[Peace-discuss] Unreal estate

[C. G. Estabrook]

For the radical use of the Jubilee notion in modern history, see the fascinating 
book by my friend Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, "The Many-Headed Hydra: 
Sailors, Slave, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic" 
(Beacon, 2000), pp. 290-300. --CGE


Ron Szoke wrote:
> My Bible states in a note to Lev. 25:23 that the Land was considered to belong 
> to the Lord.  It could not be private property, "to be bought and sold 
> speculatively."
> 
> "Although there is no evidence that the jubilee program was ever carried out, 
> the law opposed foreign conceptions of property that resulted in the 
> swallowing up of ancestral holdings," mentioning also 1 Kings 21:3 & Isa. 5:8.  
> (_New Oxford Annotated Bible_, NRSV, ed. Metzger & Murphy, p. 158 OT.)
> 
> It seems that the notion of private property in land was as foreign to the 
> ancient Israelites as it was to "Native Americans:  in, say, 1490.
> 
> Prof. Eric Freyfogle of our law school has some interesting things to say about 
> related matters.
> 
> -- Ron