Brick-a-Brack 230911

Take note oh teachers of theology! your sins will find you out! (thanks Alex)

• John Byron ponders the way we translate slavery in the Bible
• Paul Windsor critiques short term mission, and it aint pretty
• Reuben Munn wonders who his enemy is when he preaches
• Richard Fellows has an idea as to why the Corinthians got themselves into so much trouble
• John Hobbins reminds us not to be too kind, or something

Let me know what you think :-)

Another bumper day on the web

• Marc Cortez gives a salutary lesson in statistics, as it seems rumours of the Web's demise have been greatly over exagerated
• Cynthia Neilsen on the dehumanization of slaves in the USA
• Steve Douglas writes to a friend struggling with faith
• Jim West shares a Michael Crichton quote on reading the news
• Ali tries to work out how to argue against homosexuality without being a jerk
• the Biblical World on the women in Paul's life
• and don't miss the majestic plastic bag, i have a song about this, but i won't sing it for you today cos i have lost my voice :-(

The Truth About Porn

There is a brilliant Guardian article on Porn here (HT Rich Walker):

One thought provoking suggestion is that association with the prudishness of the religious right has stigmatised the anti-porn movement as being against freedom of speech and expression.  For Gail Dines porn is not about art or expression at all, but the hatred of women.  She chillingly describes the statistical links between porn use and rape, and paedophilia.  So how do we draw the line between liberty for authentic expression of art and censorship for dehumanising depictions of females?  The truth is, even in regular media the line has been drawn far over into the latter, meaning women are degraded in front of our eyes everyday on TV, in Magazines, and on Billboards, let alone the sub-mainstream of the porn industry.

A second interesting suggestion is her comparison with the ideological battle against slavery:

She says the blueprint for her aims is the eradication of slavery in the US, which was achieved despite the fact that every single institution was geared to uphold and perpetuate it. "What is at stake is the nature of the world that we live in," says Dines. "We have to wrestle it back."

The question for me is, in the light of those two things, would such a fight today be helped or hindered by the participation of Christian organisations? There can be no doubt that this is the sort of thing Christians should be behind, but how would we avoid getting in the way?

Jensen on Sex, Slavery and the NT

This is another rare instance of a NT scholar noticing the elephant in the room of the sexual use of slaves.  This comes at the end of Jensen's clinical demolition of an earlier article by Bruce Malina that argued that porneia, a NT term for sexual immorality, did not include non commercial and non-cultic extra-marital sex. My only complaints are that he does not discuss the fact that male slaves might also be preyed upon and he neglect the evience of Philemon and 1 Cor 7:21 as Paul's implicit desire to see slaves freed.

The following remarks venture into what may be called purely indirect evidence.  This is less satisfactory, but nevertheless it seems necessary to ask whether we can suppose that the New Testament was wholly silent on the difficult and delicate question of relations between master and famle slave.

The was a close connection bewteen slavery and prostitution in the Hellenistic world.  Liddell-Scott give the probable derivation of porne, prostitute, from pernemi, because "Greek prostitutes were commonly bought slaves."  But also frequent was the use of female household slaves, who were subject to the whims of their masters for sexual relations.  In Israel too, this sort of relationship was l;egitimated.  Exod. xxi 7-11 deals with the Israelite girl sold as a slave and Deut. xxi 10-14 with the prisoner of war.   The basic protection offered each is that she might not later be sold.

It can hardly be supposed that this srt of behaviour was tolerated in the Christian community, but the silence of the New Testament is surprising.  Paul is aware of the hold a master can have over his slave for evil, for he uses it as an illustration (Rom vi 16), but this has no place in his exhortations.  Instead we find the New Testament writers exhorting slaves not to seek their freedom (1 Cor vii 21-23); to obey wilingly (Eph vi 5-8); to render their masters respect for the sake of God and the church, mst especially if the masters are Christian (1 Tim vi 1-2); to try to please them in every way and not contradict them (Tit ii 9); to obey not only good and reasonable masters but even those who are harsh (1 Pet ii 18-20).

Human Nature being what it is, the abuse of female slaves would tend to persist, even in Christian circles, especialy those subject to hellenistic influences, unlessthe standard moral teaching made the matter clear.  The exhortations we have in the epistkles merely tell slave owners not to threaten (Eph vi 9) and to be just and fair (Col iv 1).  Unless we are willing to suppose that this important matter was completely ignored, we must suppose that the early Christians understood it to be included in the frequent exhortations addressed to all about avoiding porneia and that, therefore, the term included this as well as other sorts of extra-marital intercourse.

From Joseph Jensen "Does Porneia Mean Fornication? A Critique of Bruce Malina" 

Novum Testamentum, Vol. 20, Fasc. 3 (Jul., 1978), pp. 161-184 

Let me know what you think :-)

Roundup

The soul of a dead human is apparently worth NZ$1,415, unless the buyer got a discount for buying in bulk?

RCAP has a new feature,"Conversations with Matua," this month managing to mix assault, incest and the prophet Amos.  Matua is a rather useful Maori word for parent, not least because it is gender non-specific. 

Barnabas Fund reacts to the change in Western Christian perceptions of Islam.

Christian Kiwis get kicked out of Morocco, but claim not to be missionaries.  Isn't caring for orphans part of Christian mission? I think what they mean was that they weren't actively proselytising.  But shaming Morocco by taking better care of its orphans than its Muslim society does is surely even more provocative.

John Hobbins continues an excellent series on slavery in the OT:

• The abolition of slavery in Leviticus 25: some preliminaries
• The abolition of slavery in Leviticus 25: more preliminaries
• The abolition of slavery in Leviticus 25
• Slavery per se is a cruel practice (Leviticus 25)
• Slavery according to the law collections of the Hebrew Bible

I know it seems like I am stalking Hobbins, but he really does blog a lot of good stuff, and this stuff (above) is really very important.

And perhaps most interestingly, a Zimbabwean tribe, the Lemba, have been genetically proven to share a common ancestor with the priestly Jewish line of Cohen, the ancestor they share dates back to around the time of ... wait for it ... Moses and Aaron!  Assuming of course that they existed at all. [HT Chris]

Bribery is OK by Me!

An intrepid OT teacher ponders the ethics of bribery here. 

I would tentatively suggest that the situation is less complicated.  By bribing a border guard you can claim no complicity in the corrupt system.  If you tried to bribe a immigration officer in Heathrow or Auckland Airport you would find that the system is not influenced at all by your bribe.  Equally your refusal to bribe a corrupt guard would do little to change the corrupt guard or system.  Rather than a consequence based ethic how about a virtue (character based) ethic.

What sort of person bribes a border guard?  If you are bribing him to allow you to smuggle narcotics or children for prostitution then your bribery is motivated by avarice and lack of concern for others.  Your bribery is bad because you are bad in motive. If you are bribing him because of your compassion for a refugee from a corrupt and despotic regime your bribery is good, because it is motivated by your compassion.  Bribe for the glory of God!  (Of course accepting bribes is a different matter altogether.)

Then there is alaways Proverbs 17:8, :-)


Now thinking about the ethical problems in marginal situations has made me think a of a trickier example.   Anti-slavery groups often debate whether or not it is ethical to buy slaves their freedom.  On the one hand you are showing compassion to the individual (virtue) but on the other hand you are fueling the slave trade by becoming a buyer (consequence). 

Let me know what you think :-)