Jubilee years Luke and the Birth of Jesus

[Clive]

Btw, Jesus is of the tribe of David, ie from Judah.....

[Clive]

The political ideology of the Deuteronomistic History in the Bible depicts the reality after the fall of the northern kingdom. It is Judah-cen- tric, arguing that all territories that once belonged to Israel must be ruled by a Davidic king, that all Hebrews must accept the rule of the Davidic dynasty, and that all Hebrews must worship the God of Israel at the temple in Jerusalem. The story of the northern kingdom is therefore mostly tele-graphic and its tone negative;2 while the individual Hebrews can all join the nation if they accept the centrality of the Jerusalem temple and dynasty, their kingdom and kings are viewed as illegitimate.

http://www.sbl-site.org/assets/pdfs/978 ... ld_txt.pdf

[Clive]

Well well!

The Lord said to Moses at Mount Sinai, 2 “Speak to the Israelites

Now why would the Judaic rabbis want to abolish Jubilee? Self interest? Writing Israel out of their history?

[Clive]

For those interested in early Christianity, the Jubilee year is completely meaningless. All we know about first century Judaism comes from Josephus, and maybe a little for Philo.

They don't mention it at all.

It is pointless to spend time on it.

Fascinating!

What is pointless about looking in detail at a very egalitarian principle, that is at the bedrock of a very wealthy and successful kingdom, that has clearly been written out of history by later groups?

Thou dost protest too much! Oh no, its communism! In the Bible! We're doomed!

(And those later groups use the very political tool of inventing a Christ and putting treasures in heaven instead of redistributing treasures here, albeit with sops to the old ways like holding everything in common)

[Clive]

The first kibbutzim[edit]



The kibbutzim were founded by members of the Bilu movement who emigrated to Palestine. Like the members of the First Aliyah who came before them, most members of the Second Aliya wanted to be farmers. Joseph Baratz, one of the pioneers of the kibbutz movement, wrote a book about his experiences.[5]

"We were happy enough working on the land, but we knew more and more certainly that the ways of the old settlements were not for us. This was not the way we hoped to settle the country—this old way with Jews on top and Arabs working for them; anyway, we thought that there shouldn't be employers and employed at all. There must be a better way."[6]
Though Baratz and others wanted to farm the land themselves, becoming independent farmers was not a realistic option in 1909. As Arthur Ruppin, a proponent of Jewish agricultural colonization of the Trans-Jordan would later say, "The question was not whether group settlement was preferable to individual settlement; it was rather one of either group settlement or no settlement at all."[7]

Ottoman Palestine was a harsh environment. The Galilee was swampy, the Judean Hills rocky, and the south of the country, the Negev, was a desert. To make things more challenging, most of the settlers had no prior farming experience. The sanitary conditions were also poor. Malaria, typhus and cholera were rampant. Nomadic Bedouins would raid farms and settled areas. Sabotage of irrigation canals and burning of crops were also common. Living collectively was simply the most logical way to be secure in an unwelcoming land. On top of safety considerations, establishing a farm was a capital-intensive project; collectively the founders of the kibbutzim had the resources to establish something lasting, while independently they did not.

Maybe the idea of Jubilee has survived and been reinvented? Please note the area being discussed in Wiki includes the ancient kingdom of Israel!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz

[andrewcriddle]

The passage divides the seventy weeks into ten jubillees of 49 years each. The defilement of the temple under Antiochus and the establishment of the (libelled) Maccabean priesthood occur towards the end of the seventh Jubilee. In order to fit the chronology of these events the seventh Jubilee must end somewher around 150-148 BCE with the tenth Jubilee ending around 3-1 BCE. (Probably in the Sabbatical year 2-1 BCE.)

This is too precise. I was dating the purification of the temple to 164 BCE and the establishment of the Maccabean priesthood to 154 BCE. The purification of the temple may have been dated to 165 and the Maccabean priesthood was probably 152 BCE. This ends the seventh Jubilee between 151 and 146 and the end of the tenth Jubilee between 4 BCE and 2 CE.

There have been some interesting responses, thank you. But less than I hoped about the specific issue of the meaning and significance of the Testament of Levi.

Andrew Criddle