The following is only part of a much longer, rambling conversation,
but seems to have some relevance to Christians. The speakers are both
economists, Steve Keen (this Great Depression's J.M. Keynes, or Michal
Kalecki) and economist and historian Michael Hudson (Kucinich's
economics advisor). Here's the excerpt where Hudson brings up Jesus'
economics:
"[Hudson] So I realized that debt cancellation was very political. And I just said, I’m going to write a history of debt cancellation.
And so I – it took me about a year to go back through the medieval times to Rome and to Greece, to Solon’s debt cancellations.
[Keen] This is reading at this stage, rather than doing archaeological research?
[Hudson] Reading. So I went back – I had just moved down to Wall Street from where I was living to the Tribeca, one block from the World Trade Center. And then I got all of a sudden, there were references in the Jewish jubilee year to the Babylonians
But there was no economic history of Babylonia. So I begun to read about Sumer and Babylonia. And I found that every new ruler for thousands of years – from 2,500 BC down to about 500 BC – would start their reign by abolishing all of the debts owed to the palace and temples, all of the consumer debts. Not the business debts. The business debts – silver debts – were left in place. But the personal debts – the usury – that were paid in grain would be annulled.
When there was a failure of grain and people – the debtor’s, the harvesters, the citizens couldn’t pay their debts, the ruler would proclaim a clean slate. The word the rulers used in Babylonian was andurarum. And that’s the word that in Hebrew, deror, used for the Jubilee year. in Leviticus 25.
Then I did more reading, and I realized that when you know what these words mean, when Jesus gave his first sermon, reported in Luke 4 – the first sermon that he gave. He unrolled the scroll to Isaiah and said, I have come to proclaim the year of the Lord. The year of the Lord was the word for deror, for debt cancellation. And what he’d said was I’ve come to insist in abolishing the debts. And his rival was the chief rabbi of the pharisees, and who said who had the prose book – the small print, every debtor to borrow money had to sign, I will not insist on my rights to have the debts canceled in the jubilee year.
So I wrote a book – a history of this – by about, I think, 1988 and 1990, and submitted it to a university press. They submitted it in a right wing Assyriologist that said, it’s impossible to cancel the debts, because if you cancel the debts, no one would lend you money."
"[Hudson] So I realized that debt cancellation was very political. And I just said, I’m going to write a history of debt cancellation.
And so I – it took me about a year to go back through the medieval times to Rome and to Greece, to Solon’s debt cancellations.
[Keen] This is reading at this stage, rather than doing archaeological research?
[Hudson] Reading. So I went back – I had just moved down to Wall Street from where I was living to the Tribeca, one block from the World Trade Center. And then I got all of a sudden, there were references in the Jewish jubilee year to the Babylonians
But there was no economic history of Babylonia. So I begun to read about Sumer and Babylonia. And I found that every new ruler for thousands of years – from 2,500 BC down to about 500 BC – would start their reign by abolishing all of the debts owed to the palace and temples, all of the consumer debts. Not the business debts. The business debts – silver debts – were left in place. But the personal debts – the usury – that were paid in grain would be annulled.
When there was a failure of grain and people – the debtor’s, the harvesters, the citizens couldn’t pay their debts, the ruler would proclaim a clean slate. The word the rulers used in Babylonian was andurarum. And that’s the word that in Hebrew, deror, used for the Jubilee year. in Leviticus 25.
Then I did more reading, and I realized that when you know what these words mean, when Jesus gave his first sermon, reported in Luke 4 – the first sermon that he gave. He unrolled the scroll to Isaiah and said, I have come to proclaim the year of the Lord. The year of the Lord was the word for deror, for debt cancellation. And what he’d said was I’ve come to insist in abolishing the debts. And his rival was the chief rabbi of the pharisees, and who said who had the prose book – the small print, every debtor to borrow money had to sign, I will not insist on my rights to have the debts canceled in the jubilee year.
So I wrote a book – a history of this – by about, I think, 1988 and 1990, and submitted it to a university press. They submitted it in a right wing Assyriologist that said, it’s impossible to cancel the debts, because if you cancel the debts, no one would lend you money."
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