Expose of 'unearned income' at the Mosaic blog drawing from Shakespeare's handling of it in drama in light of an account in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Shakespeare operating under the "gold standard paradigm" of the then operative metallic standards system back in his day as well as the contemporary commentary at Mosaic as evidenced by both being comfortable with use of the metalepsis "moneylender".
Shylock . . . recognizes that, . . . since a patriarch would never steal, Jacob is taking “interest” for the years of unpaid work. He calls it “indirect” interest as it came from natural increase and not added coin.
Shylock, Antonio believes, uses Scripture to justify his malicious practices
The very debate Shylock and Antonio are having virtually reflects the dissonance [within] the story of how Jacob became wealthy. . . . [A]s a careful reader of Scripture, Shakespeare picked up on the tension inherent in the account, and chose to express this tension, this inner biblical dialogue, in the form of a debate between the Jewish moneylender, Shylock, and the Christian merchant, Antonio.
This "rentier" debate is still going on centuries later and still with 6 nines of people engaged in the debate still suffering under the influence of knowledge of the old metallic standards system while remaining ignorant of what we have now (post 1971) as a purely numismatic system.
Not surprisingly, it doesn't seem the debate ever gets anywhere.
Read Shakespeare’s subtle analysis of this week’s Torah portion:
https://t.co/25FMlTl45d
— Mosaic (@mosaicmag) November 21, 2015
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