Posted on 05/31/2009 9:26:02 AM PDT by Freepmanchew
The topic of slavery is usually accompanied by bitter feelings and condemnation for Americas past. Like America, many civilizations have used slavery as a means of providing labor. Samarian drawings on clay tablets dating back to 4000 BC show captives taken in battle being tied, whipped, and forced to work. Then there are ancient papyrus manuscripts from 2100 BC that record the ownership of slaves by private citizens in Egypt. The earliest mention of slavery in the Bible would be Genesis 9:25 when Noah cursed the descendants of Canaan. From Abraham on down we read of the men in the Bible owning slaves and the Israelites themselves becoming slaves, but never do we read of God condemning slavery. We do read of Him telling Moses how to treat slaves in Exodus chapter 21, but neither God nor Jesus ever condemned the practice.
(Excerpt) Read more at norcalblogs.com ...
People have to work for their living, but prisoners don't. No wonder many of them can't wait to be sent back behind bars. There is something wrong in that.
But where do these moral principles come from? Certainly not the Bible? What other source of morality do we as a nation subscribe to?
Really? What was the literacy rate in 1600, 1700, 1800 and 1900? Depending on what you define as "literacy," of course, will determine how literate the nation was. If you make say "able to sign your name" then your numbers will be higher. If you say "read and write prose, your numbers willbe lower. No wonder literacy rates were sampled according to the former standard, which is meaningless.
Just because you can sign your name doesn't mean you can read complex prose. So, to put this in perspective, according to one source, one hundred years after Gutenberg's invention, that is by the end of the 16th century, allegedly 50% of the population in England could sign their name!
On the other hand, the same source says that a century later in France as many as 75% of the population were illiterate (i.e. could not sign their name)! Accordingly, the government of France in 1880 published a report showing that between "1686 and 1690 the female literacy rate (based on ability to sign) was just 14 percent, while the male rate was 36 percent."
Allegedly Protestant Europe fared better than Catholic Europe, with literacy rates between 35 and 45 percent, that is literacy as in "sign your name." By 1861, four hundred years after Gutenberg, the 1861 Newcastle Report in England reported 67% "literacy" among men and 51% among women. Other sources say that by 1860, 40% of people in England could not sign their names.
Even if they could doesn't mean they could read and comprehend the Bible—or even afford one!? You made a claim which is not supported by facts. It seems that, in Protestant England, which was supposedly well ahead of Catholic France, the literacy rate—meaning one could sign his or her name (but not necessarily read)—grew from 50% to mere 67% among men and barely 1% among women over a 400-year time span!).
So, where are you getting your ideas from? And btw, I don't use Google. Google is a quick reference that makes everyone appear 'smart' and it is good for general reference. Yet Google is highly unreliable because anyone can edit it! No serious researcher will use Google as a reliable authority.
so....Where are the links?
Also....Why would many in an agrarian society need to be able to fluently write? Even needing to sign their name would likely be a rare event. It is entirely possible for a person to be able to read and not be able to, or be comfortable with writing.
They were Christians alright, but they did not abolish slavery based on what the bible teaches.
But...I suppose you would prefer to hold to your anti-Christian prejudices. Where did you learn this? A government K-12 school? A university?
So, if someone disagrees with your unsupported statements or your Google "facts," the next step is insults? Where did you learn that? In your church?
The glaring red "source," unless you are color blind.
Exactly. That's why Gutenberg's invention of the Bible had nothing to do with literacy. It's a Protestant myth. Reading and writing had to do with the development of the cities and the trade boom in the 17th and 18th centuries, peaking with industrialization (19th century); literacy is tied tro social and economic factors, independent of Christianity.
In the East, Greeks were always urged to read and know their scriptures by their hierarchs because Greek scriptures were written in the Greek vernacular (koine) and not some unintelligible language.
Franks and Goths were Germans and their language was alien to Latin. The only reason they used Latin is because their language was too primitive to use for prose. Before the Norman conquest, in England the only written language was Latin.
In the east the Bible was translated into Church Slavonic which was derived from the Old Slavonic vernacular, understood by everyone, even the illiterate. In addition to that, for the illiterate the Church used iconsthe Bible, a pictorial bible of sorts. That way even the illiterate knew how to "read" the Bible.
In the West, the vernaculars were not sophisticated enough for writing. It was Luther who, through the translation of the bible actually created modern literary German language fit for prose. And even then, such a language was not sophisticated enough for science. So, Latin was a must for any scientific and academic work. Even Luther wrote in Latin.
The Church ahd nothing to do with that. Some countries, like Croatia, used Latin in their Parliament until 1840 simply because the native language wasn't developed enough. In England, the language of the court and the middle class was unintelligible to the Cockney-speaking illiterate masses. That's why "literacy" was defined simply as being able to "sign your name" and nothing more than that. It didn't mean you can read and write.
Out of context, it is easy to make a false conclusion that you had Cockney-speaking masses reading and studying the Bible just because 50% of the population could sign their name!
To be truly literate you need education, and to get education you need money, one thing most people didn't have (imagine that!), especially because they had loads of children that had to beg and steal, or they worked on the farm from the youngest days from dawn until dusk and had no time to study.
If they couldn't make the ends meet, who had the time and the luxury to study, and the money to afford a Bible? Easy, the educated, not the masses. So, this myth about how Christianity led to literacy after the printing press, and how it liberated the slaves is as bogus as a three dollar bill.
If your ancestor hadn’t completed his terms of indenture, would responsibility have been passed onto you?
I’d like to have a slave that’s an android robot. Just imagine: “Roby do this! Roby do that!” My robot slave would do everything, just like a butler.
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