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The Jubilee ( he, יובל ''yōḇel;'' Yiddish: ''yoyvl'') is the year at the end of seven cycles of '' shmita'' (Sabbatical years) and, according to
biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...
regulations, had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in the
Land of Israel The Land of Israel () is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine (see also Isr ...
. According to the
Book of Leviticus The book of Leviticus (, from grc, Λευιτικόν, ; he, וַיִּקְרָא, , "And He called") is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. Scholars generally agree ...
, Hebrew slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. Rabbinic literature mentions a dispute between the
Sages A sage ( grc, σοφός, ''sophos''), in classical philosophy, is someone who has attained wisdom. The term has also been used interchangeably with a 'good person' ( grc, ἀγαθός, ''agathos''), and a 'virtuous person' ( grc, σπουδα� ...
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 Jubilee ("Year of Release") deals largely with land, property, and property rights. The biblical rules concerning Sabbatical years are still observed by many religious
Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
in
Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
, but the regulations for the Jubilee year have not been observed for many centuries. According to the post-exile rabbinic interpretation of
Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the ...
, observance of Jubilee only applied when the Jewish people live in the land of Israel according to their tribes. Thus, with the exile of the
tribes The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confli ...
of
Reuben Reuben or Reuven is a Biblical male first name from Hebrew רְאוּבֵן (Re'uven), meaning "behold, a son". In the Bible, Reuben was the firstborn son of Jacob. Variants include Rúben in European Portuguese; Rubens in Brazilian Portugu ...
, Gad, and Manasseh (about 600 BCE), Jubilee has not been applicable.


Etymology

The
Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...
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. Early modern biblical scholars believed that the Latin term derived from the Hebrew term ''yobel'', used in the
Masoretic Text The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; he, נֻסָּח הַמָּסוֹרָה, Nūssāḥ Hammāsōrā, lit. 'Text of the Tradition') is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. ...
, which in turn derived from ''yobhel'', meaning ''ram''; 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. An alternative etymology for the English and Latin terms notes that the Latin verb '' iūbilō'', "shout for joy," predates the Vulgate, and proposes that instead the Latin ''jubilo'' (meaning ''shout'', from Proto-Italic *''jū''), as well as Middle Irish ''ilach'' (victory cry), English ''yowl'', and Ancient Greek ''iuzō'' (ἰύζω: shout), derived from a
Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo ...
root ''*yu-'' (shout for joy). In this interpretation, the Hebrew term is either a borrowing from an Indo-European language, or an independent word with no etymological relation to the Latin word.


Origin and purpose

states: Ancient Near Eastern societies regularly declared noncommercial debts void, typically at the coronation of a new king or at 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 The Covenant Code, or Book of the Covenant, is the name given by academics to a text appearing in the Torah, at Exodus -; or, more strictly, the term ''Covenant Code'' may be applied to Exodus 21:1–22:16. Biblically, the text is the second of ...
, which some textual scholars regard as pre-dating the
Holiness code The Holiness code is used in biblical criticism to refer to Leviticus chapters 17–26, and sometimes passages in other books of the Pentateuch, especially Numbers and Exodus. It is so called due to its highly repeated use of the word ''hol ...
; the
Book of Ezekiel The Book of Ezekiel is the third of the Latter Prophets in the Tanakh and one of the major prophetic books, following Isaiah and Jeremiah. According to the book itself, it records six visions of the prophet Ezekiel, exiled in Babylon, during ...
, 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 Jeremiah, Modern:   , Tiberian: ; el, Ἰερεμίας, Ieremíās; meaning "Yah shall raise" (c. 650 – c. 570 BC), also called Jeremias or the "weeping prophet", was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewis ...
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 Passover, also called Pesach (; ), is a major Jewish holiday that celebrates the Biblical story of the Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt, which occurs on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the first month of Aviv, or spring. ...
, and follows seven weeks of harvest; this parallel is regarded as significant in
Kabbalah Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and Jewish theology, school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "rece ...
. 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 The Priestly Code (in Hebrew ''Torat Kohanim'', תורת כהנים) is the name given, by academia,The book of Leviticus: composition and reception - Page 55 Rolf Rendtorff, Robert A. Kugler, Sarah Smith Bartel - 2003 "Research agrees that its r ...
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 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 The book of Leviticus (, from grc, Λευιτικόν, ; he, וַיִּקְרָא, , "And He called") is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. Scholars generally agree ...
, 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: 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 In Biblical criticism, () is a German phrase roughly translating to "setting in life". It stands for the context in which a text, or object, has been created, and its function and purpose at that time. The is also used to refer to the social, e ...
'' (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-Saduqa Ammi-Saduqa (or Ammisaduqa, Ammizaduga) was a king, c. 1646–1626 BC according to the Middle Chronology dating, (or c. 1582–1562 according to the Short Chronology The chronology of the ancient Near East is a framework of dates for various eve ...
) 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 servant Indentured servitude is a form of Work (human activity), labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensa ...
s. 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 ''Seder Olam Rabbah'' ( he, סדר עולם רבה, "The Great Order of the World") is a 2nd-century CE Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no storie ...
(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 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 Jubilee 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. 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 Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile is the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon, the capital city of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, following their defeat ...
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. 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 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 The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...
"represents a calendrical system based on the weekly rotation of the twenty-four priestly courses during a six-year period and constructed into six consecutive Jubilees, i.e. 294 years.".


Textual and practical considerations

An example of the textual argument is given by North in his comparison of with . The first passage establishes the timing, in days, for the Festival of Weeks ('' Shavuot''), while the second prescribes the timing, in years, for 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'', ), and is to end "the day after the seventh Sabbath" (''mimaharat ha-shabat ha-sheviyit'', ). 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") is fairly common in Scripture; for example, the Feast of Tabernacles is to last for seven days (), 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 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 is no support in Scripture for two voluntary fallow years in succession, even though some have misinterpreted 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 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, 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 and . For in the former passage, the command is that sowing and pruning must occur for 6 consecutive years, whereas in the latter, the command is to neither sow, nor reap nor gather from untended vines in the Jubilee year. If the Jubilee year is the 50th year as confirmed by , 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 1 of the following Sabbatical cycle, the requirement of observing 6 consecutive years of sowing and pruning could not be observed as only 5 years would therefore be available for sowing and reaping, not the specified six as 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 6 years but in the 7th year the land must observe a sabbath rest. It would be a double negative to command the land to be sowed for 6 years in cases of famine and war.


Historical considerations

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 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 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 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 the people were captive in a foreign land.


The date when counting began

The ''
Seder Olam Rabbah ''Seder Olam Rabbah'' ( he, סדר עולם רבה, "The Great Order of the World") is a 2nd-century CE Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no storie ...
'' 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 the entry into the land. This follows from a straightforward reading of the relevant text in Leviticus:
The 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 . Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop, but during the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath rest, a sabbath to the ... 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 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 The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...
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, 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 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.


The Jubilee in Jewish tradition

A different approach is taken in the
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...
(''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 () 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 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 Shlomo Yitzchaki ( he, רבי שלמה יצחקי; la, Salomon Isaacides; french: Salomon de Troyes, 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), today generally known by the acronym Rashi (see below), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a compre ...
, explains in the Talmud (''Arakhin'' 12b) that 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 Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly ...
, however, had a different tradition, writing in his work '' Antiquities'' (10.8.5) that 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, 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 the
Grecian The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and, to a lesser exten ...
, Hasmonean, and Herodian periods.


Theological significance

The text of the Book of Leviticus argues that the Jubilee existed because the land was the possession of
Yahweh Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he po ...
, and its current occupiers were merely aliens or tenants, and therefore the land should not be sold forever.
Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.
he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...
ic sources argue that the Jubilee was created to preserve the original division of land between the Israelite tribes,Sifra, Behar Sinai, 7:1 as evidenced by 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 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 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:


See also

* Bank holiday *
Jewish holiday Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' ( he, ימים טובים, , Good Days, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed in Judaism and by JewsThis article focuses on practices of mainst ...
s *Jubilee in the Catholic Church *Sed festival


References


Bibliography

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External links


The economic and social significance of the Sabbath and Sabbatical years by Manfred DavidmannModel of land economy with Jubilee
*{{CathEncy, wstitle=Year of Jubilee (Hebrew) Hebrew calendar Jewish courts and civil law Hebrew words and phrases in the Hebrew Bible Shabbat Land of Israel laws in Judaism