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96-715: 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. 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 ,

192-857: A grouping which includes both pre-Priestly and post-Priestly material. The general trend in recent scholarship is to recognize the final form of the Torah as a literary and ideological unity, based on earlier sources, likely completed during the Persian period (539–333 BCE). A minority of scholars would place its final compilation somewhat later, however, in the Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE). A revised neo-documentary hypothesis still has adherents, especially in North America and Israel. This distinguishes sources by means of plot and continuity rather than stylistic and linguistic concerns, and does not tie them to stages in

288-415: A jubilee to you. In it you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself, nor gather from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat of its increase out of the field. In this Year of Jubilee each of you shall return to his property. ( WEB ) Ancient Near Eastern societies regularly declared noncommercial debts void , typically at the coronation of a new king or at

384-411: A much earlier date of codification. These Babylonian kings (to whom could be added Ammi-Saduqa ) 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

480-541: A recent report an effort is underway to determine the date when counting ceased in order to resume. The counting will again be according to a 49-year cycle. A second historical argument has been presented to the effect that the two instances of a Jubilee mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud (tractates Arakin 12a and Megillah 14b) appear to be proper historical remembrances, because the known calculation methods of rabbinic scholarship were incapable of correctly calculating

576-574: A result, there has been a revival of interest in "fragmentary" and " supplementary " models, frequently in combination with each other and with a documentary model, making it difficult to classify contemporary theories as strictly one or another. Modern scholars also have given up the classical Wellhausian dating of the sources, and generally see the completed Torah as a product of the time of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (probably 450–350 BCE), although some would place its production as late as

672-431: A source, with its origin in the law-code produced at the court of Josiah as described by De Wette, subsequently given a frame during the exile (the speeches and descriptions at the front and back of the code) to identify it as the words of Moses. Most scholars also agree that some form of Priestly source existed, although its extent, especially its end-point, is uncertain. The remainder is called collectively non-Priestly,

768-501: Is fairly common in Scripture; for example, the Feast of Tabernacles is to last for seven days ( Leviticus 23:34–36 ), but the last day is called the eighth day (v. 36). North found this comparison between Leviticus 23 (Feast of Weeks) and Leviticus 25 (Jubilees) to be "the strongest possible support for the forty-ninth year" as the Jubilee year. His conclusion that the Jubilee was identical with

864-455: Is no support in Scripture for two voluntary fallow years in succession, even though some have misinterpreted Leviticus 25:21–22 as if this refers to a Jubilee year following a Sabbatical year, which is not the sense of the passage. Lefebvre shows that this cannot be the case because planting is mentioned for the eighth year; it is the year after a Sabbath, a year in which planting and harvesting resume. Another practical problem that would occur if

960-554: Is not delegated to the current generation's sages, and thus the Torah can not be commentated on, in matters concerning the halakha ("Jewish Law"), if it contradicts Chazal's commentary. Until the middle of the Tannaim era, when there was a Sanhedrin (a High Court of Jewish law ), Chazal had also the authority to decree restrictions and to enact new religious regulations, in any matter they saw fit, concerning issues that were not included in

1056-512: Is one of the models used by biblical scholars to explain the origins and composition of the Torah (or Pentateuch , the first five books of the Bible: Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , and Deuteronomy ). A version of the documentary hypothesis, frequently identified with the German scholar Julius Wellhausen , was almost universally accepted for most of the 20th century. It posited that

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1152-519: Is taken in the Talmud ( Arakhin 12a–b) which, like Seder Olam , assigns only 410 years to the First Temple, preceded by 480 years from the exodus to its building by Solomon ( 1 Kings 6:1 ) in 832 BC (by the rabbinic accounting) and its destruction in 422 BC. The Talmud ( Arakhin 12b) accounts for 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, and 7 years taken to conquer the land of Canaan and 7 years to divide

1248-636: The Babylonian captivity (597–539 BCE), or the late monarchic period at the earliest. Van Seters also sharply criticized the idea of a substantial Elohist source, arguing that E extends at most to two short passages in Genesis. Some scholars, following Rendtorff, have come to espouse a fragmentary hypothesis, in which the Pentateuch is seen as a compilation of short, independent narratives, which were gradually brought together into larger units in two editorial phases:

1344-568: The Grecian , Hasmonean , and Herodian periods. The text of the Book of Leviticus argues that the Jubilee existed because the land was the possession of Yahweh , and its current occupiers were merely aliens or tenants, and therefore the land should not be sold forever. Midrashic sources argue that the Jubilee was created to preserve the original division of land between the Israelite tribes , as evidenced by

1440-498: The Hellenistic period (333–164 BCE), after the conquests of Alexander the Great . The Torah (or Pentateuch) is collectively the first five books of the Bible: Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers , and Deuteronomy . According to tradition, they were dictated by God to Moses, but when modern critical scholarship began to be applied to the Bible, it was discovered that the Pentateuch

1536-460: The Laws of Eshnuna § 29. But on the contrary, the jubilee legislation never addresses the situation of exile . The only form of land alienation addressed in the text is sale by owner. If the priesthood in the early Persian period really wanted a legal pretext for the return of lost lands, they would surely have written themselves a law that directly addressed their situation . Bergsma therefore points out

1632-666: The Olympiad era counting and the Seleucid era counting, drawn principally from other writers, to verify the historicity of many of these events. In spite of their differences in the general span of years, there is not necessarily disagreement between Josephus and Seder Olam when Josephus refers to dates of Sabbatical years during the Second Temple period, as the time-frame for these dates overlap those mentioned in Seder Olam (chapter 30) for

1728-447: The Seder Olam , Rabbi Jose stated (for unknown reasons) that Israel's time in its land must have lasted an integral number of Jubilee periods. If this were true, one of those periods should have ended at the beginning of the exile in 587 BC. Yet Rabbi Jose also believed that Ezekiel 40:1 marked the beginning of the seventeenth Jubilee, and this was 14 years after the city fell. In other words, the Jubilee came 14 years too late, according to

1824-745: 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 , 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 . Leviticus 25:8–13 states: You shall count off seven Sabbaths of years, seven times seven years; and there shall be to you

1920-453: The Babylonians ( Arakin 12a), whereas the correct difference was 49 years (623 BC to 574 BC). This has been presented as additional evidence that the cycle was 49 years, and further that the cycles were being measured until the last Jubilee in the days of Ezekiel, when the stipulations of the Jubilee year, long neglected except in the counting of the priests, could no longer be observed because

2016-561: 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. 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: In each of these examples,

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2112-608: The Deuteronomic and the Priestly phases. By contrast, scholars such as John Van Seters advocate a supplementary hypothesis , which posits that the Torah is the result of two major additions—Yahwist and Priestly—to an existing corpus of work. Some scholars use these newer hypotheses in combination with each other and with a documentary model, making it difficult to classify contemporary theories as strictly one or another. The majority of scholars today continue to recognise Deuteronomy as

2208-478: The First Temple stood 470 years, which would, of necessity, offset the number of Jubilee cycles. Moreover, Josephus' reckoning of the timeline of events does not always align with Seder Olam , the book on which rabbinic tradition is so dependent. The discrepancies between Josephus and Seder Olam have led some scholars to think that the dates prescribed in Seder Olam are only approximations, as Josephus brings down supportive evidence by making use of two basic epochs,

2304-573: The Hexateuch') of 1876–77, and sections on the "historical books" (Judges–Kings) in his 1878 edition of Friedrich Bleek 's Einleitung in das Alte Testament ('Introduction to the Old Testament'). Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis owed little to Wellhausen himself but was mainly the work of Hupfeld, Eduard Eugène Reuss , Graf, and others, who in turn had built on earlier scholarship. He accepted Hupfeld's four sources and, in agreement with Graf, placed

2400-538: 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

2496-423: The Jubilee cycle were 50 years is that, after the first cycle, the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles would be out of phase unless the seventh Sabbatical cycle was stretched to eight years. But Scripture gives no instructions for making such an adjustment. Instead, it is assumed that the two cycles will always be in phase so that the shofar can be sounded in the seventh year of the seventh Sabbatical cycle. In contrast,

2592-454: The Jubilee year appear in Leviticus 25 . 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. The biblical requirement is that the Jubilee year

2688-404: The Jubilee year. If the Jubilee year is the 50th year as confirmed by Leviticus 25:10–11 , it must necessarily be a separate year from the first 49 years comprising the whole of the first seven Sabbatical cycles. Therefore it cannot be identical with the seventh Sabbatical year, as 49 does not equal 50. Were the Jubilee year to be considered identical with year one of the following Sabbatical cycle,

2784-540: The Jubilee. In the first passage, the start of counting for the Festival of Weeks is said to be "the day after the Sabbath" ( mimaharat ha-shabat , Leviticus 23:15 ), and is to end "the day after the seventh Sabbath" ( mimaharat ha-shabat ha-sheviyit , Leviticus 23:16 ). These seven weeks would constitute 49 days in most modern methods of reckoning. Nevertheless, verse 16 says that they are to be reckoned as 50 days. This method of reckoning (sometimes called "inclusive numbering")

2880-782: The Jubilees, were in existence in the late fifteenth century BC. Despite the fact that the specific norms of the Jubilee were meant for an agrarian and ancient economy, it has been noted that its principles of economic justice remain relevant and can be adapted to the modern world. The periodic land redistribution mandated by the Jubilee was aimed at preventing excessive wealth inequality and democratizing private property, without abrogating either personal responsibility or incentives for prosperity. The Jubilee provides an economic structure that regularly dissolves large economic inequalities. Given that every fifty years almost every citizen in Ancient Israel

2976-663: 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

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3072-507: The Pentateuch is a compilation of four originally independent documents: the Jahwist , Elohist , Deuteronomist , and Priestly sources, frequently referred to by their initials. The first of these, J, was dated to the Solomonic period (c. 950 BCE). E was dated somewhat later, in the 9th century BCE, and D was dated just before the reign of King Josiah , in the 7th or 8th century BCE. Finally, P

3168-450: The Pentateuch") by Rolf Rendtorff . These three authors shared many of the same criticisms of the documentary hypothesis, but were not in agreement about what paradigm ought to replace it. Van Seters and Schmid both forcefully argued that the Yahwist source could not be dated to the Solomonic period (c. 950 BCE) as posited by the documentary hypothesis. They instead dated J to the period of

3264-400: The Priestly work last. J was the earliest document, a product of the 10th century BCE and the court of Solomon ; E was from the 9th century BCE in the northern Kingdom of Israel , and had been combined by a redactor (editor) with J to form a document JE; D, the third source, was a product of the 7th century BCE, by 620 BCE, during the reign of King Josiah ; P (what Wellhausen first named "Q")

3360-664: The Torah, and the number was later expanded to three when Wilhelm de Wette identified the Deuteronomist as an additional source found only in Deuteronomy ("D"). Later still the Elohist was split into Elohist and Priestly ("P") sources, increasing the number to four. These documentary approaches were in competition with two other models, the fragmentary and the supplementary . The fragmentary hypothesis argued that fragments of varying lengths, rather than continuous documents, lay behind

3456-605: The Torah. In 1780, Johann Eichhorn , building on the work of the French doctor and exegete Jean Astruc 's "Conjectures" and others, formulated the "older documentary hypothesis": the idea that Genesis was composed by combining two identifiable sources, the Jehovist ("J"; also called the Yahwist) and the Elohist ("E"). These sources were subsequently found to run through the first four books of

3552-419: The Torah; this approach accounted for the Torah's diversity but could not account for its structural consistency, particularly regarding chronology. The supplementary hypothesis was better able to explain this unity: it maintained that the Torah was made up of a central core document, the Elohist, supplemented by fragments taken from many sources. The supplementary approach was dominant by the early 1860s, but it

3648-637: The allotment of the land to the tribes was finished at this time. Because the division of the land took seven years, the conquest that followed must also have taken seven years. "One has to say that 14 years Israel spent at Gilgal, seven when they were conquering and seven when they were distributing." Then, after putting up the Tabernacle at Shiloh, "At that moment, they started to count years for tithes, Sabbatical years, and Jubilee years." Another explanation has been offered for Rabbi Jose's postponement of counting until 14 years had elapsed. In this same chapter 11 of

3744-402: The case, then we should have expected that 587 BC, when the exile began, would have been at the end of a Jubilee period. However, Rabbi Yose cited Ezek 40:1 as designating the time of the seventeenth Jubilee, and since he knew this was fourteen years after the city fell, he presumed that counting had been delayed for fourteen years so that he could account for the fourteen years between the fall of

3840-422: The city and the observance of the seventeenth Jubilee. He also mentioned the previous Jubilee, in the time of Josiah. As much as he would have liked to put these last two Jubilees fourteen years earlier in order to be consistent with his idée fixe , Rabbi Yose could not do it because he knew these were historical dates, not dates that came from his own calculation. An alternative account is that counting started at

3936-427: The consideration that the Jubilee year is an intercalated year separate and distinct from the Sabbatical cycles resolves an issue of the requirement for observation of the Torah of both Leviticus 25:3 and Leviticus 25:11 . For in the former passage, the command is that sowing and pruning must occur for six consecutive years, whereas in the latter, the command is to neither sow, nor reap nor gather from untended vines in

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4032-489: 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

4128-406: The date of the entry into the land implied by Ezekiel's Jubilee (the seventeenth) is in exact agreement with the date calculated from 1 Kings 6:1 and Joshua 5:6. These chronological considerations are usually neglected in discussions of the legislation for the Jubilee and Sabbatical years, but Steinmann stresses their theological importance as follows: This illustrates one of the principles stated in

4224-404: The dates of the Jubilees mentioned. Rabbinic (Talmudic) scholarship always assumed non-accession reckoning for kings, whereby the first partial year of a king was double-counted both for him and as the last year of the deceased king. This reckoning would give 47 years from the Jubilee mentioned in the 18th year of Josiah ( Megillah 14b) to the Jubilee that took place 14 years after Jerusalem fell to

4320-516: The days of seven Sabbaths of years, even forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth year shall be

4416-517: The direction of influence moves from P to Ezekiel. A term or expression with a positive connotation in P takes on a negative overtone in Ezekiel. Ezekiel parodies P language by using terms antithetically. It is virtually impossible to imagine that the Priestly Writer would have composed Israelite history by transforming images of Israel's apostasy and subsequent downfall from Ezekiel into images conveying

4512-482: The entry into the land. This follows from a straightforward reading of the relevant text in Leviticus: The L ORD then spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, saying, "Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, 'When you come into the land which I shall give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the L ORD . Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during

4608-568: The evolution of Israel's religious history. Its resurrection of an E source is probably the element most often criticised by other scholars, as it is rarely distinguishable from the classical J source and European scholars have largely rejected it as fragmentary or non-existent. Wellhausen used the sources of the Torah as evidence of changes in the history of Israelite religion as it moved (in his opinion) from free, simple and natural to fixed, formal and institutional. Modern scholars of Israel's religion have become much more circumspect in how they use

4704-498: The exceptional covenant and unique relationship between Israel and YHWH. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that the Priestly Writer could have turned Ezekiel's land of exile (ארץ מגוריהם) into Israel's land of promise, Israel's enemies (קהל עמים) in to a sign of fecundity, or Israel's abundant sin (במאד מאד) into a sign of YHWH's covenant. It is, however, plausible that Ezekiel, writing in exile, re-evaluated P's portrayal of Israel's uniqueness, cynically inverting these images so that what

4800-556: The fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you (Leviticus 25:1–4, 8–10, NASB). The Talmud states that the people of Israel counted 17 Jubilees from the time they entered the Land of Canaan until their exile at the destruction of the First Temple. If counting is measured back 17 cycles from Ezekiel's Jubilee (Ezekiel 40:1) that began in Tishri of 574 BC, based on Thiele 's computation,

4896-457: The first year of the first cycle would have been 1406 BC. According to the religious calendar that started the year in Nisan, and in accordance with Joshua 5:10 that places the entry in the land in Nisan, Nisan of 1406 BC is the month and year when counting started. But 1406 BC is the year of entry into the land that is traditionally derived by another method, namely taking Thiele's date of 931/930 BC for

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4992-453: The following year, creating a much greater risk of starvation overall; Judah the Prince contended that the jubilee year was identical with the sabbatical 49th year. 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

5088-546: The idea that the time in the land must comprise an integral number of Jubilee cycles. Rodger Young proposes that the knowledge of when a genuine Jubilee was due was the real reason for the supposition of a delay before the start of counting: The reason for the fourteen-year delay in Seder ‘Olam 11 is that Rabbi Yose (primary author of the Seder ‘Olam ) had the idée fixe that the total time that Israel spent in its land must come out to an exact number of Jubilee cycles. If that had been

5184-459: 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

5280-425: The influence of the prophets and the development of an ethical outlook, which he felt represented the pinnacle of Jewish religion; and the Priestly source reflected the rigid, ritualistic world of the priest-dominated, post-exilic period. His work, notable for its detailed and wide-ranging scholarship and close argument, entrenched the "new documentary hypothesis" as the dominant explanation of Pentateuchal origins from

5376-605: The king’s order. 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 ; the Book of Ezekiel , which some textual scholars also regard as earlier than

5472-458: The land among the tribes, putting the first Jubilee cycle precisely 54 years after the exodus (i.e. in 1258 BC), and saying that the people of Israel counted 17 Jubilees from the time they entered the Land of Canaan until their departure, and that the last Jubilee occurred 14 years after the First Temple's destruction (i.e. in 408 BC). Talmudic exegete, Rashi , explains in the Talmud ( Arakhin 12b) that

5568-434: The land. The reasons for this are given in Seder Olam chapter 11. In Joshua chapter 14, Caleb mentions that he was 40 years old when he was sent out as a spy in the second year of the 40-year wilderness journey, and his present age was 85, which meant he received his inheritance seven years after entering Canaan. Rabbi Jose assumed that everyone else received their inheritance when Caleb did, or had already received it, so that

5664-533: The late 19th to the late 20th centuries. In the mid to late 20th century, new criticism of the documentary hypothesis formed. Three major publications of the 1970s caused scholars to reevaluate the assumptions of the documentary hypothesis: Abraham in History and Tradition by John Van Seters , Der sogenannte Jahwist ("The So-Called Yahwist") by Hans Heinrich Schmid , and Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch ("The Tradition-Historical Problem of

5760-482: The latest, while Wilhelm Vatke linked the four to an evolutionary framework: the Yahwist and Elohist to a time of primitive nature and fertility cults, the Deuteronomist to the ethical religion of the Hebrew prophets, and the Priestly source to a form of religion dominated by ritual, sacrifice and law. In 1878, Julius Wellhausen published Geschichte Israels, Bd 1 ('History of Israel, Vol 1'). The second edition

5856-494: The modern State of Israel , land was nationalized at the state's founding (given both the activities of the Jewish National Fund in helping create the state of Israel, and to prevent a wealthy landlord class from monopolizing scarce land resources). The Israeli government continues to act as the sole nationwide landowner. The Septuagint used the phrase "a trumpet-blast of liberty" (ἀφέσεως σημασία apheseôs sêmasia ), and

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5952-524: The observance of the Jubilee year only applied when the Jewish people 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 a more modern sense, the Jubilee rules concerning land redistribution (as opposed to debt forgiveness) have been rendered obsolete, as in

6048-407: The people were captive in a foreign land. The Seder Olam Rabbah recognized the importance of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles as a long-term calendrical system, and attempted at various places to fit the Sabbatical and Jubilee years into its chronological scheme. As mentioned above, the Seder Olam put forth the idea that the counting for these cycles was deferred until 14 years after entry into

6144-463: The preface to the present book: that some historical insights will remain obscured until the chronology of the period under discussion is determined properly. The Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles provide such historical insight. But they do more: they also offer theological insights on such important matters as the date and historicity of the Exodus and the origin of the Book of Leviticus. If, as has been argued,

6240-415: 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. 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

6336-410: The rabbinical tradition that the Jubilee should not be imposed until the Israelites were in control of Canaan. Leviticus also states that the Israelites were the servants of Yahweh, which classical rabbis took as justification for the manumission of Israelite slaves at the Jubilee, using the argument that no man should have two masters, and thus, as the servants of Yahweh, the Israelites should not also be

6432-488: The requirement of observing six consecutive years of sowing and pruning could not be observed as only five years would therefore be available for sowing and reaping, not the specified six as Leviticus 25:3 requires. A lot of the misunderstanding comes from not carefully reading the original Hebrew text. There was no requirement in the Law to observe 6 consecutive years of sowing. The command stated that you may sow for six years but in

6528-534: The servants of men. A further theological insight afforded by the Jubilee cycles is explained in Andrew Steinmann's monograph on Biblical chronology. Steinmann has an extended discussion of the evidence for various pre-exilic Sabbatical years, and how they all occurred an integral number of seven-year periods before Ezekiel’s Jubilee (see the Historical Sabbatical Years article). He also notes that

6624-423: The seventh Sabbatical year was followed by Lefebvre, for this as well as additional reasons. The consideration that the Jubilee was identical with the seventh Sabbatical year solves the various practical problems, as also addressed by these authors. If the Jubilee were separate from, and following the seventh Sabbatical year, then there would be two fallow years in succession. Lefebvre points out, however, that there

6720-466: The seventh year the land must observe a sabbath rest. It would be a double negative to command the land to be sowed for six years in cases of famine and war. Although not cited by these authors, two historical arguments also argue for a 49-year cycle. The first is that the Samaritans celebrated a 49-year cycle. Although the Samaritans stopped counting for the Jubilee some hundreds of years ago, according to

6816-431: The seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the L ORD ... You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely , forty-nine years. You shall then sound a ram's horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. You shall thus consecrate

6912-501: The so-called "P" or Priestly Code that Wellhausen believed represented the last stage in the development of Israel's religion. 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

7008-402: The start of the divided kingdom after Solomon's death, in conjunction with 1 Kings 6:1 (Solomon's fourth year was 480th year of Exodus-era), to derive the date of the Exodus in 1446 BC. The method of determining the date of the Exodus and entry into Canaan from the Jubilee cycles is independent of the method of deriving these dates from 1 Kings 6:1, yet the two methods agree. A different approach

7104-411: The territories of Reuben and Gad and the eastern half-tribe of Manasseh. The length of the Jubilee cycle continues to be of interest to modern scholarship, as does the question of the practicality of the legislation, and whether it was ever put into effect on a nationwide basis. Regarding the length of the cycle, three significant scholarly studies devoted to the Jubilee and Sabbatical years agree that it

7200-448: 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

7296-450: The times of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles were known all the time that Israel was in its land, and, further, that the only adequate explanation that has yet been given for Ezekiel’s Jubilee being the seventeenth Jubilee is that the counting for these cycles actually started 832 years earlier, in 1406 BC, then it is logical to conclude the Lev 25–27, the texts that charter the Sabbatical years and

7392-503: 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

7488-416: The weekly rotation of the twenty-four priestly courses during a six-year period and constructed into six consecutive Jubilees, i.e. 294 years.". An example of the textual argument is given by North in his comparison of Leviticus 23:15–16 with Leviticus 25:8–11 . The first passage establishes the timing, in days, for the Festival of Weeks ( Shavuot ), while the second prescribes the timing, in years, for

7584-553: 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". The biblical regulations concerning

7680-577: The written Torah, or were not delivered at Mount Sinai. These rabbinical mitzvot ("commandments") include the holidays of Purim and Hanukkah , the laws of muktzeh ("set-aside items") on Shabbat , the ritual washing of one's hands ( netilat yadayim ) before eating bread, the construction of eruvim (liminal gateways), and the institution of the current schedule of daily prayer services – shacharit (morning prayer), mincha (afternoon prayer), and ma'ariv (evening prayer). Documentary hypothesis The documentary hypothesis ( DH )

7776-423: The year of the First Temple's destruction (422 BC) was actually the 36th year in the Jubilee cycle, and that fourteen years later (408 BC) would have been the next Jubilee. This time span, taken together (from 1258 BC to 408 BC), accrues to 850 years, during which time the people counted seventeen Jubilees. The historian Josephus , however, had a different tradition, writing in his work Antiquities (10.8.5) that

7872-480: Was 49 years, while disagreeing somewhat on the interpretation of the other issues involved. These major studies were those of Benedict Zuckermann, Robert North, and Jean-François Lefebvre. The reasons given by these authors to support a 49-year cycle are both textual (examining all relevant Biblical texts) and practical. Calendrical document 4Q319 from the Dead Sea Scrolls "represents a calendrical system based on

7968-451: Was a product of the priest-and-temple dominated world of the 6th century BCE; and the final redaction, when P was combined with JED to produce the Torah as we now know it. Wellhausen's explanation of the formation of the Torah was also an explanation of the religious history of Israel. The Yahwist and Elohist described a primitive, spontaneous, and personal world, in keeping with the earliest stage of Israel's history; in Deuteronomy, he saw

8064-484: Was challenged by an important book published by Hermann Hupfeld in 1853, who argued that the Pentateuch was made up of four documentary sources, the Priestly, Yahwist, and Elohist intertwined in Genesis-Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers, and the stand-alone source of Deuteronomy. At around the same period, Karl Heinrich Graf argued that the Yahwist and Elohist were the earliest sources and the Priestly source

8160-412: Was entitled to a plot of land — the main form of wealth at the time — the system seems to promote a form of Asset-based egalitarianism , embracing a universal basic capital or universal inheritance, which in turn could justify a Universal basic income . The norm of Leviticus 25:13, according to which everyone was supposed to return to their own property in the Jubilee years, coupled with the fact that land

8256-417: Was generally dated to the time of Ezra in the 5th century BCE. The sources would have been joined at various points in time by a series of editors or "redactors". The consensus around the classical documentary hypothesis has now collapsed. This was triggered in large part by the influential publications of John Van Seters , Hans Heinrich Schmid , and Rolf Rendtorff in the mid-1970s, who argued that J

8352-461: 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. This interpretation has been largely adopted in later rabbinic scholarship. One reason for this interpretation of

8448-556: Was initially equally distributed among the Israelites (Book of Numbers 26:51-54), provides additional grounding for Thomas Paine 's idea of natural inheritance. Chazal Chazal or Ḥazal ( Hebrew : חז״ל ) are the Jewish sages of the Mishnaic and Talmudic eras, spanning from the final 300 years of the Second Temple period until the 7th century , or c.  250   BCE  – c.  625   CE . Their authority

8544-687: Was mostly in the field of Halakha (Jewish law) and less regarding Jewish theology. Chazal are generally divided according to their era and the main writing done in that era: Until the end of the Savoraim era, Chazal had the authority to comment on the Torah according to the Talmudical hermeneutics standards required by the Law given to Moses at Sinai , sometimes even expounding a word or phrase outside its plain and ordinary sense. Nowadays in Orthodoxy , this authority

8640-491: Was not the unified text one would expect from a single author. As a result, the Mosaic authorship of the Torah had been largely rejected by leading scholars by the 17th century, with many modern scholars viewing it as a product of a long evolutionary process. In the mid-18th century, some scholars started a critical study of doublets (parallel accounts of the same incidents), inconsistencies, and changes in style and vocabulary in

8736-456: Was once a "pleasing fragrance to YHWH" symbolizes impiety and irreverence. 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. Finally, if the only purpose of the jubilee legislation

8832-476: Was printed as Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels ("Prolegomena to the History of Israel") in 1883, and the work is better known under that name. (The second volume, a synthetic history titled Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte ['Israelite and Jewish History'], did not appear until 1894 and remains untranslated.) Crucially, this historical portrait was based upon two earlier works of his technical analysis: "Die Composition des Hexateuchs" ('The Composition of

8928-531: 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

9024-402: Was to be dated no earlier than the time of the Babylonian captivity (597–539 BCE), and rejected the existence of a substantial E source. They also called into question the nature and extent of the three other sources. Van Seters, Schmid, and Rendtorff shared many of the same criticisms of the documentary hypothesis, but were not in complete agreement about what paradigm ought to replace it. As

9120-456: 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

9216-480: Was to serve as a pretext for the return of the exiles' lands, certainly much simpler laws than the jubilee could have been written and ascribed to Moses. All that would be necessary is a short statement mandating the return of property to any Israelite who returned after being exiled. In point of fact, precisely such brief, pointed laws are extant in the Mesopotamian codes , for example, the code of Hammurabi § 27 and

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