I am plucking what follows from two posts at Thought Criminal (don't worry, links are below). I'm not quoting the context provided there because I want you to read the posts themselves, with this language imbedded. The words below are those of Walter Brueggemann. I would remind any who don't know what Brueggemann is a Biblical scholar, and a Christian, and his reading of the texts from the Hebrew Scriptures are probably the most radical you've ever read:
Well, I'm glad I get to be with you to talk a minute.
Three theses about the Bible.
- The first thesis is that the Bible, most of the Bible, Old Testament and, for Christians, The New Testament originated in a context of a predatory economy, that was extracting wealth from vulnerable People to transfer it to powerful People. And that was practicing unfair allocation of resources.
There was a lead story in the New York Times this morning, did you see it? A long article saying that inequality is only going to get worse and worse and none of our efforts will do anything and the only thing that will disrupt it will be a war. So that's the context in which we read the Bible.
- The second learning I've had about The Bible is that the Biblical Community, Israel and the early Church in the New Testament make a response to the predatory economy that is one of resistance and that proposes a neighborly alternative.
- And the third learning I have had is that The Bible is best read in a context of a predatory economy. Which means we've got the best context in which to read The Bible because we live in a predatory economy that practices the unfair allocation of resources. So that's an overview of what I've been learning of late. And, then, what I want to do, cause The Bible does it, you have to reduce those theses to narrative, so Peter is going to have us tell stories after a while. The Bible is essentially, I propose, a series of stories about a predatory economy and the neighborly response to a predatory economy.
So the first and big story that governs all the other stories is the story of Pharaoh in Egypt. Pharaoh may or may not have been an actual historical person. But what Pharaoh is, he's a type or he's a metaphor, He's a stand-in for all predatory economies. And the story of Pharaoh is a story of a nightmare of scarcity and a policy of accumulation, the success of monopoly, and then as will always happen with monopoly, when accumulation ends in monopoly it always ends in violence.
Predatory economies are intrinsically violent.
That story of Pharaoh is in the book of Genesis [the story of Joseph in Egypt]. And when you flip over into the first chapter of Exodus where we meet the Children of Israel who have become slaves it says that Pharaoh treated them harshly. Which means they had incessant production demands because they had debts they couldn't pay and they had debts they couldn't pay because of Pharaoh's predatory policies.
So that's the context in which the most paradigmatic story of the Old Testament arises. And Moses is the lead character in a response to that predatory economy. And the Mosaic drama takes place in three parts, and you know those but it's useful to think about them because our response to the predatory economy might be in three parts.
First part is the Exodus narrative, which means the exit of the predatory economy. And what Peter has taught me as you know is one way to exit the predatory economy is keep the money local. That's an exit from the predatory economy, keep it out of the hands of the banks.
The second moment in Moses's response is the incredible experience in the wilderness of abundant bread, abundant water and abundant meat. They get water from a rock and bread from heaven and they got meat from quail. The Bible doesn't explain any of that. But what The Bible affirms is that if you run the risk of getting outside of the predatory economy you move from frightened scarcity to inexplicable abundance. And the problem is that we cannot know that ahead of time.
The third moment in Pharaoh's work [he meant Moses's work, I believe] is at Mount Sinai in which he got the ten big rules for neighborliness. The Ten Commandments were ten rules for neighborliness at the center of which is the Commandment about Sabbath. Which is a rule to say do not bust your ass to gain approval from Pharaoh. That's what Sabbath is about. And I have come to think that for our society Sabbath is the most important and most difficult of all of the Commandments. Because I go around saying if you want to keep Sabbath you have to turn off the NFL. I said that at a wealthy Episcopal church in Charlotte a couple of Sundays ago and a priest started backing me off, "Well I think People ought to go to church before they go to the football game." And then I found out the reason he was doing that was the owner of the team was in the audience. So it was a little bit tricky about that.
To put those in the context where I found them, I recommend this post. Highly recommend. It's the best way to begin the discussion about taking these ideas seriously. The second post continues with Brueggemann's comments:
So there are incredible provisions in the Book of Deuteronomy that protest against the predatory economy.
There are provisions that say things like you have to pay People their wages on the day they earn them. No wage theft.
It says that you take anything in collateral for a loan from a poor person that if they have one coat you can take their coat for collateral during the day but you've got to take it back to them at night cause they need to sleep in it. You can pick it up the next morning for collateral but then you've got to take it back at sundown. Imagine doing that on a 30 year loan. Moses's idea is you should bother with it.
In Deuteronomy 15 the Mosaic regulation is at the end of seven years you've got to cancel debts because Moses had determined that there should not be a permanent underclass. And the way to prevent a permanent underclass is to cancel debts.
And then in the Jubilee year Moses ups the ante by saying every 49 years you've got to give everything back to People, everything you took from them. Which is REDISTRIBUTION AND REPARATIONS.
So The Bible is, essentially, from the Mosaic tradition, is an act of alternative to the predatory economy.
Now, very quickly, I think I've used up my time, but very quickly, I want to tell you about three reperformances of the Exodus narrative in The Bible. Two of these you will know about one you may not know about.
First, Solomon, King Solomon was Pharaoh's son-in-law. And he is the principle predator inside Israel. So Solomon taxed People to death. So Solomon must have been a primordial groper - if I can use that presidential word - because he had three hundred wives and seven hundred concubines. And he is known for having built the grand Temple in Jerusalem that is filled with Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! and cheap labor.
The gold came from predatory commerce and taxes and the cheap labor meant that he didn't have to spend much of his gold to build The Temple. So The Temple in Jerusalem is a monument to predatory economics. And if you read the texts carefully, the Biblical God says, "I ain't gonna stay there, you can't put me in a place like that and expect me to stay there! For I am a God of emancipation."
The response to Solmon's predation is the whole prophetic movement of the eighth and seventh century BCE in which their oracles are essentially an expose of the predation of the elite of the city of Jerusalem.
The second reperformance of the Exodus in the fifth century BCE under the Persian government - this sounds contemporary - what those governments did, empires basically exist to collect revenue, that's what all empires do. Including the US empire/ And what they do is hire locals to collect the taxes to send to the imperial capital. So Nehemiah is one of these governors that collect money to send to Persia. He taxes other Jews. In Nehemiah 5, if you do not know Nehemiah 5 see if you can find it in your Bible and take a look. Nehemiah 5 says People were having to sell their children to pay their taxes and to sell their fields to settle their mortgages. They were desperate.
And when Nehemiah the governor hears about it he is indignant and he calls a meeting, in Nehemiah 5 of the Jews who were vulnerable and Jews who were predators and he says, "You guys are all Jew. You need to stop doing this to each other, " and he forced them into a covenant. Now mutatis mutandis.
What I want to suggest to you is that what has happened in our society is that very many People have been so trapped by the empire, by the predatory empire that they have forgotten that they are human. And when you forget that you are human you can exploit other human beings and not notice that they are human. So the work of somebody like a Nehemiah is to get these People who have forgotten they are human and to remind People of their common humanness, which requires economic solidarity that is worked out as Jubilee.
The third reperformance, that I'll do in one sentence, is that the Roman empire was another predatory system and in the New Testament The Jesus Movement is essentially a response of a neighborly economy to the predation of Rome with which some Jews had colluded.
Simply observe how badly we have read The New Testament when we thought it had to do with private sin and going to heaven. When, in fact, The New Testament is essentially about a neighborhood alternative in economics. Jesus got executed by Rome because the empire is scared to death of a neighborly economy.
I added emphasis to that last paragraph because I think the emphasis on private sin (!) and "going to heaven" are exactly where Christianity acquiesced to the world and made Christ's teachings (and Paul's) safe for the world. When what we need to be doing is making the world safe for human beings, by recalling we are human beings, and by noticing other people are humans, too. You know, like Mary's Magnificat sang for.
Nice work if you can get it, huh?
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