The Bible And Slavery

[Politesse]

So...Jesus' teachings are incompatible with owning slaves? Then, again, and with insistence: where did he address it explicitly and headlong?

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs. What he did teach was how a person ought to live. and that way of life had as its core love of God and love of neighbor. I'm not choosing those elements arbitraily, they're the unifying theme of the gospels and Jesus himself, uncommonly for him, outright called them the most important commandments. He rarely taught anything by direct statement, let alone cited "commandments", but that he made explicit. Why?

We know how consistently the American slave-owning class defended their practice with Biblical backup. They had a good case, it seems to me.

They had a very good case; if you only look at the proof texts they favored, and fail to ask any critical questions about the morality of their actions and the ethic prescribed by their supposed master. Then you hit questions that neither you nor they are willing to answer.

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!" It's not that I think you are taking a consciously pro-slavery position. It's that I don't think you are thinking through the implications of the shit you say, the people you are supporting and those who you are dismissing. Your position is actively harmful to those you are supposedly sympathetic to (enslaved persons) in that you are supporting the arguments used to enslave them while instinctively dismissive of the arguments made by abolitionists. If you say you oppose slavery, but always agree with slavers and never with liberators, shouldn't you be a little worried about the consistency of your claims as opposed to your actions?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So...Jesus' teachings are incompatible with owning slaves? Then, again, and with insistence: where did he address it explicitly and headlong?

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs. What he did teach was how a person ought to live. and that way of life had as its core love of God and love of neighbor. I'm not choosing those elements arbitraily, they're the unifying theme of the gospels and Jesus himself, uncommonly for him, outright called them the most important commandments. He rarely taught anything by direct statement, let alone cited "commandments", but that he made explicit. Why?

We know how consistently the American slave-owning class defended their practice with Biblical backup. They had a good case, it seems to me.

They had a very good case; if you only look at the proof texts they favored, and fail to ask any critical questions about the morality of their actions and the ethic prescribed by their supposed master. Then you hit questions that neither you nor they are willing to answer.

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!" It's not that I think you are taking a consciously pro-slavery position. It's that I don't think you are thinking through the implications of the shit you say, the people you are supporting and those who you are dismissing.

Am I the only one reading this as a complaint about cherry picking certain sections of the Bible to reinforce a position while simultaneously bragging about cherry picking certain sections of the Bible to reinforce a position?

 

[Politesse]

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs. What he did teach was how a person ought to live. and that way of life had as its core love of God and love of neighbor. I'm not choosing those elements arbitraily, they're the unifying theme of the gospels and Jesus himself, uncommonly for him, outright called them the most important commandments. He rarely taught anything by direct statement, let alone cited "commandments", but that he made explicit. Why?

They had a very good case; if you only look at the proof texts they favored, and fail to ask any critical questions about the morality of their actions and the ethic prescribed by their supposed master. Then you hit questions that neither you nor they are willing to answer.

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!" It's not that I think you are taking a consciously pro-slavery position. It's that I don't think you are thinking through the implications of the shit you say, the people you are supporting and those who you are dismissing.

Am I the only one reading this as a complaint about cherry picking certain sections of the Bible to reinforce a position while simultaneously bragging about cherry picking certain sections of the Bible to reinforce a position?

It's hypocritical to claim that you are following every word of the Bible, or speaking for the whole Bible, and then to "cherry pick" (ie critically evaluate) what you are reading. If you believe, as I do, that it is an ancient text and needs to be read with a measure of nuance to begin with, like you would literally any other book, then there is no contradiction. I don't see why this is hard to understand, as your command of the English language suggests you have in fact read other books than the Bible. Presumably you don't approach them all in cock-eyed, bizarre way that people read the Bible.

I feel like the hermeneutics argument is a derail though. Even a literally-interpreted Bible does not support or allow for slavery. Or can you answer my question, unlike these other cowards who dismiss my argument but are afraid to actually state out loud the absurd argument they are making?

 

[ideologyhunter]

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!"

Uhhhhh. No. "Boy those Nazis (slaveowners) had some great points!" isn't expressing admiration for the slaveowners. It's a criticism of the scriptures. It's putting the scriptures on a moral plane with those who found nothing immoral about slavery.

 

[Politesse]

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!"

Uhhhhh. No. "Boy those Nazis (slaveowners) had some great points!" isn't expressing admiration for the slaveowners. It's a criticism of the scriptures. It's putting the scriptures on a moral plain with those who found nothing immoral about slavery.

And yet you have not made any moral arguments against slavery. All you have voiced is support for the arguments made for it, and contempt and dismissal for the arguments made against it.

(The Nazis were Christians and they did keep slaves, by the way, this is a well-known historical fact. So that isn't hyperbole, they favored all the same arguments from Scripture as yourself.)

 

[Jarhyn]

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!"

Uhhhhh. No. "Boy those Nazis (slaveowners) had some great points!" isn't expressing admiration for the slaveowners. It's a criticism of the scriptures. It's putting the scriptures on a moral plain with those who found nothing immoral about slavery.

And yet you have not made any moral arguments against slavery. All you have voiced is support for the arguments made for it, and contempt and dismissal for the arguments made against it.

(The Nazis were Christians and they did keep slaves, by the way, this is a well-known historical fact. So that isn't hyperbole, they favored all the same arguments from Scripture as yourself.)

In fact, in the turn of slavery in north America, it was Christians banging their bibles about Ham or some shit? Of course it was Christians on the other side too, talking about doing into others.

Maybe religion just isn't a good measuring stuck for ethics, and while it can be pointed to as a starting point, as a suggestion that answers may be seen in the universe's structure, that those answers have to be reached from an eclectic understanding of the universe and it's intrinsic relationships using modern models and understandings and observations.

 

[Politesse]

In fact, in the turn of slavery in north America, it was Christians banging their bibles about Ham or some shit?

Is, not was. We have not succeeded in destroying this ugly practice universally yet. The myth of full abolition is one of many fragments of dangerous propaganda that circulate in our society.

Maybe religion just isn't a good measuring stuck for ethics, and while it can be pointed to as a starting point, as a suggestion that answers may be seen in the universe's structure, that those answers have to be reached from an eclectic understanding of the universe and it's intrinsic relationships using modern models and understandings and observations.

But I quite agree with this. In fact, I find that people who say their morality "comes from the Bible" are more often acting in self-interest or the self-interests of the very wealthy, than out of any sort of concern for universal love.

But that won't stop me from calling out pro-slavery bullshit when I see it, or letting Christians rest easy on their laurels when they blurt out arguments they obviously haven't thought through. If they claim to love their neihgbor, I can and will oblige them to answer for the ways in which they do not.

 

[Bomb#20]

It’s interesting to watch you run away from the things the Bible plainly says, and try to accuse me, the one condemning it, as if I’m creating your problem. As if my pointing out how it harms your desire to call your bible a Good Book makes me, somehow, the author of the harm.

No. The harm is in your book. It is plain as day. It makes the book undivine, unreliable as a guide and harmful on humanity. And all that was true before I ever read it. I’m not the author here. Pilitesse and Learner and Lion all defend and make excuses for it.

Well, for some people, when you're trying to achieve an ideological goal you deeply believe in, you may find yourself tempted to deprioritize comparative trivialities, such as telling the truth about your outgroup. It's called "pious fraud".

 

[ideologyhunter]

And yet you have not made any moral arguments against slavery. All you have voiced is support for the arguments made for it, and contempt and dismissal for the arguments made against it.

1. Who -- outside of some Christian apologists -- needs to hear arguments against slavery?? This is 2020. Not 1850. Not 500 BCE.
2. I have supported arguments in favor of slavery? Thanks for informing me. Wasn't aware of it. I'll watch my syntax. I wasn't even considering getting indentured servants, let alone Bible-style chattel slaves.

 

[Politesse]

1. Who -- outside of some Christian apologists -- needs to hear arguments against slavery?? This is 2020. Not 1850. Not 500 BCE.

There are an estimated 40 million slaves in the world today. In my own country, this condition is still legal if the enslaved person is a prisoner. I have devoted years of my life to fighting this injustice. Obviously, the message is still needed.

And no, just because you don't personally own a slave, doesn't mean that you aren't supporting slavery when you falsely say "the Bible supports slavery". You are endorsing the beliefs of some of the nastiest people in history and in the present when you parrot their propaganda.

 

[Rhea]

You lot are ignoring what I would consider to be the most important of the Bible's teachings in favor of following the most atrocious elements of ancient law you can find.

Good Lord (pun intended) Do you REALLY not understand why?

We are talking about the parts of the bible that have and do affect law and social behavior in negative ways. They need to stop. Those people use the bible to keep them.

You really don't understand why we would focus on that and not the parts that are a namby-pamby copy of a millennia of prior philosophers?

You don't read the Bible like a book. You copy and paste little bits and verses from here and there and slop them together into a Frenkaenstein's monster built from your own desires.

I read the bible like the bludgeon it is used against me as.
I have read the whole thing, btw. It did not become coherent.

LionIRC and Aesthete and I are not on the same side here; I am not a fundamentalist, and I am opposed to slavery.

It is curious that you do not argue against them. Maybe I missed it. Did you argue against them when they said the bible DID condone slavery, because slavery was a good thing? Or did you choose to focus on something taht was not the topic of the thread? I could be wrong here - feel free to show your quotes where you took those fundamentalists to task...

I have never held any other position. I don't think this should be a question of religous belief in the first place; slavery is a horror no mater what your religious background might be. But those who try to exploit religion to support slavery, whether they are Christian or atheist, I will always oppose.

okay... show us what that looks like when you oppose people who say the slavery in the bible is no big deal - it's lovely.

 

[Rhea]

So...Jesus' teachings are incompatible with owning slaves? Then, again, and with insistence: where did he address it explicitly and headlong?

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs.

Wait.

He didn't comment on the atrocity of slavery because that was "too political"??

Is this satire?

 

[Jarhyn]

So...Jesus' teachings are incompatible with owning slaves? Then, again, and with insistence: where did he address it explicitly and headlong?

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs.

Wait.

He didn't comment on the atrocity of slavery because that was "too political"??

Is this satire?

Yeah, I am hoping so. Jesus, in the gospel fictions, spoke out many times against injustice, politics be damned. Isn't his adherence to his statements, as politically unfavorable as they were, why he ended up getting crucified?

And now people are claiming JeSuS WaSnT PoLiTiCaL?

 

[Rhea]

They had a very good case; if you only look at the proof texts they favored, and fail to ask any critical questions about the morality of their actions and the ethic prescribed by their supposed master. Then you hit questions that neither you nor they are willing to answer.

Do you still not understand that what this thread is about is that a "holy" book even has these statements in it to be used as proof texts? That it crushes the reputation of the book altogether as any kind of godly text?

It's funny how you bounce back and forth so glibly between "They ought to be condemned, as their actions are so bad I don't even have to explain why they should be considered bad" and "boy those Nazis sure had some great points!"

Do you really not understand how that is a statement that "wow, that stupid book sure gives them a lot of ammunition for evil, doesn't it? They don't even have to work hard because the passages condoning things we condemn make their point for them."

It's not that I think you are taking a consciously pro-slavery position. It's that I don't think you are thinking through the implications of the shit you say, the people you are supporting and those who you are dismissing.

And we are asking how you can take seriously the position that if you pretend it's not there, and "just focus on the nice bits" it'll never be used for evil. The fact that you allow it to stay there is what gives them the ammunition to use for next time. Their argument is that it is in the bible and you let it stay in the bible.

Your position is actively harmful to those you are supposedly sympathetic to (enslaved persons) in that you are supporting the arguments used to enslave them while instinctively dismissive of the arguments made by abolitionists. If you say you oppose slavery, but always agree with slavers and never with liberators, shouldn't you be a little worried about the consistency of your claims as opposed to your actions?

And we show that your position is actively harmful to those you claim to support, by supporting the continued existence of these phrases in what you agree is a book for the religion. They look at you and they say, "see? We have a MAJORITY of bible-believing Christians, therefore what's in the bible, anything that's in the bible, gets extra weight."

Did you really not see that this was the argument we've been making since page one?

 

[James Madison]

This has been a matter of common disagreement from the very beginning, with both sides believing themselves certainly and unquestionably correct. A situation that continues to this very day, as the recent case in the US state of Nebraska attests.

Do you want to start hurling Bible verses back and forth until we get tired? I can even play both sides, if you like, the "wham texts" used in both cases are more than familiar to me.

No need to hurl bible quotes back and forth...if you believe the bible condemns slavery, just cite the evidence.

So you do want me to just post a bunch of verses, and then you'll post a bunch of verses, and we'll just go on and on? It sounds boring to me, but okay.

Gal. 3:28

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Matt 12:29-31

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these. ​

Please note the underlined statement.

Matt 25:31-46

“When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left. Then the King will say to the people on his right, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the world. I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.’ The righteous will then answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink? When did we ever see you a stranger and welcome you in our homes, or naked and clothe you? When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important of these followers of mine, you did it for me!’ “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Away from me, you that are under God's curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been prepared for the Devil and his angels! I was hungry but you would not feed me, thirsty but you would not give me a drink; I was a stranger but you would not welcome me in your homes, naked but you would not clothe me; I was sick and in prison but you would not take care of me.’ Then they will answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and we would not help you?’ The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.’ These, then, will be sent off to eternal punishment, but the righteous will go to eternal life.”
​

Yes, I know you have proof texts to throw back. You're not the first Evangelical I ever met, and I know your arguments and your verses. I spent much of the last year advocating for an aboilitionist project in my home country (which, by the way, succeeded) and you get a lot of Bible verses thrown at you when you do that. I've read them and I don't care. Imprisoning another human being is still wrong, and an utter failure of the best virtues of the faith. I am less interested in whether you can quote I Timothy at me, than whether or not you can make a consistent logical argument as to how you can love someone as much as yourself but also exploit them for your personal benefit concurrently. Whether you can make a convincing moral case for why a person who is not supposed to value wealth in the first place, can without contradiction or hypocrisy attempt to purchase a human being. If you can't, then your so-called Biblical proofs are full of straw, not stone. But you care more about taking down your "enemies" than actually freeing slaves, or you wouldn't be attacking abolitionist Christians in the first place. Tell me, what have you done lately to end the practice? Because it seems to me that your kind of advocacy is more likely to hurt slaves than help them. An atheist slaver wouldn't care about Bible verses either way, and a Christian slaver would correctly interpret your arguments as support for their position. So who are you helping, and why? It sure as hell isn't the slaves.

The “best virtues of the faith” co-existed with slavery, with laws acknowledging and regulating slavery. Slavery, and those laws pertaining to slavery, co-existed with “love your neighbor as yourself.” Indeed, there’s an inconsistency, which you resolve by alleging an oversight by the authors. “[A]ny participation in slave markets/prisons etc as an abject failure of the more important Christian principle of universal and unequivocal love for one's neighbor. I think this did not occur to many of the Bible's authors, slavery having been so prevalent in their time as to be ubiquitous.”

Yet, the authors weren’t alone in being remiss to recognize what you perceive as an institution and practice incompatible with “love your neighbor as yourself.” The failure to see the verse the same as you extended to many others in society at the time, as they owned slaves and people were enslaved.

It is possible, back then and at that time, the understanding of “love your neighbor as yourself” was not inconsistent with slavery. Which is to say possibly the authors and many at the time were aware of slavery and “love your neighbor as yourself” but didn’t understand the meaning of “love your neighbor as yourself” to present any conflict.

After all, the Bible is inundated with prohibitions, both in the OT and NT, as the authors assiduously complied a list of do nots. In the midst of doing so, slavery didn’t make the cut on the explicit naughty list. To the contrary, while a naughty list was being compiled, slavery was not only omitted from the list, but laws were established regulating the practice of slavery.

Which is another way of saying for authors and a people, obsessed with detailing what they couldn’t eat, not having sex while a woman is menstruating, circumcision, leaving a corner of the field unharvested for the poor and alien, the all important prohibition of woving mixed fabric for clothing, and the many other prohibitions, it seems improbable these authors and people missed slavery as a do not. Given the authors adroit compiling an extensive naughty list for the people to live by, it also seems improbable the “love your neighbor as yourself” was missed as inconsistent with slavery at the time.

Yes, today some people, with the benefit of a historical shifting lens of what is immoral, gaze upon “love your neighbor as yourself” through that contemporary lens of morality and possibly construe it, in part, differently than the time the authors and people wrote it/lived under it, over 2000 years ago. It isn’t at all clear your reading of the verse today is what it meant back then in regards to this specific instance.

 

[Politesse]

So...Jesus' teachings are incompatible with owning slaves? Then, again, and with insistence: where did he address it explicitly and headlong?

He doesn't. This is not unusual, he was not a poltiical leader, and didn't comment on political affairs.

Wait.

He didn't comment on the atrocity of slavery because that was "too political"??

Is this satire?

I'm pointing out that he never commented on politics, yeah. He told people what they themselves needed to do to live a righteous life. He didn't tell them what kind of govenrment to have or what laws to enact; I don't think he believed governments were capable of forcing people to live rightly. He wasn't a political leader, or even a religious one when he was alive. Just a wandering rabbi with a few disciples. Yes, I know, that isn't what your fundamentalist buddies say.

 

[Politesse]

Do you still not understand that what this thread is about is that a "holy" book even has these statements in it to be used as proof texts? That it crushes the reputation of the book altogether as any kind of godly text?

So, in the end, it isn't the slaves that you care about, at all. Yes, I do understand the argument you're making. The Bible wholeheartedly endorses slavery, so "get rid of" the Bible somehow. It's not like it's a particularly complicated or nuanced argument. Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I don't understand you.

And we are asking how you can take seriously the position that if you pretend it's not there, and "just focus on the nice bits" it'll never be used for evil. The fact that you allow it to stay there is what gives them the ammunition to use for next time. Their argument is that it is in the bible and you let it stay in the bible.

I haven't pretended that your passages aren't there, they just do not and cannot supersede the law of love which is both more clearly stated and obviously more important in any case. "I can sticky-tape an argument together to say x" is not the same as "we are clearly and unambiguously commanded to do y".

And we show that your position is actively harmful to those you claim to support, by supporting the continued existence of these phrases in what you agree is a book for the religion. They look at you and they say, "see? We have a MAJORITY of bible-believing Christians, therefore what's in the bible, anything that's in the bible, gets extra weight."

Are you suggesting that I, personally, have any power over whether the Bible does or does not exist? I do not. Neither do you. So what we're arguing about is whether to hold Christians accountable to the best virtues of their faith, or whether to encourage them in the very worst. Atheists backing them up isn't going to make slavers deconvert, why would they? They like their faith, and they believe it gives them cause to do whatever they like. You're asking them to give up their religion and their property at a go. In exchange for what?

But when I talk to them, not with the intent of destroying their faith, but of destroying the weeds that have grown up among the grass, I can and have changed people's minds on this very issue.

Incidentally, if there's a Christian fundamentalist who would consider me a "Bible-believing Christian", I'd be interested to meet them.

 

[Politesse]

It is possible, back then and at that time, the understanding of “love your neighbor as yourself” was not inconsistent with slavery. Which is to say possibly the authors and many at the time were aware of slavery and “love your neighbor as yourself” but didn’t understand the meaning of “love your neighbor as yourself” to present any conflict.

Are you arguing that they were correct not do so? Yes, I know there have been slavers within the Christian fold for the entire tenure of the faith's existence, and that they all thought they were justified in their actions. I'm not claiming that "the authors" whoever you mean by that, all agreed with each other and all agreed with me. But if they don't agree with me, I think they are wrong. And I think you do, too, unless you're about to make a plea like DBT's to try and explain to me why "nice" slave owners are loving.

I know that plenty of people living today think brutal exploitation of paid workers is never a sin, for the same reasons you discuss. Even if the conditions of said employees' lives are materially worse than that of slaves, they've been raised in a capitalist society that sees labor as an inherent good and therefore themselves as inviolable despite their many cruelties. But being raised within a certain culture in no way makes someone correct in abusing their neighbor, simply because they believe they are. Nearly everyone believes that they are good, and justified in their decisions. That isn't what makes a person good.

At least, not according to Christian philosophy.

 

[Politesse]

Wait.

He didn't comment on the atrocity of slavery because that was "too political"??

Is this satire?

Yeah, I am hoping so. Jesus, in the gospel fictions, spoke out many times against injustice, politics be damned. Isn't his adherence to his statements, as politically unfavorable as they were, why he ended up getting crucified?

And now people are claiming JeSuS WaSnT PoLiTiCaL?

Jesus absolutely spoke out against injustice. I've quoted him doing so. And trying to follow his example, despite the frustration of the exercise.

There are definitely poltiical implications that would flow from his teachings, but he wasn't a politician. This is not a new observation. Have you never noticed that books other than the Gospels have to be used to a majority degree when people try to design governments based on Christianity? Lots of Tanakh, lots of letters of Paul, and even with these there is no unambiguous Biblical advice for many political situations. It's a glaring hole in his teachings. I would be open to an arguement that this was a failing of his.

 

[Jarhyn]

Wait.

He didn't comment on the atrocity of slavery because that was "too political"??

Is this satire?

I'm pointing out that he never commented on politics, yeah. He told people what they themselves needed to do to live a righteous life. He didn't tell them what kind of govenrment to have or what laws to enact; I don't think he believed governments were capable of forcing people to live rightly. He wasn't a political leader, or even a religious one when he was alive. Just a wandering rabbi with a few disciples. Yes, I know, that isn't what your fundamentalist buddies say.

He never outright said "Don't own slaves; free them when you can. Do not participate in the sale of people, except for to free them!" He had a lot of things to say about lesser things. I do forgive his author for having written him this way, and thus said the full of the rest of it without saying that. He had a lot of opportunities, whoever it was that didn't say it. But you are right insofar as he did say many things which extrapolate to that ultimate end.

The ambiguity combined with the contextual document that is the rest of the fore-matter and the later letters and activities of "Paul". I can't say much bad about the works attributed to "John". I very much think I would love to meet him, and share a drink. Then kick him in the nuts for starting a bloody cult and not showing his work.

Jesus was a political character. He was a minority, a Jew in Rome, worshipped by kings and proclaimed by angels of his own people's God (political scandal! Not even Roman gods?!?), flipped tables in his own cultural politics, and generated scandal, and was executed politically. It was political as much as it was philosophical, and it only got moreso on account of the romans after the passion play cults started spreading and the later fan translations, and then Paul.

It's alright to identify that, just like it's alright to say that all the other matter is pretty fucked up, including most of the fan translations, much of Paul, and pretty much all of the OT.