The Concept of the Jubilee Year

Just a note to avert any impression of an elaborate theory developing out of some real but limited facts. (a) Everything not proven will be clearly marked and no arguments will depend on what is not certain. My imagination works well, but so does my critical sense. (b) The steps for what was set out in the previous message are all there. For instance, even if someone might quibble about the word shatta “the year” necessarily being the Jubilee Year, the 49 stars are there for a reason. Besides, there are two more angels with two wings each, one with the head of an eagle and one with the head of a lion, corresponding to two of the six-winged Seraphs, those representing Mark and John, each blowing a shofar. (Actually they correspond to all four, but that would take us off the point). It is the eagle-bodied Seraph that holds the unsealed book. And for the Egyptians Mark is John. While we are on the subject, the repeated modern translation “trumpet” in the book of Revelation is a disastrous slip. The Greek word means a shofar or horn (ram’ s horn or cow’ s horn). The Greek of the Pentateuch consistently distinguishes between a shofar and a metal trumpet. The King James translators were usually alert to these traditional Hebrew to Greek renderings and tried to show their significance by using the same English word in the OT and NT, but somehow their craft was in abeyance this time. (But sometimes the Greek does this marking of equivalents more than any translation, deliberately to the point of unnatural expression. Actually it is the unnatural expressions that are impossible to miss. In John I the Greek says “and tabernacled amongst us”. The Greek word is as surprising as the literal English equivalent. The English “dwelt” is an attempt at smoothing out the expression of the Greek, but at the same time this English word is also the rendering of the Hebrew verb in the Pentateuch rendered “tabernacled” in the LXX). Anyway, they missed this one in Revelations. It is a bad slip, because you are meant to think of Leviticus XXV. Without that, the imagery is reduced in part to vague piety. Why are there seven angels, for a start? It was not so that the book could be made longer.

The chapter in Isaiah abut the year of Favour is 61. The reference back to the Torah is Lv XXV and Dt XXXII. One of these would have been the reading before the reading from Isaiah when Jesus preached, and the other would have been the reading at about the same time. Notice the mention of the new order of priesthood in Isaiah. This part is quoted twice in Revelations. The new order of priesthood started at the Pentecost after the Ascension. For the Egyptians, this is the occasion when Mark took up his appointment as the Apostle.

The concept of the Jubilee Year that is unique and is the year of Favour starting the time of Favour is developed in some Qumran texts. The Samaritan concept of the return of the Time of Favour is central. The point that it is to start in a Jubilee Year is so self-evident that it is not explicitly mentioned, but it is always there.

As said, I can use Revelations without my argument DEPENDING on some theory about the relationship between the object and the book, or the date of either. It is enough to say that both are the product of the same tradition, and that the book is a reliable guide to the interpretation of the object. What I actually think is that the book is a development of the tradition. At the moment, I think the resistance to accepting the book might have been that it was too Egyptian or too Markan if understood beyond the level of vague piety; whereas to the Egyptians or Markans, who understood it in detail, it was innovative.