Michael Hudson: Christianity began as a protest movement, but it was a protest movement that was very conservative. We know from the Dead Sea Scrolls – essentially the library of the Temple of Jerusalem hidden to protect it from the Romans – that what Jesus wanted to do was just what he announced in the first sermon that he gave. It is reported in Luke, Chapter 4. He said “I’ve come to proclaim the year of the Lord,” meaning the Jubilee Year. He unrolled the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah that described the Jubilee Year.
He said that the rabbis who opposed to be cancelling debts – the Pharisees, a conservative group of rabbis led most notably by Hillel – had developed a special clause that was similar to what the Babylonian creditors had tried to do. It was called the prosbul clause. A debtor who needed money would have to sign a waiver saying, “I agree not to avail myself of the rights that the Bible promises me in the Jubilee Year. So if the debts are cancelled, I waive my rights and the creditor can foreclose anyway.”
Jesus explained in his sermon that this was against the Mosaic Law – the law of Leviticus, chapter 25. It was in fact against everything the Old Testament talks about. (My book has the relevant Dead Sea scrolls.) But rabbinical Judaism was being taken over by pro-creditor Pharisees. Luke quotes Jesus as describing them as being avid for money, and working for the creditor class.
At that time the great social fight not only in Judea but also in Greece and Rome was between debtors and creditors. There was a region-wide civil war. There were assassinations of Roman pro-debtor advocates such as the Gracchi brothers in 133 BC. A century of civil war followed, in which even Julius Caesar, who enacted a modest debt reform, was killed. Sparta’s King’s Agis and Cleomenes were killed for cancelling the debts. There were armed uprisings throughout Greece and Asia Minor over this.
This was a universal fight. But somehow, the economic message of Jesus has been taken out of context. It is as if what he was talking about was otherworldly. But he was talking about something very worldly – the debt issue. Jesus wanted to restore the debt cancellation as it was supposed to be according to Leviticus 25.
