• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    And then look at how Jesus’ disciples interpreted the command in relation to Greeks, Ethiopians, and… even slaves (the entire letter to Philemon deals with exactly this point, instructing the non-Jewish Philemon to treat his escaped slave Onesimus as a brother/kin, not as Romans treated their slaves).

    the letter to Philemon says nothing about how to treat slaves, only a request that Philemon spare’s Onesimus’s life. Onesimus was a run-away slave, and was to be executed for that. Onesimus had been serving with or for Paul, and Paul didn’t want to steal from Philemon (Lets be honest here, a large part of that decision was probably that if he was caught harboring an escaped slave… he’d be executed too.)

    The fucked up part here is that Paul didn’t send just the letter back. He made Onesimus carry it to face Philemon’s decision.

    At no point does the letter tell or ask or even suggest that Philemon release his other slaves (of which, Philomon had many, many more. Most of his workforce was likely slaves, in point of fact.

    As for in other letters, every time slavery is addressed, it’s in the context of “Slaves: obey your masters.” (Eph 6:5-9, Col 3:22-25, 1 Tim 6:1-2, Titus2:9-10, 1 Peter 2:18-20). These are all the verses I can find directly instructing people on slavery- both slaves and masters. (there’s loads of “slaves in christ” imagery, but whatever. these are direct instructions.)

    Ephesians is the only one that contains instructions to masters- and it’s not to free the slaves. It’s “Treat them fairly”. It’s not even “don’t beat them.”. I’ll remind you: that you have to instruct people to not beat the shit out of your slaves unfairly… they’re still beating the shit out of them on occasion.

    Ultimately, it’s clear that early christians never condemned slavery, and preferred to work with in the social structure it provided. There is no reason to believe Jesus saw anything wrong with slavery as an institution, because of the glaring silence. Which, you would expect of pretty much anyone living in the Near East during the Iron age (or most the world during that time, for that matter.

    Samaritans weren’t Israelites to the Jews, because they had lost their lineage and intermarried with the surrounding peoples. Just look at Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well.

    yeah. so like. they were all interbreeding like fuck bunnies during the babylonian exile. And after. if you’re going to hold the samaritans to that standard, gotta hold it to the rest, too, right?

    unless of course the idea that they had somehow become “corrupt” was less about any one thing and more about just shitty propaganda to justify crap like destroying the temple at Mount Gerizim. (happend in 128bce.) or, when the samaritans retaliated by desecrating the temple in jerusalem in 6 ce. (talk about holding a grudge.)

    There’s a lot of shit that happened between them. it’s complicated. but they were still israelites. Kind of like how there’s a lot of shit that happened between catholics and protestants, but they’re all still christians. except I don’t know that any one that desecrated the cathedral in rome with skulls. details, amiright?