Did America ACTUALLY have 400 years of slavery?

[Zardnaar]

I believe trade within the empire only crashed, with concominat abandonment of cities, in the 5th century. Certainly by the 4th big cities were still big, and provincial cities still retained their functions, they were hastily building walls. Than meant manpower available locally, to the city, and trade to sypply it. Even if the monetary economy started breaking down in the third century, something replaced it, or the debased currency sufficed. It was political fragmentation in the 5th century that finally lead to trade network collapse and urban abandonment. How fast that happened I can only speculate. In this corned it may have happened over a single lifetime, if so it must have seemed catastrophic.

The maintenance on the aquasducts etc started to break down due to the economic problems.

Hard to say exactly due to lack of records. The 1st century AD is better documented than the 3rs to 5th iirc.

Theoretically they should have been able to raise their own men etc the depopulation was several centuries away.

But yeah who knows wxact details if the Romans even knew we don't.

 

[innonimatu]

Not that hard to say. There's lots of archeological evidence. The big rural villa were not abandoned before the late 4th or early 5th century. Cities were building big city walls in the 4th century. They can be dated. And these were the provinces. I think that the cities collapsed after the big trade networks got much reduced, and those fell after the political fragmentation introduced new barriers and new competing centres among the provinces of the empire. With the cities emptying of population then civil buildings start their centuries-long decay. But in some places damns, aqueducts and bridges were used for almost the the full 2000 years! Modern vandals still have managed to destroy some of those, like the acqueduct - "ni todo lo antiguo por el mero hecho de serlo entraña importancia e interés para la historia, para la arqueología y para el arte..." liberal modernizers... lots of surviving very old works were torn down by them.

 

[Zardnaar]

Not that hard to say. There's lots of archeological evidence. The big rural villa were not abandoned before the late 4th or early 5th century. Cities were building big city walls in the 4th century. They can be dated. And these were the provinces. I think that the cities collapsed after the big trade networks got much reduced, and those fell after the political fragmentation introduced new barriers and new competing centres among the provinces of the empire. With the cities emptying of population then civil buildings start their centuries-long decay. But in some places damns, aqueducts and bridges were used for almost the the full 2000 years! Modern vandals still have managed to destroy some of those, like the acqueduct - "ni todo lo antiguo por el mero hecho de serlo entraña importancia e interés para la historia, para la arqueología y para el arte..." liberal modernizers... lots of surviving very old works were torn down by them.

Sort of I think new awuaduct construction stopped and they fell into disrepair.

I was also talking about the army. The people were still there but it seems they were unable to raise an army unlike say 500-700 years earlier.

 

[Lexicus]

I believe trade within the empire only crashed, with concominat abandonment of cities, in the 5th century.

Trade crashed in the 3rd century but recovered, but never to the heights from prior to the Third Century Crisis. It did finally collapse again in the 5th century, though the eastern empire kept it going for a bit longer.

 

[Zardnaar]

Trade crashed in the 3rd century but recovered, but never to the heights from prior to the Third Century Crisis. It did finally collapse again in the 5th century, though the eastern empire kept it going for a bit longer.

Cheers last inpaid attention they argued Rome never recovered from the third century crisis. It was the final straw.

Much like Manzikert in the east.

 

[Plotinus]

I don’t see how it can have been the “final straw” when the entire empire endured for the best part of another two centuries. What did it in was the crisis of the *fifth* century. Of course many of the roots of that crisis lay in the third century, but the reforms of Diocletian and others staved off collapse for a long time.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Rome also wrongfully executed the person that Christians consider to be the Messiah, just saying.

Not quite. The NT makes it pretty clear that Jesus had to die and who did it and why were immaterial. Without his death, no resurrection, no Easter morning, no Saviour, no Christianity. Judas and Pontius Pilot were just God's pawns to get the job done. There was no betrayal, no injustice.

 

[Plotinus]

Even if that were an accurate representation of NT teaching on the matter - and I don’t think it is - I’m not sure one can base historical assessments on theological assertions!

 

[Remorseless1]

Not quite. The NT makes it pretty clear that Jesus had to die and who did it and why were immaterial. Without his death, no resurrection, no Easter morning, no Saviour, no Christianity. Judas and Pontius Pilot were just God's pawns to get the job done. There was no betrayal, no injustice.

The leaders of the Temple were the ones who insisted be put to death for his heretical teachings and speeches. When Pilate fudged, and asked that a crowd of Jerusalem be assembled to determine whether Jesus or Barabas the thief be put to death, the Temple priests made certain the majority of the crowd backed the Temple's position. The Romans rarely cared about local politics. They wanted order and taxes

 

[Plotinus]

Well, that’s what Matthew and John would have you believe. But it’s pretty unlikely that it actually happened that way. Pilate was a brutal despot not exactly known for his merciful nature. What probably happened is that Jesus’ name was on a list he was given if people to execute, and he rubber-stamped it without a second thought. The idea of him releasing a prisoner at Passover and asking the crowd who they wanted is obviously fictional.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The idea of him releasing a prisoner at Passover and asking the crowd who they wanted is obviously fictional.

Is this the right way to think about such historical evidence as the gospels might provide? So, in those gospel accounts, Pilate says "you have a tradition whereby I release somebody to you at Passover." The audience to which the gospels were originally directed would know whether that was true or not. If not, why put an obviously discrediting claim in your narrative? A narrative that in other places is trying to sell some pretty incredible claims.

 

[Ajidica]

Is this the right way to think about such historical evidence as the gospels might provide? So, in those gospel accounts, Pilate says "you have a tradition whereby I release somebody to you at Passover." The audience to which the gospels were originally directed would know whether that was true or not. If not, why put an obviously discrediting claim in your narrative? A narrative that in other places is trying to sell some pretty incredible claims.

Ancient writers never let things like "facts" or "the audience would know better" get in the way of telling the proper moral lesson.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Is this the right way to think about such historical evidence as the gospels might provide? So, in those gospel accounts, Pilate says "you have a tradition whereby I release somebody to you at Passover." The audience to which the gospels were originally directed would know whether that was true or not. If not, why put an obviously discrediting claim in your narrative? A narrative that in other places is trying to sell some pretty incredible claims.

The gospel narratives were written decades after the events and Pilate died ~37 AD after he was removed as Governor of Judea in 36 for slaughtering a bunch of Samaritans. By the time the gospels were written down there was lots of opportunity to dress up the story since many/most of the actors were dead or had moved on.

 

[Plotinus]

Yes, and Matthew was writing for Greek-speaking people outside Judea, who probably wouldn’t have any particular knowledge of customs there.

Even apart from that, Ajidica is right to say that ancient authors simply had a different approach to this sort of thing. A good example from another Gospel is Luke’s claim that Caesar Augustus ordered an empire-wide taxation census which required everybody to travel to the home town of their distant ancestors - another obviously absurd claim, but in this case one that many readers would surely have known to be false. But given that the claim is made in the course of a narrative in which characters react to key events by spontaneously bursting into song, its historicity surely isn’t the central concern!

 

[innonimatu]

Even apart from that, Ajidica is right to say that ancient authors simply had a different approach to this sort of thing. A good example from another Gospel is Luke’s claim that Caesar Augustus ordered an empire-wide taxation census which required everybody to travel to the home town of their distant ancestors - another obviously absurd claim, but in this case one that many readers would surely have known to be false. But given that the claim is made in the course of a narrative in which characters react to key events by spontaneously bursting into song, its historicity surely isn’t the central concern!

This kind of surprises me. I mean, taxation and census were provincial matters, but was it impossible that an administratively-inclined emperor might order governors to all do it? Is the returning to home town the non-credible part?

 

[Edmund Ironside]

A good example from another Gospel is Luke’s claim that Caesar Augustus ordered an empire-wide taxation census which required everybody to travel to the home town of their distant ancestors - another obviously absurd claim, but in this case one that many readers would surely have known to be false.

Michael Jones would disagree with your assertion.

 

[Plotinus]

The two main issues - though there are others - are that no such empire-wide census is mentioned in any other source; and the returning-to-ancestral-city part. The first isn’t insuperable. It’s not inconceivable that such a census just isn’t mentioned in any surviving records. But the second is just ridiculous. Note that Joseph, according to Luke, doesn’t travel to his home town, or even the town where his family came from; he travels to the town where his incredibly distant semi-legendary ancestor lived many centuries earlier. It’s like saying that for the UK census anyone descended from King Arthur should go to Tintagel to be registered. According to Matthew’s Gospel, David was twenty-seven generations before Joseph. It’s clearly absurd to suppose that anyone could have known their ancestors twenty-seven generations back, or that, if they did, people should have been expected to travel to where their great-times-25 grandfathers came from. Why that generation in particular? Why not to where their great-times-10 grandfathers came from? What if some people didn’t know their ancestry that far back? Did they not get taxed? And as for saying “everyone descended from King David go to Bethlehem”…! That could have been everyone on the country for all anybody knew. No wonder it was so crowded.

That video doesn’t address this inherent implausibility at all. All it says is that there aren’t any sources saying that censuses *weren’t* conducted in this way, so we should take Luke’s word for it. That isn’t a good argument.

There’s also the problem that Luke’s Gospel plain contradicts Matthew’s on this point, since Matthew implies that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem to start with and provides a quite different explanation for why they subsequently moved to Nazareth (to avoid Antipas). If Luke’s story of them living in Nazareth and only visiting Bethlehem temporarily for the census were true then no explanation for their return to Nazareth would be needed. The obvious conclusion is that Jesus was born in Nazareth, his home town, but the Gospel writers wanted him to have been born in Bethlehem for theological reasons, and Matthew and Luke devised different ways of contriving this, with varying degrees of plausibility.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

Interestingly Michael Jones has a section on his site responding to videos people make about his videos. It appears someone did make one about this video. Obviously it won't have an exact response to your criticism, but perhaps touches on some of the issues. I tried to copy the more relevant part of the response. He also says when he has the time he wants to make a more comprehensive video on the subject.

"Now at 18:38 Divine Disbelief says, “Neither of the biblical references has anything to do with ‘going to their place of origin’ or ‘property is the property of their father’.” But I never said it had anything to do with returning to a place of origin. Instead, the point was these passages do hint at property rights through inheritances. Their inheritance came from their father when the father died. Until then, they were under their father. I admit I could have explained this better, but that also doesn’t justify them reading into it what they think.

After this, things kind of go off the rail. To quote at 20:10, “Why would it matter to the Romans who owned any property thousands of years prior?” But where did I ever say or imply this? The fact that Joseph’s original family household was probably in Bethlehem (which is why he went back there) probably had nothing to do with King David’s claim from thousands of years ago, which is why I never claimed that.

Perhaps, they are referring to Luke 2:4 which reads, “And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David.” Maybe Divine Disbelief is using this verse to suggest the Romans cared about lineages going back to David, but I suspect that is reading too much into the text. Luke is probably using this opportunity to remind readers that Jesus is a legal descendent of David through Joseph’s family connection in Bethlehem. However, Joseph probably went there because that is where his father was located.

The gospels also imply Joseph and Mary likely stayed in Bethlehem for a while. In the book “Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes,” the authors remind us:

“When Joseph went to Bethlehem to register, Mary gave birth to Jesus. They needed to wait a few weeks for Mary to recuperate before they traveled back, but it appears Joseph and Mary may have remained in Bethlehem for nearly two years. When the wise men arrived, they went to a house where the toddler Jesus and his parents were living (Mt 2:11). What had Mary and Joseph been doing all this time? Not vacationing. Joseph was probably following work opportunities. He intended to return to Nazareth but was staying while there was work to be found. This was the time (hairos) for work. He would leave when the time was passed. Americans find it hard to leave town for a long weekend. Who will feed the cat? We cannot imagine someone leaving their home for a year or two. But in cultures in which hairos is more important than chronos, this is a common thing to do.” (19)

If Joseph had family connections, as Luke and Matthew imply, then it makes sense as to why they spent so much time in Bethlehem, and how it could have created work opportunities through familial connections. I don’t think the Romans or Hoerd cared about who was descended from David (which is why I never once said this), but they may have wanted families together in their place of origin for proper assessment. The possibility that some families could trace their lines back to David was just an indirect consequence of requiring Joseph to go back to his father’s house.

This section was a bit funny to watch because Divine Disbelief then spends several minutes trying to attack a claim that was never made by doing mathematical calculations of how many Jews could have been descended from David and would need to have traveled back to Bethlehem. I can’t tell if they are trying to be ridiculous in this section for comedic purposes, but I’ll respond nonetheless. At 24:10, they argue from using exponential calculations, “…it shows pretty much every Jew in 1st century Palestine and all those living elsewhere in the Roman Empire would have been of the, quote, line of David.”

Sure, that is possible, and it works in a hypothetical setting, but things do not ever play out the same way in reality. For one, the Jews only documented male heirs, so anyone who descended from a female descendant of David would not have documented that connection. Second, the life expectancies were much shorter back then due to higher rates of war and disease (let’s also not forget the Babylonian Exile). Populations didn’t grow as fast as they have after the industrial revolution. So, unfortunately, it’s not like every one of these descendants would have lived to reproduce. In fact, using that kind of exponential growth is very impractical in reality, especially before modern times. This whole thing reminded me of an older video by Potholer54 who responded to AiG on trying to argue for exponential population growth after the alleged global flood to get enough people to build the pyramids.

The idea that every Jew in the 1st century would have been able to claim they were a descendant of David is probably not true, which is why we don’t see it happening in the records that survived. Populations were simply not growing like they are today.

I am not saying it is impossible that David could be what scientists call the ‘most recent genealogical ancestor’ of everyone in Judea, but that is not even relevant to the main point (20). I did not claim every descendant of David would need to have gone to Bethlehem. Nor do we have reason to believe every Jew would have thought of themselves as a legal descendant of David. My point was about returning to family origins under the father’s household, wherever that was. Again, this is not to say we have proof this is what happened, it is utilizing the principle of charity to make sense of what Luke is telling us. Plus, there are no records that contradict Luke on the procedures of this specific census.

At 25:28 they state, “The complete chaos which would ensue as tens of millions of people made the trek to the, quote, place of their origin which again is not mentioned in any historical documentation would not have gone overlooked by those alive at the time.”

Obviously tens of millions would not have arrived in Bethlehem, as we just went over (especially since there were not even that many Jews in Judea at that time). But apart from this, why do we need to assume Luke is wrong or questionable just because there is no corroborating evidence? Luke is a historical document. Should we not give Luke the benefit of doubt since no other historical documentation contradicts him? If they had a source from this 4 B.C. census that said otherwise, then they would have a point, but they seem to be assuming Luke is wrong because nothing confirms his report. The Bible is not guilty until proven innocent."

 

[Plotinus]

Well, the idea that Joseph's family might have still been living in Bethlehem even after so many generations isn't inherently absurd - after all, Cheddar Man has relatives still living in Cheddar today, which if you've been there isn't perhaps all that surprising. It would, though, be hard to see how anyone living at that time could have reliably known that they were descended from King David (or anyone); are we to suppose that anyone with a family legend of being related to David was supposed to go to Bethlehem? It just seems crazy. Perhaps more importantly, though, he's trying to push for the idea that everyone went to their recent families' home town - so it's not that Joseph went to Bethlehem because he was descended from David and that's where David was from - rather, he went to Bethlehem because his immediate family was from there (and, as it happens, they were from there because they'd simply never moved away since David's day). That might seem more plausible, except that it's not what Luke says. Luke says that Joseph went to Bethlehem specifically because he was descended from David. So this seems to me to be a case of twisting the words of the text to try to fit a more plausible narrative.

The idea that Jesus' parents might have stayed on Bethlehem, having gone there for the census, isn't inherently implausible, of course, but it's pure speculation and in any case contradicts Luke 2:39-40, which states that they went straight back to Nazareth after doing everything required by the Law following the birth. I suppose that the claim that they didn't return until Jesus was nearly two is based on Matthew 3:16, where Herod orders the deaths of all boys under the age of two, but that's a pretty dubious inference - Herod might, after all, have been trying to cover all bases by keeping the age window fairly wide. One might think that if Herod knew Jesus to be nearly two at this time he'd have ordered only the deaths of infants aged between twelve and twenty-four months, if he were trying to be precise. In any case, this just seems to me to be more evidence of inconsistency between the Gospels: in Luke they start in Nazareth, go to Bethlehem, and return again quite quickly after Jesus' birth, while in Matthew they start in Bethlehem and move to first Egypt and then Nazareth at some unspecified time, but within two years of Jesus' birth.

Of course with enough ingenuity one can construct scenarios to make divergent accounts consistent. I’ve seen accounts of Jesus’ life that solve the problem of the cleansing of the Temple (John says it happened at the start of Jesus’ career but the Synoptics put it at the end) by claiming it happened twice. But the question then becomes: what’s more probable? Is there any reason to prefer these contorted scenarios other than a desire to preserve a prior theologically motivated commitment to the inerrancy of the texts? Because that’s hardly a good historiographical principle.

As I said, I don't think that these birth narratives are supposed to be historically convincing anyway. Luke has characters burst into song at various points. Are we really supposed to believe that Mary free-styled the Magnificat at the Annunciation? Did Luke really expect his readers to think that? We're used to these things because they're so embedded in liturgical and cultural tradition, but really they don't make sense if interpreted as sober historical records.

 

[Edmund Ironside]

Interesting.
It is unsurprisingly beyond my level of expertise to have a response to your response to his response to their response to his video!
I have been to cheddar gorge (main memory was stopping at a tea shop to have an English cream tea*), can't comment on what the locals were like!
*They are opening up a tea shop in grand rapids michigan where you can go for an English cream tea, so maybe I can recreate that memory.