The Jubilee ( yōḇel; Yiddish: yoyvl) is the year that follows the passage of seven "weeks of years" (seven cycles of sabbatical years, or 49 total years). This fiftieth year deals largely with land, property, and property rights. According to regulations found in the Book of Leviticus, certain indentured servants would be released from servitude, some debts would be forgiven, and everyone was supposed to return to their own property in jubilee years.
Rabbinic literature mentions a dispute between the Sages and Rabbi Yehuda over whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath's Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year.Babylonian Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 9a). Maimonides, Mishne Torah (Hil. Shmita ve-Yovel 10:7), in this case, rules in accordance with the Sages that the Jubilee is to be reckoned in the 50th year during the Seven-year cycle, with the new Seven-year cycle beginning afresh in the 51st year. This opinion agrees with that of Philo of Alexandria, who wrote in the chapter, On the Virtues (ch. XIX, vs. 100), "In this fiftieth year (Jubilee), all the ordinances which are given relating to the seventh year are repeated, and some of greater magnitude are likewise added, for instance, a resumption of a man's own possessions which he may have yielded up to others through unexpected necessity; for the law does not permit any one permanently to retain possession of the property of others, but blockades and stops up the roads to covetousness for the sake of checking desire, that treacherous passion, that cause of all evils; and, therefore, it has not permitted that the owners should be for ever deprived of their original property, as that would be punishing them for their poverty, for which we ought not to be punished, but undoubtedly to be pitied" (End Quote)
The biblical rules concerning sabbatical years are still observed by many religious Jews in Israel, but the practices prescribed for the Jubilee year have not been observed for many centuries. According to current interpretation of Torah in contemporary Rabbinic Judaism, the observance of the Jubilee year only applied when the people of Israel were living in the Land of Israel according to their tribes. 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.
In modern Israel, the Jubilee rules concerning land redistribution have been rendered functionally obsolete by secular Israeli land law. The vast majority of land in Israel is owned by the Israel Land Authority (until 2009, the Israel Land Administration), an agency of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, and the private non-profit Jewish National Fund.
Etymology The Septuagint used the phrase "a trumpet-blast of liberty" (ἀφέσεως σημασία apheseôs sêmasia), and the Vulgate used the Latin iobeleus; the English term Jubilee derives from the Latin term. The Latin term derives from the Hebrew term יוֹבֵל yōḇēl,"jubilee, n.", in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022 used in the Masoretic Text, which also meant ram and ram's horn trumpet; the Jubilee year was announced by a blast on a shofar, an instrument made from a ram's horn, during that year's Yom Kippur.
Origin and purpose
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Ancient Near Eastern societies regularly declared noncommercial debts void, typically at the coronation of a new king or at the king's order.Graeber. David. Debt: The First 5000 Years. 2011. Biblical scholars once argued that the Jubilee was an obvious development of the Sabbatical year. Rather than waiting for the 50th or 49th year, the Deuteronomic Code requires that Hebrew slaves be liberated during their 7th year of service, as does the Covenant Code, which some textual scholars regard as pre-dating the Holiness code;Richard Elliott Friedman, Who wrote the Bible? the Book of Ezekiel, which some textual scholars also regard as earlier than the Holiness Code, refers to a year of liberty (שנת דרור), during which property is returned to the original owner (or their heirs), (earlier written mentioning in Sum: ama-gi, ama-ar-gi, 'return to the mother') but the word דרור is used by Jeremiah to describe the release of slaves during the Sabbatical year, which various scholars take to imply that Ezekiel must have been referring to the sabbatical year. Scholars suspect that the transfer of these regulations to 49th or 50th year was a deliberate attempt to parallel the fact that Shavuot is 50 days after Passover, and follows seven weeks of harvest; this parallel is regarded as significant in Kabbalah.
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.Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (New York: Meridian Books, 1957) 117–120. Originally published as Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Berlin, 1882; Eng. trans., 1885; 5th German edition, 1899; first published in 1878 as Geschichte Israels). Wellhausen dated those chapters to a late exilic or post-exilic period though many modern proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis have arrived at different datings.
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. Yehezekel Kaufmann has argued that the book of Ezekiel quotes from the Sabbatical and Jubilee legislation of the Book of Leviticus, which must have been in existence before Ezekiel's writings.Yehezekel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel from its Beginning to the Babylonian Exile (trans. M. Greenberg; New York: Schocken Books, 1972) 433–435. This argument has been expanded by Risa Levitt Kohn. Kohn examined in detail the 97 terms and phrases that are shared between Ezekiel and the Priestly Code. She concludes:
John Bergsma provides a further argument against an exilic or post-exilic date for the codifying of the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation, saying that the Sitz im Leben (life situation) of the exilic or post-exilic period is not at all addressed by this legislation.
Bergsma therefore points out the incongruity of Wellhausen's ascribing an exilic or post-exilic date to the Jubilee and Sabbatical-year legislation, since this would conflict with the Sitz im Leben of Israel during, and after, the exile. In addition, Bergsma shows that the problem that this legislation was addressing was a problem recognized by the kings of Babylon in the second millennium BC, which naturally suggests the possibility of a much earlier date of codification. These Babylonian kings (to whom could be added Ammi-SaduqaJames B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969) 526–528.) 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. The decrees were issued sporadically.
Economist Michael Hudson maintains that the Biblical legislation of the Jubilee and Sabbatical years addressed the same problems encountered by these Babylonian kings, but the Biblical formulation of the laws presented a significant advance in justice and the rights of the people. This was due to the "clean slates" now being codified into law, rather than relying on the whim of the king. 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. Hudson therefore maintains that not only was the Levitical legislation a significant advance over the prior attempts to deal with indebtedness, but this legislation was also eminently practical, in contradiction to many Biblical interpreters who are not economists and who have labeled it "utopian".
Regulations The biblical regulations concerning the Jubilee year appear in . According to these regulations, the Jubilee was to be sounded once 49 years had been counted, raising an ambiguity over whether the Jubilee was within the 49th year, or followed it as an intercalation in the 7-year sabbatical cycles; scholars and classical rabbinical sources are divided on the question.Jewish Encyclopedia
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 biblical regulations state that the land was to rest a "Sabbath" when the Children of Israel came to the land God was giving them Israel. The Seder Olam Rabbah (second century AD), stated that this verse meant that the counting was not to start until after the Israelites had gained control of Canaan, which the Seder Olam, based upon received tradition, placed at 14 years after their entry into the land.Seder Olam Rabbah, chapter 11. This interpretation has been largely adopted in later rabbinic scholarship. One reason for this interpretation of the Levitical text was that if counting started before the land was completely conquered, it would require the Israelites to return the land to the Canaanites within 50 years; similar nationalistic concerns about the impact of the Jubilee on land ownership have been raised by Zionist settlers. From a legal point of view, the Jubilee law effectively banned sale of land as fee simple, and instead land could only be leased for no more than 50 years. The biblical regulations go on to specify that the price of land had to be proportional to how many years remained before the Jubilee, with land being cheaper the closer it is to the Jubilee.
Length of the cycle Since the 49th year was already a sabbatical year, the land was required to be left fallow during it, but if the 50th year also had to be kept fallow, as the Jubilee, then no new crops would be available for two years, and only the summer fruits would be available for the following year, creating a much greater risk of starvation overall;Cheyne and Black, Encyclopedia Biblica Judah the Prince contended that the jubilee year was identical with the sabbatical 49th year.Talmudic tractate Rosh Hashanah 9a However, the majority of classical rabbis believed that the biblical phrase hallow the fiftieth year, together with the biblical promise that there would be three years worth of fruit in the sixth year, implies that the jubilee year was the 50th year. The opinion of the Geonim, and generally of later authorities, was that prior to the Babylonian captivity the Jubilee was the intercalation of the 50th year, but after the captivity ended the Jubilee was essentially ignored, except for the blast of the shofar, and coincided with the sabbatical 49th year; the reason was that the Jubilee was only to be observed when the Jews controlled all of Canaan, including the territories of Reuben and Gad and the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh.