Micheal Hudson has a new book out in Easter called, … And Forgive them their Debts: Credit and Redemption. He is a distinguished professor of economics and is also a historian of economic systems and world's economies. He says that the word sin in the bible also meant debt in biblical times so for much of the time Jesus was referring to debt, not sin.
As we turn towards our faiths this Christmas and Hanukkah in an attempt to make sense of the year that was, economist Professor Michael Hudson says we have been interpreting the bible incorrectly. And he has written an entire book about it. Rather than sex and sin, both Christianity and Judaism is preoccupied with debt. As it turns out, Jesus was a socialist activist who paid the ultimate price fighting for the reinstatement of regular debt jubilees. In fact, the rulers of classical antiquity who cancelled their subjects’ debts were overthrown with disturbing frequency and tended not to live that long…
As many people turn towards their Christian and Jewish faiths this Christmas and Hanukkah in an attempt to make sense of the year that was, at least one economist says we have been reading the bible in an anachronistic way.
In fact he has written an entire book on the topic. In ‘…And Forgive them their Debts: Credit and Redemption’ (available this spring on Amazon), Professor Michael Hudson makes the argument that far from being about sex, the bible is actually about economics, and debt in particular.
“The Christianity we know today is not the Christianity of Jesus,” says Professor Hudson.
Indeed the Judaism that we know today is not the Judaism of Jesus either.
The economist told Renegade Inc the Lord’s Prayer, ‘forgive us our sins even as we forgive all who are indebted to us’, refers specifically to debt.
“Most religious leaders say that Christianity is all about sin, not debt,” he says. “But actually, the word for sin and debt is the same in almost every language.”
“‘Schuld’, in German, means ‘debt’ as well as ‘offense’ or, ‘sin’. It’s ‘devoir’ in French. It had the same duality in meaning in the Babylonian language of Akkadian.”
The Ten Commandments were about debt
People tend to think of the Commandment ‘do not covet your neighbour’s wife’ in purely sexual terms but actually, the economist says it refers specifically to creditors who would force the wives and daughters of debtors into sex slavery as collateral for unpaid debt.
Jesus died for our debt
Professor Hudson says Jesus Christ paid the ultimate price for his activism.
The Pharisees, Hillel (the founder of Rabbinical Judaism) and the creditors who backed them decided that Jesus’ growing popularity was a threat to their authority and wealth.
“They said ‘we’ve got to get rid of this guy and rewrite Judaism and make it about sex instead of a class war’, which is really what the whole Old Testament is about,” Professor Hudson said.
“That was where Christianity got perverted. Christianity turned so anti-Jesus, it was the equivalent of the American Tea Party, applauding wealth and even greed, Ayn-Rand style.”
The economist says that Christianity was reshaped by Saint Paul, followed by the “African” school of Cyril of Alexandria and St Augustine.
“Over the last 1000 years the Catholic Church has been saying it’s noble to be poor. But Jesus never said it was good to be poor. What he said was that rich people are greedy and corrupt. That’s what Socrates was saying, as well as Aristotle and the Stoic Roman philosophers, the biblical prophets in Isaiah.”
Neither did Jesus say that it was good to be poor because it made you noble.
What Jesus did say is that say if you have money, you should share it with other people.
“But that’s not what Evangelical Christianity is all about today,” says Professor Hudson. “American Fundamentalist Christians say don’t share a penny. King Jesus is going to make you rich. Don’t tax millionaires. Jesus may help me win the lottery. Tax poor people whom the Lord has left behind – no doubt for their sins. There’s nothing about the Jubilee Year here.”
More here -
26 comments:
Kaivey never let a Jewish person lecture you about Christianity....
It is indeed “sin” (hamartia). It means “misses” like when you play golf and you try to send the ball to the flag but It slices 20 yards to the right of it...
Jesus to the lost sheep of the house of Israel in Luke 11:4 “and pardon to us the sins of us...”
Israelites could commit sins by not complying with the Levitical laws and precepts and if they sinned had to make up for it in accordance with the penal portions of the law...
Romans 4:4 “to the worker the wage is not considered a favor but a debt”
“debt” is ‘opheilEma’
It’s a different word with different meaning ... here it is a financial obligation...
“The economist says that Christianity was reshaped by Saint Paul,”
LOL It was established by Paul...
I think you're right, Ralph. I'm not an expert, but I think he messed it up quite a bit.
More or less what he is saying is that the death of the Christ was so that 2,000 years later we would let a bunch of students off the hook who borrowed absurd amounts to get completely ripped off by the academe for bullshit degrees...
Its pretty disrespectful to say the least...
he is more or less saying to somehow tax successful business people who have become wealthy and transfer the munnie to the academe...
I think we'll all find, if we can be bothered to understand Jesus rather than quote snippets out of context, is that Jesus did stand for economic and social justice, fighting injustice, and like it or not the Mosaic law which he'd himself have dispensed with rather than wait for others to magically dispense with it a short time after his death. Accepting that the religion Paul manufactured out of nothing had anything to do with Jesus is one of life's great mysteries. What you get is a religion completely divorced from Jesus's teachings and little more than stuff about grace, an artificial term created so that everyone is saved, especially multimillionaire televangelists who fleece the poor and always get found in a motel with prostitutes and cocaine. Hence the absurdity and the shamelessness of rich people claiming to be doing Jesus's work or the sneering at poor people for being forced to make the decisions they have made because the system itself is rotten to the core. Jesus was about changing a corrupt world, not at licking the backsides of the rich and powerful.
Matt: "Kaivey never let a Jewish person lecture you about Christianity...."
Why not? In principle, they're no less or better informed than anyone else, and certainly a lot better than most Christians I know. I've found that Christians know a lot more about other religions than those who follow those faiths because they wish to criticise them. Their own religion is of course impervious: it just is right because Jesus entered their hearts or something and told them that they're saved, so party on. Similarly, I find, Jews have been very helpful in pointing out things I always took for granted. Jews do have very good, even unanswerable, reasons for why a Jewish Jesus could not possibly have said what the Gospel writers claimed he said, or why if he did say these things was knowingly committing religious crimes warranting death, thus Jesus signed his own death warrant so as to save sinners with his own blood, something totally alien to the Judaism he preached.
Matt: "he is more or less saying to somehow tax successful business people who have become wealthy and transfer the munnie to the academe..."
Leaving aside Jesus's appreciation of MMT, what's wrong with taxing successful business people, a vague term if ever there was one given that so many of them got rich from inheriting it, dubious practices and government largesse? Only the modern right wants to protect the rich. The right even under Nixon, forgetting Eisenhower, were not against high taxes. There's nothing wrong with high taxes, unless you're rich in which case I understand the urge to protect what you consider to be yours, although as we all know all net financial assets come from the government. Ideologues make up the other defenders of the rich, in which case they're fools.
"Paul manufactured out of nothing"
Well if that is what you are believing then youre never going to get it...
But FD in the whole "Peter vs. Paul" question swirling about in Christendom, I am 100% on the "Paul side"....
And He never violated any laws or made anybody violate any laws either the Levitical Law or the Roman Law...
" Jesus did stand for economic and social justice, fighting injustice, and like it or not the Mosaic law which he'd himself have dispensed with "
Nope...
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." Mat 5:17
The Levitical Law IMPOSED "economic and social justice" thru active compliance with it... iow if Israel followed it (big "if"...) then they had the superior economic and social results AS WELL AS becoming justified with God...
This is "justification through works" or an active form of justification...
Vs. Paul's teaching of our "justification through grace" or our receiving the UNMERITED favor of God...
Paul's teachings of knowledge and truth is NOT some sort of human behavior modification program...
And btw whether or not we put untrained, unqualified, incompetent morons in charge of our contemporary economic systems and then we get shitty results doesnt even have anything to do with any of this....
"Leaving aside Jesus's appreciation of MMT,"
The Levitical Law mandated use of mass measures of silver at certain times ie those laws used metallic standard if they used "money"... most trade was conducted in real goods...
The ROMANS and HERODIANS were using "MMT" or what the scriptures term a "Numismatic" system... which yes He ofc evidenced an understanding of.... both systems being created through Him...
Matt: "And He never violated any laws or made anybody violate any laws either the Levitical Law or the Roman Law..."
1. Taking Jewish law first. If Jesus never asked or made anyone to violate Jewish law, why is there a religion called Christianity completely different to the one he practised and preached? What is the point of his teachings if we are asked to follow something very different? In what way are we following Jesus?
Jesus would not have been crucified had he not violated Jewish law with his alleged blasphemies and heresies.
2. Now for Roman law. His cleansing of the temple of the money changers (some prefer "lenders", which makes the crime much worse) and the merchants broke the law of some authority, whether Jewish or Roman. Jesus used physical force to cleanse the temple, which the Jewish and/or the Roman authorities would have objected to. Jesus objected and physical put an end to to the fleecing/robbing that the money changers and merchants were practising, thus undermining what was presumably legally sanctioned "business".
Jesus was daily undermining Rome by claiming to answer to a higher power. A very fragile peace held in Palestine, and the Romans were forever putting down revolutions. Jesus's message was revolutionary, anti-Roman and anti-Rabbinical as then was. The Jewish authorities would have dearly loved to execute Jesus for religious crimes, for which he was clearly guilty if the New Testament is to be believed, but the Jewish authorities decided to ensure that it was Rome which passed judgement. Jesus was charged with sedition against the empire, for which Pilate EXECUTED him. Spare me any legalities about Pilate finding Jesus innocent. That was a clever legality on his part. Offering to spare Jesus's life to those baying for it is not finding someone innocent. Both the Romans and the Jewish authorities got what they wanted: the death of Jesus by blaming each other.
Matt: "Well if that is what you are believing then youre never going to get it..."
You're right, I don't get it, and I haven't for some time now. Paul is not preaching what Jesus preached. He pretty much says it outright!
Matt: "But FD in the whole "Peter vs. Paul" question swirling about in Christendom, I am 100% on the "Paul side"...."
Why's that? What theological reason is there to argue that Paul had a better understanding of Jesus's teachings than Jesus himself, the twelve apostles and Jesus's brother James, who was far more anti-Paul than Peter? Paul was almost theologically illiterate. He never met or knew Jesus, suddenly comes on the scene with the sort of wild claims that the twelve apostles never make and gives an amazingly peculiar interpretation of what Jesus's teachings were and how he was given access to all kinds of information that no one else has. According to Paul, we should forget what Jesus was (a Rabbi), what Jesus followed (Judaism), what Jesus preached (what we call the Old Testament with some original teachings of his own but which in no way transgress the Mosaic law) and almost anything associated with Jesus (Jewishness and revolution against the pagan Romans), but we should ditch it all to appeal to the pagans because they aren't interested in any of that stuff. So Paul created a largely syncretic pagan religion with Jesus as a nebulous man-God who saves through grace. Nowhere is any of this stuff in the WORDS of Jesus himself.
Matt: "Paul's teachings of knowledge and truth is NOT some sort of human behavior modification program..."
Yes, exactly the opposite of Jesus. If Jews had followed the law, then, yes, they would not have been in the position they were in, according to Mosaic law. That's what Jesus was teaching, and warning to return to. Paul's teachings were that because Jews had failed to live up to their commitments, they should therefore throw it all in the trash can of history and create a religion about grace! What kind of argument is that? Evidently a brilliant one because it seems to have worked!
I have a problem with "turning the other cheek" when someone messes with me. Doubly so when they mess with my family.
That fraudster in Greece who messed with my elderly parents ... I am going to nuke his sorry behind when I get to Greece this summer.
Sorry, still livid at what happened :(
lastgreek, if you need someone to help with the pulling of nails and gouging of eyes, I'd be happy to help. Some people only understand violence.
"Turning the other cheek" does have other interpretations. It can't mean what we take as the simplest meaning, otherwise Jesus would not have used violence in the Temple to clear out the merchants and the money changers/lenders (international moneymen/bankers of his day price gouging the faithful). After all, the merchants and moneymen could have said to Jesus to "turn the other cheek".
It is almost certainly not literal but an expression that would have had another meaning in the context, time and Aramaic of Jesus. It could well mean a simple act of forcing the violent person into a dilemma into which he is defeated by the original action. There are other interpretations, but letting someone break one leg and then offering the other isn't what is meant at all.
Unless there was no other way or the crime was particularly abhorrent (cleaning of the Temple), most of the time Jesus sought to find subtle and ingenious ways of showing up hypocrisy and impiety. Read the whole verse in which the "turning of the other cheek" and I think a good case can be made for what I've laid out, although clearly there may well be others. I suppose we'll never know because none of us has ancient Aramaic or can translate what such an unusual comment from our vantage meant in that particular instance.
“Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man.". Luke 23:4
So He was square with Rome.... I’ll find the one that shows he was square wrt Leviticus...
He couldn’t have been guilty of transgressions against any earthly laws or then it couldn’t be viewed solely as an act/sign of conciliation from God...
“You're right, I don't get it, and I haven't for some time now. Paul is not preaching what Jesus preached. He pretty much says it outright! ”
They each employed different teaching methods you have to understand the difference...
Jesus used “discipling” with his Israelite “disciples” it’s an active or kinetic type of method ... so there is always a lot of activity with the disciples... curing, healing, feeding, etc
This is where Christendom gets off track with their “justification through works” ... they think the active methodology itself is somehow directly related to our justification in the sight of God...
Paul didn’t “disciple” Paul used a rote or strictly verbal method... Paul never termed anyone he taught a “disciple” because he didn’t use that methodology...
With Paul you don’t have to do anything physical you just have to read it... we’re all justified today simply through the grace of God... God’s not at enmity with mankind... God is at peace with mankind and conciliated to mankind through the death of His Son...
This is what Paul taught anyway... I believe it at least...
“What theological reason is there to argue that Paul had a better understanding of Jesus's teachings than Jesus himself,”
Because Jesus said it Himself he told the Cainite woman (btw after he analogizes her to a dog...) “ I have only been sent but for the lost sheep of the House of Israel”.
He was only here in flesh and blood for apostate Israel ... He tried to get through to them via discipling... didn’t work ie a demonstrative failure...
He appeared to Paul later as “a light brighter than the noon day sun” and commissioned Paul as an apostle to those of the nations outside of Israel... Paul went to Greece and Rome and taught via rote method... you just read it...
That's what Paul said.
Keyword being “said” ie rote methodology...
Matt: “Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, "I find no basis for a charge against this man.". Luke 23:4
Of course, but Pilate is employing a legal technicality. If Jesus was innocent, then free him. Don't offer for him to be judged by a baying mob of murderous fanatics! Can you imagine if that happened in any courtroom in America?
Judge: "The jury has found this man innocent but it is quite proper for the baying lunatics with pitch forks should have the last say on this matter."
Matt: “I have only been sent but for the lost sheep of the House of Israel”.
That's a very loose reading. If you can read the above statement to mean that no one need follow my teachings because they only apply to Israel, then you should be in advertising, making black look white or any other colour you think desirable. What Jesus was saying, if he said it, was simply that he was sent ONLY to the House of Israel. That was his function.
Matt: "He appeared to Paul later as “a light brighter than the noon day sun” and commissioned Paul as an apostle to those of the nations outside of Israel..."
That's Paul's unsubstantiated claim. Paul arrives in Palestine TEN tears after the death of Jesus. For ten years, Jesus's apostles were preaching his message as a Jewish religion, otherwise Jesus would have said something different. Paul suddenly shows up has a disagreement with the apostles, leaves (possibly banished) and spreads a DIFFERENT message to the apostles for another TEN years, before returning to have it out with the apostles who were obviously wrong in doing what Jesus taught them.
The apostles had apparently learned nothing about what Jesus really meant, and Paul, who's been absent for TWENTY years preaching a DIFFERENT message, is the only one who understands Jesus, though he had never met him or spent any time with him. Paul gets around all this by claiming that Jesus appeared to him and - what exactly? - ditch the whole shebang and start a religion completely divorced from what he preached and centre it all around grace, and how we are all saved because of a blood sacrifice. Now, really, does this sound at all convincing? In which case, why didn't Jesus just say "Forget all this Judaism stuff. There is a new religion and it's all about grace." Why did he leave his apostles teaching Judaism? Did he suddenly realise after his resurrection that all the apostles were fools for teaching what he taught while alive and that the ideal way was to reappear to a man called Saul and that he would understand? Why not reappear to the apostles? Why leave them wasting their time? Why keep their company if they are such damned fools that between all of them they didn't get the message about dropping Judaism and instead starting a religion about a triple Godhead and grace, though he himself never says it?
None of that was prophesied... Paul didn’t start a religion either ... he taught against ritual and sectarianism... never used the word trinity it is a non scriptural term.. Paul taught the faith is linear not planar in geometry...
If you look at what the Lord tells his Israelite disciples to do “for a remembrance of Me” he changes the Passover sacrificial meal to a re-enactment of the original sacrifice of feedstocks in the way of Cain. (bread and wine) (‘Meat is Murder’,etc) .. ie no more shedding of blood and death... ie no more enmity ...
Here are two key scriptures :
“Paul making one declaration, that, "Ideally the holy spirit speaks through Isaiah the prophet, to your fathers,
26 saying, 'Go to this people and say, "In hearing, you will be hearing, and may by no means be understanding, And observing, you will be observing, and may by no means be perceiving,"
27 For stoutened is the heart of this people, And with their ears heavily they hear, And with their eyes they squint, Lest at some time they may be perceiving with their eyes, And with their ears should be hearing, And with their heart may be understanding, And should be turning about, And I shall be healing them.'
28 Let it be known to you, then, that to the nations was dispatched this salvation of God, and they will hear." Acts
Israel was OVER... salvation of Christ went to the nations...
Via grace ie unmerited favor:
“10 For if, being enemies, we were conciliated to God through the death of His Son, much rather, being conciliated, we shall be saved in His life.”
We WERE enemies of God ... think Christopher Hitchens “God is not Great” etc which is textbook Cain 101...
The salvation which is in Christ (anointed Son of God) is with we Cainites now ... via grace ie unmerited favor ... that’s why Christ in flesh directed His disciples to perform a re-enactment of the original Cainite form of sacrifice... ie feedstocks instead of killing livestock’s ...
It’s ideally not a religion .. that came later when man institutionalized a lot of it into behavior modification, sectarianism, etc...
“Jesus was innocent, then free him. Don't offer for him to be judged by a baying mob of murderous fanatics!”
He wasn’t a Roman citizen so He had no legal protections... contrast the Lords treatment with Paul’s in Acts they tried the same thing with Paul and tried to railroad Paul to be executed but Paul was a Roman citizen so he appealed all the way to Caesar in Rome and was exonerated...
This is another key contrast between the Lords approach vs Paul’s approach... Paul had the luxury of being a citizen of Rome...
Look the bottom line is that the Lord has to be killed (homicide) in order to be a sacrifice ... and He has to experience death just like we have to in order for it to be an act of conciliation from God...
iow God is no longer requiring us to have to go through anything (humiliating death) that He didn’t also require His own Son to go through ... so He is conciliated to mankind now through the death of his Son...
The “good news” of the grace of God from Paul, think of me as an ambassador here:
“For Christ, then, are we ambassadors, as of God entreating through us. We are beseeching for Christ's sake, 'Be conciliated to God!'” (2 Corinthians 5:20)
He’s not mad at anybody.... and material matters or behavior modification don’t have anything to do with this...
Matt: "He wasn’t a Roman citizen so He had no legal protections..."
That's a totally irrelevant and self-serving argument worked out by those who had no choice but to come up with a subtle formulation. Let's take a broader look at the two possibilities: protection under Rome and protection under the Jewish authorities.
1. Roman citizenship grants legal protection. While this is of course true, the opposite is also true: non-Romans had no such protection. If they have no such protection, why was Jesus or anybody else ever brought before a Roman court and tried under Roman law? Non-Romans were sentenced by Roman officials all the time. Hundreds of thousands of non-Romans were crucified by the empire, and by the way not a single one was ever documented to have been buried immediately after crucifixion. The Romans were excellent bureaucrats. They recorded crucifixions in detail. The bodies of the crucified were left up on the cross for very long periods of time. Vultures and other such birds would rip the body dry.
Why then did the Jewish clerical authorities decide to have Jesus tried for sedition by a Roman court? Because Rome is the ultimate law whether you are a citizen or not, and perhaps they were not certain that they would be able to find Jesus guilty in a Jewish court.
2. Jews have legal protection under Jewish law. Again true, and Jesus was clearly guilty under Jewish law, if they could prove he made such blasphemous and heretical statements. He had to be put to death, if it could be proven that he had said what he would have been charged with. There are no two ways about it. Jesus preached Biblical law, and under Biblical law he would have understood that he was guilty of the gravest crimes, and the only punishment was death.
So why did the Jewish authorities decide not to try him themselves, rather than insisting that he be tried for sedition by Rome? We know why: would it not be more advantageous to have your enemies rid themselves of your problem? Indeed a very good argument can be made that there was little consensus amongst Jews and there was no desire to execute Jesus and that's why the clerical authorities gave Jesus up to Rome.
Continued...
Rome could have decided not to prosecute but it didn't. They were the empire, and they could have simply insisted that this was all a purely Jewish matter and they weren't going to fall for such an obvious trick by the clerical authorities, if indeed the clerical authorities wanted him dead. Jews may have protection under Jewish law but they do not have any such protection under Roman law. Jesus may well have survived a Jewish court: Jesus regularly made fools of any and all comers from the clerical authorities, so it's not an absolute given that he would have been found guilty. But there is absolutely no chance Jesus could survive a Roman court. Sedition is a capital offence, and Rome had seen enough of Jesus to know he needed to be dealt with. Rome has crucified many for less.
All of which adds up to the obvious: Rome clearly wanted to try Jesus, and a Roman trial means death. The Jewish clerical authorities may or may not have wanted Jesus dead, although perhaps an influential minority did and that was enough to send Jesus to a Roman court which had already decided the matter. We're never going to resolve the question about how guilty the clerical authorities were, but it's irrelevant when they didn't want to try him themselves and left it to Rome to decide. Historically, Rome was the most savage and bloody empire there has ever been, leaving aside the Nazis. Naturally, justice didn't exist in the minds of Roman officials.
Now why did Pilate, after finding Jesus INNOCENT, decide to allow a baying mob of bloodthirsty fanatics the ultimate decision? It's perfectly clear, isn't it? Jesus's guilt or innocence is completely irrelevant. Rome wants Jesus dead. Pilate is all theatre and grandstanding, but he wants to make it look like a Jewish decision. Rome was putting down revolts almost every day. It didn't want a martyr on its hands. So Pilate cleverly makes Rome look like an innocent bystander trying to make peace.
Your argument about Paul actually makes my case not yours. Paul did appeal to the emperor, and, yes, he was tried as a Roman citizen but he spent two years in prison/house arrest. But how did Paul die? Paul was later executed by Rome, according to most historical sources: he was either beheaded or crucified. The two punishments are significant. If Rome wants you dead, say goodnight.
Matt, I forgot to add to make the following point. When Pilate asked the Jewish authorities why they wouldn't try Jesus themselves, they, or at least a faction of them, answered that, although they would like to, they could not put Jesus to DEATH. Only Rome could pass such a sentence. Pilate could have said go to hell, but he didn't.
Pilate therefore understood that the only acceptable and preordained sentence was death by taking the case. The trial itself is mere theatre, especially the washing of Pilate's hands, which can instead be thought of as Pilate being pleased to wash himself of this nuisance which he would eventually have to deal with, but this gave him an unarguable way of doing it. Rome of course wanted anyone like Jesus dead, and this gave Pilate a perfect opportunity to rid Rome of someone who was starting to become more than a minor irritant. More importantly it would undermining the Jewish authorities at the same time. Pilate was able to sow disaffection within the Jewish movements by putting Jesus to death. He'd crucified countless others already, why should he care about another, innocent or not? Apparently Pilate's botched attempt to put down one of the many uprisings led him to be called back to Rome. Unfortunately we know nothing more about this Machiavellian figure.
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