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The Holy Year and the Jubilee
Roberth North
The Holy Year of Roman pilgrimage proclaimed by Pope Paul VI for 1975 is in continuity with an interesting tradition.' The earliest relevant document is that of Pope Boniface VIII declaring the year 1300 a Holy Year. He does not use the term « jubilee » and in fact insists that the year's holiness attaches to its being a centenary or hundredth year. But the cardinal who wrote the history of his pontificate calls a relevant chapter « The Centenary or Jubilee Year ».2
Boniface published his decree only on February 22, 1300, not so much to propose or promote a Holy Year, but rather to acknowledge approvingly that there were already many pilgrims in Rome under the impression that in each hundredth year there was a special indulgence to be gained. An ancient pilgrim from Savoy had been present at the same occasion a hundred years earlier, or so he told the Pontiff, whose diligent search had failed to reveal any better historical record of the event. But hard-nosed Thurston finds convincing that the belief in a Holy Year of « remission » connected with a visit to Rome was found ready-made by Boniface and not invented by him.3
Later researchers had slightly more luck than Boniface VIII. A hymn dating from shortly after 1200 contains the expression « Concession of the year of Jubilee releases the debt of punishments ». And an interpolation made about 1290 into the « Chronicle of Alberic » claims that during the year 1208 a fifty-year Jubilee was celebrated.' The interpolator's choice of that off-date could not possibly have been intended to reinforce the views about a centenary holy year which were circulating around the time of Boniface. More obviously echoed is the dating of the first Old Testament Jubilee in 1207 B. C., according to some Jewish traditions.' If any pious fraud was involved, it was very naive, since fifty years after 07 B. c. is not 08 A. D. but 43 A. D. Anyway in 1208 A. D. there is record of moderate indulgences at Rome, from which may perhaps be inferred some special concourse of pilgrims.6
Earlier and more gullible inquirers claim to have found recorded evidence of a Jubilee celebrated by Innocent III in 1200, Pascal II in 1100, and Silvester II in 1000.7 One of Saint Dominic's relatives is said to have testified that he attended the Jubilee preceding 1300. And a bishop of Vaison named Joseph Suarez claims to trace the centenary indulgence back to Pope Sergius I in 700.8 These witnesses, such as they are, reinforce the conviction of Bonif ace that it was the hundredth year which was holy, and give little or no motive for connecting it with the fifty-year Jubilee of Leviticus 25: 9.
However, the term « jubilee » had already been in use for other indulgences (« remission = semittd Dt 15,1; this is also the root-meaning of « jubilee » suggested by the Septuagint rendition aphesis). The Crusades were called « the true jubilee » by Saint Bernard and others before 1200.9 In other prevailing uses the word jubilee meant a fifty-year interval without implication of « remission », as we speak today of the golden jubilee of a wedding. Thus already the jubilee of a monk's profession was celebrated; also a jubilee of the reinterment of St. Thomas of Canterbury•10
Apart from any proved historical connection between the Levitical Jubilee and the Roman Holy Year, we need have no hesitation in asserting that essentially they have one identical thing in common: « a year holy because of the recurrence of a round number ». If there the resemblance ends, we can only say that this is a pity, and hope that in the future some highly-modern social justice aspects of the biblical Jubilee may come to receive more recognition and implementation.11
Ruiz cites the allocution of Paul VI on May 9, 1973: « The Holy Year, canonically Jubilee, consisted of a special year of public life with abstention from normal toil, restoration of previous subdivided land-ownership, remission of debts, and freeing of slaves ». Ruiz regrets that our Christian Holy Year, under the claim of becoming « spiritualized », has actually lost much of the Old Testament aim that is apt and needed for the world today. Still, his page 94 can rejoice that the aims held out by Paul VI are more hopeful than the claim of Pius XI on May 29, 1924, that the Old Testament goals were merely a foreshadowing of things like « indulgences » and « pilgrimages » which until now have been almost the only « spiritual blessings » which the Holy Year has had to offer.
Even chapter 25 of Leviticus, however, which is our only source of information about the Jubilee, comes down to us in a form re-written by priests and canonists in such a way as to make its ceremonial and clergy-benefiting aspects seem to outweigh its underlying humanitarian essentials. Nevertheless it remains clear that the Jubilee is in close connection with the seventh or « sabbatical » year, not called 1.emittii as in Deuteronomy 15:1 by Leviticus 25:8 or the apparent parallel Exodus 21:2. It is the seventh such « slave-release year », or the forty-ninth year, which gives occasion for the proclamation of the yobel.
In the following or fiftieth year, according to Leviticus 25: 10, the yàba-prescriptions are actually to take place. This leaves ambiguous whether the next seven-year and seventh-seven cycle begin to be counted at once from the end of the forty-ninth, or only from the end of the fiftieth year. The provisions really specific to the Jubilee as distinct from any (other) sabbatical year are timeless or instantaneous: release of slaves and return to one's homestead. Hence even if they take place at the outset of the fiftieth year they need not interrupt the cycle." It has even been proposed that the Jubilee « year » was only the brief intercalary period occasionally required to keep the civil and religious (or solar and lunar) calendars more or less concurrent.13
A Jerusalem Dominican sees in the number fifty only an allegorical indication of super-perfection." Another way of saying the same thing might be that we all feel a strong natural preference for the round number.
The only factual argument in favor of a fiftieth full year completing the Jubilee cycle is in the verses Leviticus 25: 21f: the sixth year will bring forth fruit for three years; when you sow in the eighth year, you will be living on leftover grain until the ninth year ». Coming as it does after the statement of verse 11 that there shall be no agriculture in the Jubilee year, there seems to be explicit insistence that two full years of fallow will be involved, and thus the Jubilee is a fifieth full year distinct from the sabbatical forty-ninth. Against this inference it must seem strange that a legislator speaking explicitly about the special procedures operative only from the forty-eighth to the fifty-first year should have chosen to designate these as sixth and ninth. In any case, a reexamination of what kind of « fallow » is really prescribed even for the ordinary seventh years will bring us closer to the true social-justice character of the Jubilee legislation.
The Jubilee is plainly seen as a heightening of whatever was supposed to happen in every seventh year." In Leviticus 25:2-7 this seventh-year observance is described solely in terms of the « repose » (Sabbat) of the cultivable soil. Verses 4f expressly prohibit planting, pruning, and harvesting, though not plowing, and give no hint that any natural or agricultural benefits of a «fallow » are intended. On the contrary, verse 6 says « the sabbath of the soil will provide food for you ». This is generally interpreted to mean «not in the way it normally does via planting and harvesting but only through random growth».
But what verse 6f really says is that this particular year will provide food not only for the owner (« you ») but for slaves and sharecroppers and minorities (ger).16 Prominence thus accorded to slaves must recall to us that the equally-solemn description of seventh-year observance in Exodus 21:2 deals solely with the fact that every slave is then to be released. The Exodus word for « release » is simply « go out », but seems equivalent to the knittei of Deuteronomy 15:2, where there is question not of slaves but of debtors being released from their obligation.
Putting all these interrelated passages together, we may warrantably conclude that what the Mosaic law really required in the seventh year was a regulation of bankruptcy procedures." Farmers who had lost title to their land by bankruptcy and had to continue tilling it as «slaves » or sharecroppers were in this one year to be « released » from their debt and have just as much right to the produce of the soil as the «creditor-owner » had in normal years. The obvious humanitarian aims of such a legislation would require merely that the creditor carry on no large-scale tilling or harvesting operations. This does not exclude that the « (freed) slave » could plant or till the field which during this year was supposed to provide food in a special way for him.
There were doubtless many farmers, then in Israel as elsewhere in every age, who « went under » after a year of drouth or sickness. As their lands fell increasingly into the hands of creditors, these became big latifundists." The more lands and indentured-croppers they owned, the more they were able to resist natural disasters, and thus they progressively swallowed up ever more of the independent farmers. Indeed, in justice let us not overlook that the big owners' capital and property-rights (due at least partly to their own skills and laboriousness) served as a kind of insurance to the less-competent farmers, guaranteeing to their families as a last resort enough to live on.
The legislator's aims were not merely humanitarian or merciful. He seems to have recognized that it was overall a better thing for the economy, as well as for religious brotherhood, that the real ownership of the land should remain in principle divided up among as many original holders as possible. God's will in this matter is the only reason held out by Naboth for refusing to sell his patrimony even to the king (1 Kgs.21: 3 ).
This inalienable ownership was to be shown every seventh year by the temporary prevailing of the indentured servant's right to the land over the owner's. But after seven such cycles the originally indentured owner would be now a very old man, and it was fair that his heirs should be given a completely fresh start. These heirs included also those sons who had had to be « farmed out » ( Jer. 34: 10f; Neh. 5:5) or indentured to owners far away who had not enough sharecropping families.
« You shall make the fiftieth year holy by proclaiming that everyone is free (dere3r) upon the land which he inhabits. The meaning of the Jubilee is that everyone shall regain title to his property, including those who have to come back to the family from afar ». Such is our translation of Lev. 25: 10. In dependence upon several recent researches, we have claimed that biblical demands for restoration of the pledge or « gage » in due time (Ex 22:25; Dt. 14:12) have their relevance not only to the non-living or « dead » mort-gage like pawned cloak or foreclosed property, but to the « live gage », an owner or his sons indentured into servitude to pay off a debt.19
The Jubilee legislation of Leviticus 25 is thus a ceremonial and perhaps unduly idealistic combining of several other social-justice prescriptions which were very practical and workable and had already become deeply rooted in the moral convictions of the Hebrew people. In fact the key-word for the emancipation in Leviticus 25:10, derar, may be identical with the similar early Babylonian practice called anduräru.2° The basic principle of the Jubilee is thus a sound one and not utopian at all: « The land shall not be alienated in perpetuity: because all the land belongs to God, and the whole of earth's population are equally his guests upon it » (Lev. 25:23).
Naturally the land does not belong to God as to one secondary cause or owner alongside others, but in the sense that he is the source and guarantor of the proper relationship of all natural resources to the whole of mankind. To this extent we must regard as an anthropomorphism or metaphor the words « God says
All land belongs to me' », and transpose them into speech suited to our cultural milieu.
Such transposition was legitimately attempted by a Communist in a very methodical and thought-provoking exegetical research." Capitalist mistrust of his effort must perforce be softened by the fact that he was shortly later liquidated." His predictable conclusion, « God's ownership of all the land means that there can be no private property at all » may be tendentious and exaggerated, but it is probably closer to the truth than to say private property rights are so absolute that they can leave one whole nation rich and powerful while many other nations are near starvation. Another Communist also wrote an intriguing book on How the Jubilee Started." He connects it with the Babylonian biltu or « priest-gift », an effort made under Ezra to gather up and finally enforce the previously-recorded attempts to free land-slaves and divide up the properties held by big landowners.
With all moderation, we may and must agree that God's ownership of the land means that all the earth's resources must be utilized for the benefit of all the earth's population in some realistically workable way that is fair to the haves as well as to the have-nots. To us it seems more natural to interpret « God's ownership » in Leviticus (25:23) as meaning « Everybody shall own property » rather than « Nobody shall own property ». But in a world of modern economics, one may perhaps thoughtfully question whether the two formulations ultimately differ so much after all.
It is understandable that in his background the biblical legislator felt that God's ownership could be best expressed by having all the cultivable land of Israel parceled out into small lots, with ownership remaining perpetually divided among the largest possible number of families. In the purely agricultural sphere this policy would not be efficient or feasible today. But the principle may be retained even today, in the form: « Human dignity requires that those who are competent and willing to shoulder the burdensome responsibilities, should be enabled to share in the ownership of the means of production of what is necessary and useful for human life ».
It is cheering to recognize that an increasing number of scholarly and hierarchical pronouncements promoting the Holy Year, including those of Pope Paul VI, encourage us to make it an ever-better expression of the social-justice ideals which we have inherited from our Jewish « fathers in the faith ».
Fr. North S.J., a professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, is an expert on biblical geography and biblical archeology. His doctoral thesis was written on the Jubilee Year in the Pentateuch.
1. H. Schmidt, Bullarium Anni Sancti (Rome 1949).
2. Gaetano Stefaneschi, De centesimo seu jubileo anno liber, ed. M. de la Bigne (Bibliotheca Patrum Maxima, Lyons 1677) vol. 25, p. 936; see Civilta Cattolica 199 (1900) 15-32.
3. Herbert Thurston, The Holy Year of Jubilee (London 1910) 16.
4. Monumenta Germaniae Historica 23,889.648.
5. D. Bornstein, « Jubeljahr », Encyclopaedia Judaica (Berlin 1932) 10,502.
6. Cambrai Rolls Series 1,137.
7. Francescantonio Zaccaria, Dell'anno Santo trattato (Rome 1775) vol. 1, p. 22.
8. Hippolyte Prelot, « Les Premieres `Annees Saintes' », Etudes 81 (1899) 439.
9. Nikolaus Paulus, Geschichte des Ablasses im Mittelalter (Paderborn 1923) vol. 2, p. 101; Jerome Gassner, « The Holy Year », Homiletic and Pastoral Review 50 (1949) 127.
10. R. North, « Biblical Echoes in the Holy Year », American Ecclesiastical Review 123 (1950) 416-436 for further details.
11. Gregorio Ruiz, « Ario jubilar hebreo, y Afio Santo cristiano », Sal Terrae 62 (1974) 83-96.
12. David Lieber under « Sabbatical Year » in Encyclopaedia judaica (Jerusalem 1971) 14,576 approves our suggestion that the public proclamation was a sort of registration formality prerequisite to the exchange of property-administration; in column 585 there, the Jerusalem rabbi Aaron Rothkoff explains how modern Israelis cope with the presumed requirement of no agriculture for a whole year.
13. Solomon Zeitlin, Revue des Etudes Juives 89 (1930) 354; somewhat similarly August Klostermann, « Kalendarische Bedeutung des Jobeljahres », Theologische Studien and Kritiken 53 (1880) 743, as already J. Franke, Novum systema chronologiae (Gottingen 1778) 13.
14. Francois-Marie Lemoine, « Le Jubile dans la Bible », Vie Spirituelle 81 (1948) 262-288.
15. Eduard Neufeld, Socio-Economic Background of YOba and Semittii», Rivista degli Studi Orientali 33 (1958) 53-124.
16. On the rendition of er as « minority », see our « Biblical Jubilee and Social Reform », Scripture 3 (1951) 324; also there p. 332, the close connection of jubilee with the levirate-marriage requirement of Dt. 25:5; Ruth 3:3; and the similar kinsman's obligation to buy back sold land in order to keep it in the family, Ruth 4:7; Jer. 32:8.
17. R. North, Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee (Analecta Biblica 4; Rome 1954) 188.
18 R. North, « II Latifondo nella Bibbia », Civilta Cattolica 107-D (1956) 612-619.
19. Abram Menes, Die vorexilischen Gesetze Israels (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 50; Giessen 1928) 81; Hermann Weil, « Gage et cautionnement dans la Bible », Archive d'Histoire du Droit Oriental 2 (1938) 171-188; Henri Gazelles, Le Deutgronome (Bible de Jerusalem; Paris 1950) 70.
20. R. North, «DerOr >>, Theologisches Wdrterbuch zum Alten Testament (ed. G. Botterweck; Stuttgart 1974) vol. 2.
21. M. Lurje, Studien zur Geschichte der wirtschaftlichen and sozialen Verhatnisse im israelitisch-jildischen
Reiche (BZAW 45; Giessen 1927) 49.
22. William F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Garden City 1957) 91.
(23) N. Nicolskij's Russian work is summarized in Zeitschrift Mr die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 50 (1932) 116.
