Let Freedom Ring
Debt Forgiveness in the Old Testament
This part of the System Failure constellation of ideas explores how the Fall of Rome shaped Christianity. Death and rebirth are central to that religion, both in its mythology—the story of Jesus is about coming back from the dead—and in its history. Christianity resurrected much older Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions, dusted them off, and transported them forward into the Middle Ages and beyond. Three major examples—all readily allegorized by death and rebirth—are debt forgiveness, astronomical cycles, and ego death.
Christianity originated within the Roman Empire, which eventually collapsed because of debt. The Romans were pioneers in forgoing the stability of systematic debt forgiveness. By contrast, much older Fertile Crescent societies held a long tradition of it to stave off collapses exactly like the one that befell Rome. This Mesopotamian tradition arrived in the Roman Empire through Jewish scripture. That’s the story of Jesus. However, Rome's fate was sealed when the financial forgiveness he preached was changed into forgiveness for bad behavior instead. That’s how the Christianity we recognize today was shaped by the Fall of Rome.
Last week’s essay focused on debt forgiveness in the Bronze Age Mesopotamia. The topic of today’s essay is how that tradition of debt forgiveness made its way into the Roman Empire via Judaism…
The Babylonian Captivity
Debt forgiveness was an indispensable tool during the Bronze Age for maintaining the stability of early Mesopotamian societies. Babylonian kings commanded that debts be regularly purged to prevent too many from becoming hopelessly poor or anyone from becoming dangerously wealthy. This highly effective practice spread to other societies with the ebb and flow of ancient civilizations over the millenia BC.
Debt forgiveness made its way into Jewish scripture after the conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. After he sacked Jerusalem and razed the original Temple of Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar dragged thousands of Jews back to Babylon with him as his slaves. This episode is known biblically as the “Babylonian Captivity".
Interestingly, Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem was the last moment the Ark of the Covenant was known to history. It disappeared in the chaos during the Babylonian rape of Jerusalem. Some legends suggest that the Ark was also taken to Babylon along with the Jewish captives. Others insist that the Ark was taken south into modern-day Ethiopia. Whatever the case may be, it is odd that rumors of magical artifacts like the Ark swirl around significant inflection points in the history of finance. The Holy Grail also matches this pattern, which will be discussed later.
There's Always a Bigger Fish
The fate of Nebuchadnezzar’s Neo-Babylonian Empire exemplifies the old fisherman’s proverb that there’s “always a bigger fish”. Less than 50 years after its conquest of Judea, it was Babylon’s turn to be swallowed up. This time, Cyrus the Great and his Achaemenid Persian army did the conquering. After the dust settled, Cyrus released the Jewish slaves. He sent them home to Jerusalem, where they formalized the Hebrew Bible and consecrated a second Temple of Solomon to replace the one Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed.
To this day, the episode of the Babylonian Captivity remains a significant theme in Jewish scripture. During their time as Babylonian slaves, the Jews discovered the tradition of periodic debt forgiveness that stabilized Babylonian and other early Near East societies for millenia. Like the story of the Babylonian Captivity itself, debt forgiveness remains a broad theme that still appears in numerous Old Testament books.
The Liberty Bell
One such Old Testament reference to debt forgiveness is Leviticus 25:10, which reads:
10And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.
During the American Revolution, “freedom” and “liberty” became popular rallying cries. Revolutionaries used familiar Bible passages like this to spread their message far and wide. That’s why the Liberty Bell, which hangs in Philadelphia, is engraved with that specific passage. It reads, “Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants Thereof”.
My student loan sob story illustrates the inherently economic meaning of words like “freedom” and “liberty.” Having racked up over $140k in debt, I spent my 20s and 30s living with multiple roommates and working the only job I could find that allowed me to afford the $1,200 monthly payments. I felt trapped, the opposite of being at liberty or being free.
Being mired in hopeless debt peonage made me realize how dangerous too much indebtedness is to society. Economies are like basketball games; if the score gets too lopsided, half the players lose any incentive to participate. The Bronze Age kings of Mesopotamia reset their economic scoreboards to incentivize everyone to keep participating in society.
The Jews learned of the importance of this practice during the Babylonian Captivity. However, the Romans never received that lesson, even though the Jews introduced it into the Roman Empire when they joined it…
The Roman Empire
Another Old Testament reference to debt forgiveness is Isaiah 61:1-2, which reads:
1The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
In the New Testament, the scroll of Isaiah—with this specific reference to debt forgiveness—is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke as being brandished by Jesus during his debut sermon in his hometown of Nazareth. Jesus called for the debt forgiveness commanded by the Holy Writings of his own Jewish tradition—the same debt forgiveness the Jews learned about from the Babylonians five centuries previously.
What happened next altered the course of history; it’s a fascinating story for next week…
Further Materials
Should our Babylonian visitor proceed to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, he would find further vestiges of the idea of absolution from debt bondage. The bell is inscribed with a quotation from Leviticus 25.10: "Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof." The full verse refers to freedom from debt bondage when it exhorts the Israelites to "hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a Jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his family" (and also every woman, child and house slave who had been pledged). Lands were restored to their traditional holders clear of debt encumbrances. Sounding the ram's horn on the Day of Atonement of this fiftieth year signaled the renewal of economic order and equity by undoing the corrosive effects of indebtedness that had built up since the last Jubilee.
Michael Hudson, The Collapse of Antiquity, 2023, Page 36
Jesus announced in his inaugural sermon that he had come to proclaim the Jubilee Year of the Lord cited by Isaiah, whose scroll he unrolled. His congregation is reported to have reacted with fury. (Luke 4 tells the story). Like other populist leaders of his day, Jesus was accused of seeking kingship to enforce his program on creditors.
Subsequent Christianity gave the ideal of a debt amnesty an otherworldly eschatological meaning as debt cancellation became politically impossible under the Roman Empire’s military enforcement of creditor privileges.
Michael Hudson, The Collapse of Antiquity, 2023, Page 17