anticipated this. Therefore what? Memorize it. When you, and I'm obviously talking to the audience here. When you encounter someone that says this, ask them a question, therefore what?

Because what would he say? It's okay because it wasn't race-based? I hope not. I mean, he said earlier, right? This is nothing more than trying to wash down, to whitewash, to soften up, coming into the text, right? Coming into these passages, whoa, whoa, whoa, we can't make these connections to the antebellum south.

Yeah, you can. Okay, so if the question is, if it's not race-based, therefore what, the answer to that is, therefore the claim on the table is wrong. When MindShift says it was race-based, that's simply incorrect, and we're allowed to point out the error. You know, that's the therefore what? You know, I'm responding to these claims. Another example of not listening carefully came around.

They're literally shouting at the camera in unison. They're not in anger. I think they were probably trying to be kind of comedic with it. But they're shouting the word equivocation together in unison to make the point that the word slavery can be used in different senses. But the clip that they were responding to of me talking, I was actually making that exact same point. So listen to my point and then listen to their response. But the important thing to note is just how much variation there is in how slavery has functioned or servanthood has functioned throughout different cultures. And so the vocabulary becomes really important here.

when we hear the word slavery. Okay. How do we decide how to translate a word from Hebrew or Greek? Kip? Well, usually context helps a lot. And not just like not just the biblical context. The way lexicographers work, the way that we decide or the way they,

they come to decisions about what a word means is by basically exhaustively examining word usage across the ancient world in that specific language, every text that they can get their hands on in order to see how this word is used in this specific context with these particular prepositions or conjunctions included in this particular clause. phrase. That's how we decide how to translate a word. Did I miss anything, Josh? No. And

here's the thing, folks. Specifically when it comes to the word slave, here's the problem. It's like the word run. It's very easy to equivocate. I want everybody to

let's all say it together. Equivocate. Oh, just equivocate. equivocate. Sorry, sorry, two, one,

equivocate. Equivocate. We practiced that, no, we're so good at this, guys. No, I kind of laugh at this

as well. I don't mean to be, I don't think they meant to be nasty or anything. I think I would enjoy talking with these guys, but you can see

they're not listening very carefully. The whole point of my comments was very much to the same effect that the word slave can be used in different senses. We need to be careful

that we don't use one sense of term and confuse it with another, you know, that's kind of my point. So this is just lots of ways where I think their response is inconsistent. The exasperation they're showing to the other side about their points not getting through, they're actually not allowing the other side's points to get through to them. And so the passage of ideas back and forth is not happening in either direction here. They're not listening carefully. Another example of inconsistency is they emphasize the importance of reading the Bible in context, rightly so. They put a lot of emphasis on that at various

points. You saw Kipp's comments about semantics and lexicology and so forth. All that is to the good, but then they're faulting me for actually doing that precise thing in my treatment of this issue. By way of reminder, my video had made six feces, which I'll put up here on the screen so you can see. And basically, they focused on one, two, and four in their response. And I can totally understand leaving off number five, which is about the New Testament, if that's not your area of expertise, as well as number six, which was about church history, if that's not your area of expertise. But I think skipping over point three was unfortunate, because that's really important for context. But they spent a lot of time faulting me for the amount of time I took on points one through three. So I got to the Old Testament laws about slavery, about 26 minutes into my video, and that was point four.

and the video as a whole was an hour or 10. And they faulted me for this as though, you know, saying that my comments earlier about Genesis 1 and about ancient history and about hermeneutical principles are a red herring, they were called. And Josh at one point was saying basically stick to the topic at hand and he's saying he wants to shout this at the screen. Stick to the goddamn topic is what I wanted to say over and over again to this video.

Gavin, like you seem like a supervised guy. but like I'm saying to the video like, oh my God, just do slavery. Stop saying, well, how do you know? I mean, it isn't, anyway, these are internal critiques that atheists are doing, right? Or skeptics are doing. Now, I get the point of making an internal critique. Okay, fair enough. But not all of my comments were just about asking an atheist to ground something.

The vast majority of my comments during that first 25 minutes were about context, historical context. and literary context. So reading the Old Testament in light of the time at which it was written and in connection with the rest of the Bible. And I would basically say that that's a completely fair and important thing to emphasize. You know, historical context, it's like if you're studying the book of Colossians, you need to know something about Colossi in the first century. If you're studying these Old Testament laws, you need to know about the ancient world and what slavery functioned like. That's one of the things Josh does well in this book. He gives a lot of attention to the other surrounding nations. And then reading Genesis 1,

you know, the second point of my original video is hugely important. That's hugely important for context. It's even more important than like the first page of a novel is for understanding the rest of the novel, or the first line of a poem is for understanding the rest of the poem. because in the Bible, Genesis 1 and 2 are giving you creation. Before there's evil, this is telling you from the author's standpoint. What is the ideal? So that's really important for context. And then reading the Old Testament laws in light of the rest of scripture is also a part

of reading it in context. So Jesus, for example, as a Christian, I think Jesus is kind of the climactic point of the Bible. you know, if there's like a, in a novel, if there's like a turning climactic moment, I would say that that is Jesus for the Bible. And so when you have Jesus saying, teaching, what he teaches in Matthew 1988, I think, you know, this was one of the things I went over in point three that they're skipping over, but this is so important for context. To, to, there's a principle here where basically it's legitimate to say, maybe this principle that Jesus gives is in, you know, there's a principle. just about divorce or isn't only relevant to the issue of divorce because it's not just divorce

that is affected by the hardness of heart. And Jesus is saying some of these laws, in this case, Deuteronomy 24, were given because of the hardness of heart. But from the beginning, it was not so. That wasn't God's ideal of creation. Jesus understood that the ancient Near East was a brutal place. It was an absolute jungle, and it was. And so his point that some of Moses's laws were accommodated to that time period, I think it's totally fair and reasonable. If someone disagrees with that, fine, but it's on point. It's not a red herring to talk about that. We're allowed to try to read these Old Testament case laws in their historical context, Genesis 1, Matthew 19, the context of the ancient world, et cetera. Another point of inconsistency is when they're,

sort of, Josh was kind of chiding me on my tone at one point. But here's the problem. People look at verse 21 and say, oh, how terrible. You mean, you can be... I just, I just... I wasn't going to do this. Sorry. Hate these voices, Gavin. I know you don't mean anything by them, but they come across so poorly. Oh, look how terrible. Now, I think what I've already shown in this video is sufficient to show the inconsistency here. So, you know, my slightly elevated tone gets gets pointed out when I'm describing a hypothetical position, and yet, you know, they're like cussing and angry and so forth. It's like it kind of feels like you're going two miles an hour

over the speed limit. Someone pulls up beside you and says, hey, you're speeding. Watch it. And they're cautioning you. And then they take off at 45 miles an hour faster than you're going. So they're now speeding by 47 miles an hour. And it's kind of like, you know, at that point, you lose your right to try to correct the person who's just going slightly over. So, I thought that was actually kind of humorous. But anyway, okay, so these are some of the points where I just think their criticisms are inconsistent, and they're actually not dealing with the opposing side with sufficient carefulness. Okay.

So now let's step back and say, you know, from those particular points and from their comments in general, and this is the kind of thing we can then work through more line by line if we do a dialogue, were they ultimately successful? In the grand scheme of things, are they undercutting my point? Did they successfully refute my video? well, I'll put back up the six theses I had argued for. Really what they targeted is number four primarily. They didn't challenge, obviously they didn't address three, five, or six.

They conceded one. You know, despite a lot of negative comments, Josh actually granted that early on that basically, yeah, slavery was taken for granted everywhere in the ancient world. So basically, if I could identify the nub of the disagreement, it would be point. This is where we really disagree. This is what we have to work through. And just to state it succinctly, did the nation of Israel do better, okay, than the other nations in the ancient Near East with respect to the issue of slavery? Is it basically the same, or are they making improvements upon the general law, practice,

and thought of the ancient Near East? Now, it's not just me, as they pointed out, who takes the alternative view and, and says, yes, absolutely, the nation of Israel made improvements. It was far more humane. It was good for the world. If you're going to be a slave in the ancient world and the ancient eras, you'd much rather be a slave in ancient Israel than in these other nations. That's a common view. In my video, I quoted Sarnah and Christopher Wright discussing laws like the protection against physical harm in Exodus 21, which I've already commented on a little bit. I'll comment on more now. And the protection of runaway foreign slaves in Deuteronomy 23. I put up these quotes. You can see the way they are

talking about this. They're saying this is rare. This is unprecedented. There's nothing like this in the ancient Near East. And what Josh and Derek and Kipp are basically going to say is they're disagreeing. They're saying, no, that isn't rare at all. This is just par for the course. And so, it's not just so people know, it's not just Sarnah and Wright. Here's from the Anchor Bible Dictionary's essay on slavery, and they're right. I have not read that entire thing. But what they cited from it doesn't really dispute the point here. It's still making the same basic point. You can pause the video and see this is different. This is unique. This is new. I also referenced statements from this statement from Walter Eichrot about Exodus 20 to 23. I'll put this up on the screen.

I also mentioned several others, particularly about the Jubilee principle. And I'll put up some of those examples. These are all just quotes I went through in this point. You know, I made this point. And I made the same point about the doctrine of the image of God in Genesis 1. And I documented how many other ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian creation texts tended to conceive of the royal figures as made in God's image. Genesis 1 democratizes that. I quoted Tom Holland, talking about how Genesis 1 was like a hammer in the hand of the abolitionist and so forth. So this is all just what I went through. And my point is that the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament laws under Moses were making improvements and they were introducing things and they were setting a

good trajectory and so forth. And they're disagreeing with that, but I don't think they've actually undercut that point. So, you know, they're pointing out that other nations had laws to protect the slaves in some way or another as well. Fine. I didn't say the improvement is from as bad as possible to as good as possible. I just said it's a significant improvement. Right. So let me give these two examples that come up from the Sarnah and write quotes. Deuteronomy 23, Exodus 21. These are great examples of laws that do seem to me unprecedented. And even just carefully going through his appendices and so forth,

I'm not seeing anything anywhere that's comparable to these. So starting with Exodus 21, in Appendix B here, Josh lists all the battery laws from the ancient Near East. And it's true that there's lots of laws in other cultures. in the ancient Erease that limit physical harm done to a neighbor, but I'm not aware of anything where that's comparable to Exodus 21, 26 to 27. So on page 547 of Josh's book, I have the second edition, so that's the page number I'm quoting. He has a law in the laws of Ernama or Ernamu. This is an ancient Mesopotamian text and says if you break off another man's tooth,

you have to pay 30 shekels. Okay, so there's a tooth law. But it doesn't say, slave, and it's just a payment. And it's the same with the laws of Hamarabi on page 562. He cites another law about if you knock out the tooth of a commoner, you pay 20 shekels. When you get to the Hittite laws, here is from page 569. If anyone blinds a male, okay, so now we're here with slaves. If anyone blinds a male or female slave or knocks out his tooth, he shall pay 10 shekels of silver. So this would be similar to the eye or the tooth damage. And here the payment is 10 shekels of silver. So you pay up, right? This is what I had pointed out in my original video, is that a lot of these laws, you know, you might pay the master of the slave or you might make restitution in some way or

another, but there's nothing like Exodus 21, 26 to 27, where the slave goes free. You knock out the tooth, the tooth of the slave, and you set them free. There's no law like that in any of these other. cultures. So the point that Sarnah made is simply correct, so far as I can see. Going through, I'll just read from page 563 of his book here. I've got it in front of me. So I think these are from the laws of Hamarabi. Yes. So he's got all these laws. You know, the blinded eye of the slave. If he should blind the eye of an Anwilu's slave or break the bone of an Anwilu's slave, he shall weigh and deliver one half of his value in silver. and, you know, give a few other examples, but this is what you're seeing is exactly what I said.

You know, Exodus 21, 26, 27 is unique. And these other laws are making restitution to give, you pay up some money. But there's nothing that says in these other cultures, if you knock out the tooth or if you do physical harm to slave goes three. That's why all these scholars are saying this is a unique passage. I already earlier in this video quoted Chris Wright talking about this passage. I'm not aware of anything like that. What Josh wants to say about Exodus 21, 26 to 27, is that, well, it doesn't say the master's own tooth or eye is destroyed.

It doesn't say an eye for an eye in this case. Okay, fair enough, fine, but the point still remains. This is better than all the other ancient Near Eastern cultures. I mean, so again, I'm trying to abstract to the big picture here to make the point really clearly. I've learned I have to emphasize and repeat things sometimes not for them, but for viewers, because sometimes people don't, so let me just say it, say it really clearly again here. There's no law in these other ancient Near Eastern cultures comparable to Exodus 21 versus 26 to 27 that I can find that I, that Josh discusses in his book or I can find anywhere.

The protection, the physical protection for slaves in ancient Israel was unique. Okay, so that, that, that, I don't think they've undercut that point that I can tell. Same with Deuteronomy 23. This was the other passage that came up. Chris Wright talked about this, how unique this was. Josh addresses that in chapter seven of his book, first of all, where he's basically surveying, surveying scholars to show that this is talking about foreign runaway slaves. And that's, I think, that we seem to agree on that.

That's what I argued for in my video as well. And then he addresses this again in chapter five. this is the chapter of his book where he's comparing ancient Near Eastern laws about slavery and the Old Testament, and he gets to laws about runaway slaves on pages 254 to 261, and he does seem to acknowledge that Deuteronomy 23 is unique, but he says because it's addressing a unique circumstance. Quote, there are many laws concerning the movement or escape of a slave in the ancient Near Eastern collections, but none concern the apparent nuance that is seen in Deuteronomy 23, 15, to 16,

where a slave escapes from a foreign country into their country. Okay. Then as he proceeds, he's basically giving, he gives one other possible law in a different circumstance where a mistreated slave perhaps could be returned or not returned if they'd been mistreated and stuff. But he admits it's a fragmentary text and it's addressing a different, it's not a foreign servant or slave.

But ultimately he wants to say this isn't, this might sound more, humanitarian, but it isn't as humanitarian as it's sometimes held up to be, because it's really a law against having extradition treaties with Israel's neighbors. So here's my question. How do you know that? How do you know that Deuteronomy 23 is not being so humanitarian? Here's the passage. You shall not give up to his master, a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns. Wherever it suits him, you shall not wrong him. Why read this so cynically? You know, why not take those final words, you shall not wrong him, and interpret them in light of the mega

theme of the entire Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, namely you were foreigners in Egypt and you are now free. So remember the foreigners who are among you. I put up passages like Leviticus 29 and Exodus 10, and this comes up over and over and over in these books. Love your neighbor as yourself. Take care of the vulnerable party. That is a theme. So why not interpret Deuteronomy 23 in light of that? At the very least, would Josh acknowledge he's making a judgment call here in kind of downplaying

the possibility of compassion that is reflected in this law? His book is purporting to just present a scholarly consensus on these things, but there's plenty of scholars who would read this passage different. I mentioned Chris Wright as one example. For example, here's another. Here's a less cynical way to read Deuteronomy 23. Quote, the present provision, that's these verses, continues the humanitarian trajectory expressed toward Israelite slaves in chapter 15 and the openness to non-Israelites in the Assembly of Yahweh. But the magnanimity of verse 16 is extraordinary. the Israelite must not only let fugitive slaves reside among them, but also allows them to choose

a place in any town that seems good to them, nor may the Israelites exploit and oppress them. The Hebrew word refers to, this is for harm, when at the end it says you shall not harm him, refers to any kind of mistreatment by which the owner takes advantage of the person's alien status. In effect, foreign slaves who fled to Israel were free to live anywhere without fear. Now, so, but here's the thing, even if you read this verse as cynically as possible, at the end of the day, what I said and what I quoted Chris Wright as saying, and what Daniel Block is saying there, is simply true. Deuteronomy 23 is unique.

There's nothing like it. Nothing has been said that undercuts the claim of advancement here. If God's people in Israel had practiced this law consistently, they would have been a safe haven. in the entire region for runaway slaves. And it's actually really hard for me to read that one cynically. It seems like there's not what would be the benefit of doing that other than what is it explicit in the text of don't harm that person. So I would basically say, I don't think they've really undercut my claim.

I mean, we could get into the details and we could work on the question of extent. To what extent did the nation of the nation. of Israel do better with respect to slavery than the laws of Hamarabi and other texts like this. Okay, you know, it's a fair discussion. You know, we work through things. I'm definitely not saying it's like night versus day. Okay. We believe in common grace.

We believe all nations have some good laws and so forth. But I am saying it made a significant improvement. I don't think anything has undercut that claim. That would be my statement on the big picture. I don't think they've actually, for all the scorn of their video, I don't think they actually undercut the basic claim. Now, two final comments. Number one, I admit that I'm biased. I absolutely love the Bible. I'm a Christian. I'm an apologist. So I admit that I'm coming to it from that angle. I don't think it's wrong necessarily to do that. You just try to have to be honest about your biases,

right? To me, Christianity is like oxygen. It's hope. I'm eager to defend it because I think it's good, so I don't claim to be neutral. But I have to say, I think that there is apologetics that happens in the other direction. I think what they, what Josh and Kip and Derek are doing is a kind of counter-apologetics. They're not neutral either, okay? And that's fine, too. None of us need to be neutral. But they're trying, my honest take is they're reading the Bible more cynically than is necessary and not acknowledging some of the good things that came about there, I would say, if you're an atheist, you should still be glad. And even if you're an atheist because you think the issue of slavery in the Bible is a falsification for Christianity being true, you should still be glad.

If like me, you're against all slavery, you should still be glad the Bible came into existence at all. You should still be glad the nation of Israel existed because it did. It did good in the world in its overall effect on this topic and on so many others. So here's the final thing to kind of stemming from that final comment is this is where I think the discussion ultimately gets to. I understand they're trying to make internal critiques. Those are fine so far as they go. Ultimately and at the end of the day, we have to get out of the internal critique and live life. And so the larger question I think is fair to return to is what I've suggested they haven't wrestled with seriously enough from what I can see from their

video. And that is why do we think slavery is wrong at all? One of the reasons I love Christianity, I mean, I fully admit, Christianity is everything to me. It is oxygen. I couldn't make it through this world without it. So I fully admit that. One of the reasons I love it so much is it gives me a moral framework and a moral foundation for something like the value of human equality. Okay. If I could give my life to help fight against human trafficking and to reduce slavery in the world, I would gladly give my life for that. And my Christian faith informs that because I would say the doctrine of creation and the

image of God is a powerful resource for that. I'm great. In other words, this value that I think I share with Josh. and Kip and Derek, from what I can tell, we all are against slavery. Okay? My Christian faith gives me resources for that, because creation in the image of God means every single human being has value that is irrespective of their talents or their skills.

There's something inherent and intrinsic that creates a sense of equality, that everybody has this kind of same baseline, dignity, and value. If I were an atheist, I would feel as though I'm losing. this massive resource, because I find it extremely hard to see how that is sustained in an atheistic worldview. I don't see how you don't slip into how Plato and Aristotle thought. But of course, human equality is just a myth. Of course that's not true. Another resource is Christ. Okay, Jesus said, I came to set the captives free in Luke four. That's mainly, I think, talking about spiritual captivity, but it has implications for every area of our lives, including how we treat something

like physical slavery. And when you see Christ, so Mark 1045, a verse I often go back to in my life, even the son of man, that's Jesus, didn't come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Some that went up by saying this. The basic Christian message is God became a slave out of love to save us. That's the big picture talking about seeing the forest, right? That's Christianity in a nutshell. God became a... man, and he died to save us out of love. Now, if I were to become an atheist, I would feel I'm losing this massive resource to help fight against slavery and to help fight for the, and to help champion human dignity and kindness and love, you know? To me, Christianity is oxygen to that effort,

just as it's oxygen to every other thing in my life. And I think atheism, if I looked on the other wrote, and I really think it through. I see it as just merciless in stripping away things like universal human dignity, an objective transcendent meaning that guides life, the transcendent value of love. I know atheists are very loving people oftentimes, but I'm talking about the ontological basis for these things. What's at the bottom of reality? I don't think those are light problems. Actually, historic, thoughtful atheists have really recognized the devastation that is wrought. Read like Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialists and people like that, or Nietzsche and so forth. The old historic atheists, they're like figureheads of atheism,

they got this problem. They saw the devastation that is unleashed when you don't have a kind of transcendent reference for these values that we do champion in the modern West. So my comment to onlookers is, don't be so quick to discard the Bible. because of tough passages. This is like climbing up a ladder, and then you kick the ladder away, and you have no appreciation for the ladder. It has played a catalytic role in getting us to the modern day. The abolitionist movement simply was religious. Genesis 1 was the hammer in their hand.

And at least give Tom Holland's amazing book Dominion careful consideration before you make a decision about these things. I think a lot of people, they jump off the ship too fast. They see challenging texts in the Bible about slavery or whatever. I'm going to do my video on the conquest of Canaan in a few weeks, and they jump off and leave off the Bible way too fast without this sense of proportion that comes in from historical context. All right, I'm going into Baptist preacher mode. So I used to be a Baptist minister.

And I'm still serving in local church context. It's not really a Baptist church, but. so I'll stop. But hopefully, hopefully this was productive in a larger dialectic that is not yet over. I really do actually like these guys.

I think we'd have a fun conversation. So let's talk. Let's talk more. But hopefully this is productive in the meantime along the way. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you guys think in the comments.

We'll see you next time.