Jubilee (biblical)

According to regulations found in the Book of Leviticus, certain indentured servants would be released from servitude,[2] some debts would be forgiven,[3] and everyone was supposed to return to their own property in jubilee years.

Therefore, in one sense Jubilee has not been applicable since the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE by Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II.

[17] According to the documentary hypothesis, originally proposed by Julius Wellhausen, the Biblical chapters that contain the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation (chapters 25 and 27 of Leviticus) were part of the so-called "P" or Priestly Code that Wellhausen believed represented the last stage in the development of Israel's religion.

Wellhausen's theory that the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation was written in the exilic or post-exilic period, specifically after the time of Ezekiel, has always been challenged by scholars who have maintained the traditional position of Judaism and Christianity for the Mosaic authorship of Leviticus.

Recently, however, the theories of Wellhausen and others who date the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation to the exilic period or later have also been challenged by scholars who generally do not have a conservative view of the Bible.

It is, however, plausible that Ezekiel, writing in exile, re-evaluated P's portrayal of Israel's uniqueness, cynically inverting these images so that what was once a "pleasing fragrance to YHWH" symbolizes impiety and irreverence.

If the priesthood in the early Persian period really wanted a legal pretext for the return of lost lands, they would surely have written themselves a law that directly addressed their situation.

These Babylonian kings (to whom could be added Ammi-Saduqa[24]) occasionally issued decrees for the cancellation of debts and/or the return of the people to the lands they had sold.

Such "clean slate" decrees were intended to redress the tendency of debtors, in ancient societies, to become hopelessly in debt to their creditors, thus accumulating most of the arable land into the control of a wealthy few.

Furthermore, the regular rhythm of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years meant that everyone would know when the next release was due, thereby giving fairness and equity to both creditor and debtor.

[11][17] The biblical requirement is that the Jubilee year was to be treated like a Sabbatical year, with the land lying fallow, but also required the compulsory return of all property to its original owners or their heirs, except the houses of laymen within walled cities, in addition to the manumission of all Israelite indentured servants.

The length of the Jubilee cycle continues to be of interest to modern scholarship, as does the question of the practicality of the legislation, and whether it was ever put into effect on a nationwide basis.

[36] The reasons given by these authors to support a 49-year cycle are both textual (examining all relevant Biblical texts) and practical.

[39] The consideration that the Jubilee was identical with the seventh Sabbatical year solves the various practical problems, as also addressed by these authors.

[43] A second historical argument has been presented to the effect that the two instances of a Jubilee mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (tractates Arakin 12a and Megillah 14b) appear to be proper historical remembrances, because the known calculation methods of rabbinic scholarship were incapable of correctly calculating the dates of the Jubilees mentioned.

This has been presented as additional evidence that the cycle was 49 years, and further that the cycles were being measured until the last Jubilee in the days of Ezekiel, when the stipulations of the Jubilee year, long neglected except in the counting of the priests, could no longer be observed because the people were captive in a foreign land.

As mentioned above, the Seder Olam put forth the idea that the counting for these cycles was deferred until 14 years after entry into the land.

In this same chapter 11 of the Seder Olam, Rabbi Jose stated (for unknown reasons) that Israel's time in its land must have lasted an integral number of Jubilee periods.

Yet Rabbi Jose also believed that Ezekiel 40:1 marked the beginning of the seventeenth Jubilee, and this was 14 years after the city fell.

Rodger Young proposes that the knowledge of when a genuine Jubilee was due was the real reason for the supposition of a delay before the start of counting: The reason for the fourteen-year delay in Seder ‘Olam 11 is that Rabbi Yose (primary author of the Seder ‘Olam) had the idée fixe that the total time that Israel spent in its land must come out to an exact number of Jubilee cycles.

The historian Josephus, however, had a different tradition, writing in his work Antiquities (10.8.5) that the First Temple stood 470 years,[57] which would, of necessity, offset the number of Jubilee cycles.

Moreover, Josephus' reckoning of the timeline of events does not always align with Seder Olam, the book on which rabbinic tradition is so dependent.

The discrepancies between Josephus and Seder Olam have led some scholars to think that the dates prescribed in Seder Olam are only approximations, as Josephus brings down supportive evidence by making use of two basic epochs, the Olympiad era counting and the Seleucid era counting, drawn principally from other writers, to verify the historicity of many of these events.

In spite of their differences in the general span of years, there is not necessarily disagreement between Josephus and Seder Olam when Josephus refers to dates of Sabbatical years during the Second Temple period, as the time-frame for these dates overlap those mentioned in Seder Olam (chapter 30) for the Grecian, Hasmonean, and Herodian periods.

[59] A further theological insight afforded by the Jubilee cycles is explained in Andrew Steinmann's monograph on Biblical chronology.

These chronological considerations are usually neglected in discussions of the legislation for the Jubilee and Sabbatical years, but Steinmann stresses their theological importance as follows: This illustrates one of the principles stated in the preface to the present book: that some historical insights will remain obscured until the chronology of the period under discussion is determined properly.

But they do more: they also offer theological insights on such important matters as the date and historicity of the Exodus and the origin of the Book of Leviticus.

[61]Despite the fact that the specific norms of the Jubilee were meant for an agrarian and ancient economy, it has been noted that its principles of economic justice remain relevant and can be adapted to the modern world.

The periodic land redistribution mandated by the Jubilee was aimed at preventing excessive wealth inequality and democratizing private property, without abrogating either personal responsibility or incentives for prosperity.

The norm of Leviticus 25:13, according to which everyone was supposed to return to their own property in the Jubilee years, coupled with the fact that land was initially equally distributed among the Israelites (Book of Numbers 26:51-54), provides additional grounding for Thomas Paine's idea of natural inheritance.