re: #353 Bob Levin

“I don’t have to apologize for being religious.”

I never wrote or implied that you should. Religious apologetics is not apologizing for being religious. It’s a system of a defence of faith/religion. I simply indicated one of the typical methods of defence used by apologetes (mostly Christian) - saying that allegedly the “original text” changes everything, despite there being dozens of independent translations by qualified scholars that more or less agree with each other. In such a case a good and concrete evidence is needed that the translations are wrong, not simply “learn Hebrew”. The translators knew Hebrew very well. I’m not saying any translation by itself is fully correct. But we can check as many as we want, including the translation made by Jews for Jews (JPS).

You have not addressed my points about slaves in Leviticus and Exodus being just that - slaves, property that can be sold, punished, etc. You only said that I’m wrong about punishment. Here it is:

Exodus 21:
20 Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, 21 but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.

As for your point about the Talmud - it is just an interpretation/tradition that is later than the Torah. Judaism existed before the Talmud/Mishna/Gemara/Oral Torah were formulated, just as Christianity existed before the Church Fathers and canons and even before the New Testament. The “naked” Torah gives us a glimpse into this early form of Judaism. Of course modern Judaism is against slavery, but that is besides the point.