Religious Quotes with Sexist and Slavery Scriptures from the Religious Books of Christianity and Judaism

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The Old Testament of the Christian Bible is comprised of the exact same books that comprise the religious book of Judaism, called the Tanakh. All religions are mythical and one strange instance is how two supposedly different religions claim the same books (Old Testament) as it’s religious canon.

Quotes

“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”—Thomas Paine—one of the founding fathers of the United States of America

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”—Edward Gibbon—also attributed to Lucius Annaeus Seneca

“Oh these foolish men! They could not create so much as a worm, but they create gods by the dozens.”—Michel de Montaigne.

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”—Thomas Jefferson

“Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditional or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.”—Thomas Paine

“Religious men are and must be heretics now—for we must not pray, except in a form of words, made beforehand or think of God but with a prearranged idea.”—Florence Nightingale

“I pray every single second of my life, not on my knees but with my work. My prayer is to lift women to equality with men. Work and worship are one with me. I know there is no God of the universe made happy by my getting down on my knees and calling him great.”—Susan B. Anthony

“Man is a religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the true religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.”—Mark Twain

“Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.”—Oscar Wilde

“Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.”—Voltaire

“Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”—Mark Twain

“It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three: and yet that the one is not three and the three are not one.”—Thomas Jefferson

“One man says with one’s lips, ‘I believe that god is one, and also three,’ but no one can believe it, because the words have no sense.”—Leo Tolstoy

“The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.”—Thomas Edison

“Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.”—George Washington

“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics, a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkeys.”—Mark Twain

“The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.”—Thomas Paine

“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”—Frederick Douglass

“We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babies sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen, all for the glory of God and the good of souls. The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master. Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave trade go hand in hand.”—Frederick Douglass

The numerous slavery sciptures in the Bible and Tanakh were used as the moral justification for slavery. The Bible and Tanakh read like and instructional manual that provides operations and guidelines for the enslavement of humans, including children.

“Let the gentleman go to Revelation to learn the decree of God, let him go to the Bible. I said that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible, authorized, regulated, and recognized from Genesis to Revelation. Slavery existed then in the earliest ages and among the chosen people of God; and in Revelation we are told that it shall exist till the end of time shall come. You find it in the Old and New Testaments, in the prophecies, psalms, and the epistles of Paul; you find it recognized and sanctioned everywhere.”—Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.”— Robert Ingersol—civil war vet, orator, political leader, agnostic, descendent of abolitionists

“It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church. With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh.”—William Lloyd Garrison, Abolitionist leader

Note: ‘New Testament’ Christian scriptures that have no respect for women as equals.

Excerpts from I Peter 3:1-7 state: “Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands”—“While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear”—“In the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands”—“Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord”—“Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to

“Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church…Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their husbands in everything.”–Ephesians 5:22-24

“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord…”–Colossians 3:18

“Let a woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence…”-- 1 Timothy 2:11-12

"Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them t.o speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, AS ALSO SAITH THE LAW. And if they learn anything let them ask their husbands.–I Corinthians 14:34-35

Genesis 3:16
16. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire [shall be] to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee

Titus 2:3-5
3 The aged women likewise, that [they be] in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;
4 That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children,
5 [To be] discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed

Romans 7:2
2 For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband.

1 Corinthians 11:8-9
8 For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the man.
9 Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.

The extant scriptures of the Bible of Christianity and Tanakh of Judaism on slavery KJV~

Leviticus 25:44-46
44. Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 45. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. 46. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.

Exodus 21:2-11
2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. 3. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. 4. If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her masters, and he shall go out by himself. 5. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free: 6.Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever. 7. And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. 8. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her. 9. And if he had betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters. 10. If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. 11. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free without money.

Exodus 21:20-21
20. And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. 21.Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

New Testament of the Christian Bible on slavery KJV~

Ephesians 6:5-9
5. Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; 6. Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 7. With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: 8. Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. 9. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him. (Note: forbearing means showing patience, self-control, restraint under adversity.)

1 Timothy 6:1-2

  1. Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. 2. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.

Colossians 3:22
Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God;

Colossians 4:1
Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a in heaven.

1 Peter 2:18
Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

Titus 2:9-10
9. Exhort servants to be obedient unto their own masters, and to please them well in all things; not answering again; 10. Not purloining, but schewing in all good fidelity; that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things

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Canon = “orthodoxy”, not all Christians or Jews agree as to what is their important scripture. In Judaism, Talmud is also hugely important. Orthodox Christianity threw out most of their crazy mystical books, such as the Apocrypha which some consider their most interesting scripture.

Basically, both traditions are huge syntheses of other smaller religions from all over the near east over thousands of years. So, depending upon what aspects of those traditions one chooses to keep or omit, the results can seem like a contradictory jumble. I practice neither Judaism nor Christianity, but I find the scholarship of their origins quite fascinating.

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Thank goodness all the ancient philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, poets, playwrights, artists, civic leaders and other commiters of symbols to media did not include such temporal sentiments as the “spiritual” writers did. It’s fairly safe to say that these religious texts are NOT representative of their time periods, and instead express atemporal cultural viewed symptomatic only of their respective religious institutions.

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But why? As you’ve amply demonstrated, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Do you have a point to make?

Also, @popobawa4u, the Apocrypha are only interesting to those who have never actually read them. That goes double for the “Gnostic Gospels.” They’re actually dull as hell.

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It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. There’s a great deal of ordinary culture in there, at least in the ones I’ve studied, and separating wheat from chaff is the subject of thousands of dissertations. The really nutty stuff happens when fundamentalists get hold of the cultural bits and try to have them be the Literal Word of God. Examples include Proverbs and Kings, which don’t even pretend to be holy.

Song of Songs, too. It’s just Bronze-Age porn.

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YMMV - I am not a Xist-a-boo but I find the non-canon books of Christianity far more interesting than most of the New Testament. The books of the Zohar even more so, but that rabbit hole goes extremely deep.

Divine porn is best porn!

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When I think about the sexism and oppression found in religious scripture, I always think of that Tori Amos song, for what it’s worth:

I think it’s also important to remember how different people have interpreted these books to mean different things in their lives. In the US, the Quakers in the north and Southern slave owners in the Antebellum period both counted themselves as Christians and managed to have radically different thoughts on the issue of slavery. Today not even all Evangelicals agree on marriage equality.

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Considering the fact that slavery in the US and other western countries involved the capturing and enslaving of people rather than a fixed term indentured agreement (in the case of Hebrew slaves, at least), a lot more hay should have been made of this verse:

He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death.
Exodus 21:16

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I always think of this, by the best most underrated infuriatingly inconsistent band I know.

Bit preachy? :wink:

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Depends on your nerdiness level. I actually think the Gospel of Judas is very interesting in the context of Christian anti-antisemitism through the medieval period through to the modern era. Whether it effectively demonstrates the artificiality of that antisemitism in Christianity, reinforces it, or whether it was an interpretive mess to begin with, are all interesting questions.

But like I said… depends on how nerdy you are:

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In fact, and I write as someone with links to Quakerism, the Quakers as a whole do not have a brilliant record on slavery. Also, US Quakerism as a whole is more closely aligned to evangelical protestantism than is that in the UK or the European mainland. (UK Quakers refer to them as “programmed Quakers”.)
I prefer to see the religion/ethics as being more of an XY matrix. It is possible for instance to be an extremely devout but totally unethical Catholic (Cardinal Manning, Arnaud of Cisteaux) - I won’t even bother with the prosperity gospel churches - and it is possible to be an extremely ethical agnostic or atheist. Whereas some religions may fall more in the devout/ethical quadrant, the ones that are socially conditioned (like being a fundamentalist Protestant in parts of the US South or belonging to one of the Northern Irish religious tribes) possibly show no evidence of bunching at all.

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Of course, in the times under consideration, the action of the victor in battle was to kill the men and enslave the women and children, who do not get a mention in the book I prefer to think of as Way Out.

M R James remarked, and I tend to agree with him, that the thing with the apocryphal books (which he studied at length) is simply that they are poorly written, contain many magical happenings and anachronisms, and are obviously bogus. If the New Testament is boring, it’s largely because it has so completely entered Western thinking, so that people think they know it even when they don’t. Remove the layers of Pauline rubbish (I could be much less polite) and Essene mysticism and the tale of the combative street rabbi who took on the authorities, tried to discourage people from rising up against the Romans, and encouraged a more progressive approach to a reactionary legal system, the treatment of women, and the treatment of the mentally ill - still stands out.

I don’t actually agree with this.
The synthetic part of Judaism is really limited to a few books - Bereshit[Genesis] hints more or less darkly at the origins of Judaism, but a succession of prophets tried to get rid of the fluff, telling anyone who would listen that God was quite uninterested in sacrifices and obedience to a lot of nitpicking rules, but wanted people to get on and sort out their society, behave decently to one another and look after the less fortunate. Of course there are always the obsessives who spend a huge amount of time trying to find deep layers of meaning in the Bible, and there is a great Jewish tradition of this, but fundamentally Judaism is a family-oriented religion integrated into a culture, and in its modern form the synthetic elements are not that important - the important one is the very specific idea that God gave Palestine to the Jews forever, and this has been challenged by progressive rabbis for a very long time.
Christianity is effectively the synthesis of a progressive strand of Judaism with the Roman State religion, which is indeed wildly synthetic. The early Protestants tried to sort out the mess and [from a theological view quite correctly] wanted to get rid of “superstition” like Christmas and the elaborate nature festivals of the Catholic Church. Modern Protestants seem equally determined to bring the superstitions back again so long as they can be used to sell something.

The tl;dr is that citing sexism and slavery from the OT and the NT isn’t terribly useful or, I submit, interesting unless we are analysing where a particular sect got its bizarre ideas from. The important thing is actually to analyse, identify, and call out problems with particular sects and show how they conflict with law and ethics, regardless of how they try to justify them.

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That’s true, although the slavery of a couple of hundred years ago didn’t even have the justification that these people were the spoils of war rather than just industrialised kidnapping.

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It is, but it’s a good song.

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I agree on both sides of this question - what is wrong and right with particular behaviors predicated on religious works. But then you get into a debate over law and ethics, too, meaning secular ones. Secular laws can be as problematic. You still have a problem of setting up an ethical standard that everything else can be judged by, right? Not that we can’t but then who gets to do this and why? What concepts and traditions will they be employing?

That’s fair enough. But some Quakers in the US did have a record of activism and social engagement.

I don’t think that’s in question at all, though. Of course religious people don’t have a lock on morality or ethics. Nor does devoutness equal ethical behavior. But ethical/moral behavior is still relative to other human beings.

So, I think, at the end of the day, it’s about behavior and not just an action or two, but the scope of ones behavior over the long haul. And the acknowledgement that we’re all flawed, and at times engage in unethical behavior and what do we do about that in our lives, how do we make up for our inabilities to always do the right thing.

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I agree with your entire post.

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But then you get into a debate over law and ethics, too, meaning secular ones.

Only if you concede that religious law is concerned with ethics or morality, which I don’t, so I don’t think to entertain these notions. At least with Christian religions which I’m familiar with.

I don’t mean to say that people can’t or shouldn’t believe their religious law is moral or that I think they cannot be moral because they follow religious law, I mean to say that if I thought religious law was true and good I’d be following it already, as it stands, I can only advocate for flawed secular ethics and accept religious input when it seems to be good for society. (which includes practice of religion, something I don’t do but from which others do benefit)

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But it actually is, as are laws passed in secularized societies.

Which are a small subset of religious organizations, and of course the protestant faiths are far less concerned with creating things we’d understand as laws, because they evolved along with the modern state.

I understand what you mean here. I’m not advocating for a return to religious law as the organizing principle of our world (and that’s never been an organizing principle in the US), or saying that they are inherently more moral or ethical than atheists, agnostics or secular laws. I do think we only deepen and widen the divide between the secular world and religious world when we don’t try to understand where people are coming from in their moral/ethical mindsets. There are, I think, many places where religous people can add value to our society and completely alienating them is to our detriment. That being said, I do strongly believe in the separation of church and state, a point which many religious people actually agree, because they don’t want the state to dictate the tenets of their faith to them. Since there is no really religious majority in the US, it’s generally in the best interests of religious groups to be against a state mandated religion.

I do think that the people who are dominionists and want a theocratic America are in the minority and evolved out of the work began in the 1970s by the Moral Majority.

Thanks!

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One thing is certain all religions are man made and mythological. Whatever one chooses to call a religious book, that book is simply a book written by men–and not the word or word inspired by a supreme omnipotent and omnipresent creator god.

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The ethics and morals of this world would be better off without religion. Religions historically have been one of the major causes of oppression, sexism, discrimination and death.

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