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What is “ethnocentrism”? Ethnocentrism is the natural tendency to understand other cultures by comparing it to their own, your culture is us, and theirs them. By recognizing our natural tendencies towards bias rather than outright ignoring them is the preferred approach when interpreting scripture. Ethnocentrism isn’t just on a cultural level, it exists also on an ideological level as well, many of the early Church’s teachings had elements of Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy in their dogmatics. Others have gone as far as to apply modern political and economic ideologies to scripture, this ended up as modern liberation theology and the so-called “Radical Christianity,” a postmodern critical theory of Christianity.

The Orthodox Church with its many national patriarchates does interpret scripture through the language that is spoken in said patriarchate yet they are limited by the very medium which the information is conveyed. The Church has made it clear that phyletism, ethnic tribalism, is heresy after the Bulgarian Patriarchate opened a church in Constantinople which was only open to Bulgarians. Because of the natural tendency to be ethnocentric, I find that individual interpretation should be done with care, I would say that using academic biblical standards is the most fool-proof method against interpretations which might go too far.

This was my favorite lecture so far because of the portion where we talked about biblical economics, I’m an economics major. The situation we talked about with ancient peoples selling themselves to slavery in times of need was a crazy thing to think about, even if we did talk about how slavery wasn’t as bad then. When I think of American society and really all of western society the number one priority I think of is our civil liberties, to give them up is the very last thing I would do on this planet. When you really dive into it and think about the moral differences in today’s society and then it makes sense. We discussed a lot of the differences between now and then in class, but for our morals to be so different when we come from the same religious roots is fascinating. It doesn’t seem like God would change the things he wants humans to practice so this begs the question of who’s truly following God’s word best.

The First Commandment “You shall have no other gods before me,” is the first commandment for a reason. By making it the first commandment, this places the rest of the commandments in the context of the first, perhaps making it the root of all law. With God as the root, this gives value to upholding the law, to uphold it is now the objective good. We are of course called to uphold the “spirit of the law” rather than the law itself as individuals since sin is individual, not collective. These laws were formulated as natural theology, the Judeans certainly believed that basic ethics such as not killing, stealing, and the like should be enforced before the emergence of Abrahamic ideology.

Because of the commandments as products of natural promulgation of Jewish ethics, they were already the cultural norm. To go against these laws was to be a social outcast thus, simple social shunning was frequent until the situation was rectified. Is revenge ever justified in the Old Testament? It is never justified for man to take revenge on someone if the Commandments are broken, God speaks of taking vengeance (Dt. 32:35) but it is justified. The Apostle Paul writes in his epistle to the Romans “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God: for it is written,” (Rms. 12:19). By separating man from God in justification, we understand that enforcing the commandments for the sake of vengeance is never justified.

During the class on Tuesday, we discussed slavery and the Bible.  Now, the word has a bit of a different connotation to what we know as American slavery, however I still feel like it is a bit problematic to just sweep it to the side.  We know slavery as the buying and selling of people against their will, that’s what happened more modern-day and that’s what the current definition is.  However, slavery back then was more of indentured servitude – people working to pay off their debts when say, a year of crops goes bad and they can’t make money back.  This is vastly different from the slavery we know, the times were completely different and this doesn’t constitute the Bible “promoting” slavery.  However, if it is so different than slavery we know now, why are we not using a separate word in the translations is my question?  We know what they mean through context and through discussion, but had I never listened to the discussion on Tuesday I probably would not have come to the conclusion that it was indentured servitude to pay off debts, and not the form of slavery that we’re more familiar with.  Of course in the grand scheme of things it does not mean much, but I do find it interesting that even though slavery back then was different, since the word and connotation has evolved we haven’t changed anything about how it is worded/printed.

In class we discussed slavery within the Bible. Many people seem shocked when realizing that even the Bible speaks and shows slavery throughout history. An important part that I’m glad was brought up was the thought of how slavery was most likely more indentured servantry rather than colonized slavery. As can be seen through the past within the United States, slavery was ownership. Slaves were bought and sold. They were treated as farm animals. The Bible is most likely talking about repaying debts with servantry. I enjoyed the conversation that we had about how people would pay their debts. You can’t just kill someone so what do you? I didn’t realize that people would give their child to work as a slave/indentured servant if they needed the money to survive. This was very interesting and sad to me.

Today in class we talked about Slavery in the bible. We talked about it in context of the times. We brought up the he Egyptian Empire and the Greek Empire, whom at the time relied on slaves and servants. At the time this was a common thing. Today we do not view it the same way. We look at it from the idea that all people are equal. However the realization of slavery at the time was normalized.When looking at this through historical and cultural contexts this may have effected the authors of the Bible and their viewpoints. Additionally We talked about how slavery in the Bible differed from US. One of the major talking points bout slavery during the time of the bible was that it was more of an indentured servitude. This was very different from slavery we were taught. US slavery consisted of humans being bough, sold, and treated as objects and property. These people had no choice or say in what happened. However he people in the bible would become slaves because of finical problems among other things. These indentured servants would work to pay off their debts and eventually be let free. Over time it is concerning to see how viewpoints and actions on the same subject can change, especially when it comes to human life.

Slavery was seen as something that was commonly seen in the Bible. So much so, that Christian slaveholders in early America used the Bible as an free-pass to have and hold slaves. But does the Bible actually condone slavery?
There are many parts of the Bible that people have questioned over the years, but I think that one of the biggest arguments is whether slavery was condoned in the Bible, or if it wasn’t. Well, firstly we can say the slavery worked differently that some might think. In the New World, or early America, slaves were generally people who had been taken captive and were forced into slavery. However, in the Bible, slavery could come from many different ways. People who had no money could sell themselves into servitude or they could have even been criminals working in servitude to justify their sentence and appease God. There were, of course, those forced into slavery, but it was not as simple as that most times.
Do I think that the Bible directly condoned slavery? No, I don’t. I think that slavery was an awful that happened in many different cultures and that lead to the spread of it in the future. People like to pick and chose what they want the Bible to say. I think that if a person wants to use the Bible to condone something as serious as slavery, then they should really take a better look at some of the other “rules” the Bible has. 1 Timothy 2:9 states that women shouldn’t braid their hair, own gold, or wear expensive things. Leviticus 19:27 states that a man should not trim his beard, and 19:28 says that a person should not make any cuttings into their flesh, aka, have tattoos. I think the moral of this story is that there are a lot of things in the Bible, but just because they’re in the Bible, doesn’t mean you can twist them to your own standards.

For Tuesday’s class, we read and discussed the topic of slavery.

First, an important perspective going into these readings and discussions were necessary. I once read a quote that said, “we cannot judge the past with standards of the present.” This is important when we are reading anything from a different time period, especially when it comes to the Bible.

Second, an important distinction that we made was the difference between ancient slavery and American slavery, with which I am more familiar with. Beforehand, I didn’t know about this distinction. Ancient slavery was more similar to being a servant, compared to American slavery where slaves were actually bought, traded, and owned. In ancient slavery, it was more of a choice and volunteered to become a slave. Most people sold themselves, or their kids, into slavery in order to pay off debt. Of course, this is not something they preferred but was a better option than dying. American slaves were forced just because of their skin color and had no say. In the Timothy reading, I found it interesting that they said “those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful.” Does this mean those who don’t have believing masters can be disrespectful? It only matters if the master believes? It doesn’t matter if the slave believes or not?

Thirdly, we discussed the difference in the economy and idea of the property that took place at these times. The economy was mostly agriculturalists. Most people had land and relied on crops and animals in order to feed themselves and to make money. This is why the idea of slavery was so prevalent because it was easy to get in debt and necessary in order to survive. The idea of the property being different is also important because they did not think of slaves as property, but things like land and animals and crops as property.

Lastly, we discussed the types of battles happening. Dr. McGrath explained that the battles of slavery are over. And to this, I might argue. People in the US agree that slavery is bad, but there is secretly a lot of slavery still happening in other parts of the world where people still think it is okay and are abusing people. However, I did agree that there are other parts of the Bible that are still being battled. These battles include social policy, laws, and rights. These battles are important for our future.

Today in class we discussed the idea of slavery in the Bible. We talked about how the idea of slavery in the Bible was different than the US slavery that we have been taught about in school. I thought it was interesting that slavery when discussed in the Bible is something that people offered to pay off debts. I also thought the conversation of a world without slavery was interesting as well. We talked about how if there is no slavery, how would these people pay off their debts they cannot pay? These are questions I have never thought about before. I had never thought much about the idea of indentured servitude. With this in mind, I wonder how many other people think about indentured servitude when reading the Bible as opposed to US slavery.

In response to the question left for us to ponder on ‘what is being left out of the conversations including the Bible,’ I would say that the context of the situation is being left out. There are many times in which people try to shape the words of the Bible to fit the argument they are trying to uphold as truth. For example, slavery; the cultural difference between the American perception of slavery in the 21^st century is different than the perception of slavery in ancient times. Or even the Slave Bible where all the narratives of slaves in ancient times having any sort of notion to go against the hand of authority under which they lay. In most conversations, it’s a matter of taking what you like and discarding what you don’t like. The matter of liking or disliking comes down to what is upholding your side of the argument. By taking out pieces of information the audience does not get the full picture of what is going on and the text given can skew the meaning of the full meaning itself. This plays into the historical context as well; people take the literal words from the Bible and fix them to their point of view without considering what the context was in history. It ignores the fact there were different cultures with different beliefs and practices.