In the “The Lord’s Prayer” the best-known prayer of Jesus the Christ, instead of the current translation “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” the original Greek text for the European sub-continent in the Gospel of Matthew (Ch. 6, verse 12) reads: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” Debt, now notoriously translated as sin happened only because in many pagan languages of Europe as a matter of fact, in German and Dutch, the word “Schuld” means both “sin” and “debt.”

But looking back, “Alleluia,” an expression of joy used in the Hebrew tradition and now the Jewish-Christian religions, comes from the language spoken in Babylon during the second millennium BCE and referred to the liberation of debt slaves.

In Kemet from 3,000 BCE, there were proclamations cancelling debt and liberating those in debt slavery. The Pharaoh’s fundamental motivations were to entrench Maat, i.e. the need for the human being to be capable to produce enough food for himself and family and be able to bequeath his property to his family in order to become available as a soldier during a military campaign to protect the homeland. For those two reasons, creditors could not be allowed to evict anyone from their land! Kemetian law!

Under primitive barbaric Roman law, a creditor could execute insolvent debtors. At the start of the feudal era, many farmers were subjugated, since “peasants” were unable to repay their debts. That was the case during the reign of Charlemagne in the late 8th and early 9th century. Under the laws of the United States and certain European countries (which have received “insight through Rome”), failure to repay a debt was punishable by confiscation of property and by physical mutilation until the early 19th century. And still today, in Europe and elsewhere, non-repayment of debts is punishable by imprisonment.

The more you know about civilized people compared to colonial Africa and Europe/Amerikkka (where barbarism has descended from)! Now private debt is used by the warring tribal classes to subjugate, despoil, expropriate, and dispossess the toiling classes (among whom women have always been the hardest-hit victims): small farmers, artisans, fishermen, and on up to the salaried workers of today and the members of their households (students, who go into debt to pursue an education).

The more you know about the barbarism of private debt today!

5 COMMENTS

  1. Besides, what Capitalist Christian nation of primitive accumulation wants anyone to even dare think that debt could be, can be, forgiven? The whole point for maintaining the Biblical text as “Sin” rather than “Debt” has implication on capitalist ideology and policy! You cannot make people think what you don’t want them to think. Hence call it “Sin,” whatever that is! But few in our homeland today – because of the plague of barbarism descended from the coniferous forests of a midget subcontinent called Europe – understand these wide implications of ideology. The ancients in Kemet had one – Maat. And every aspect of life was interpreted and assessed through that lens.

  2. As far as the debt issue, one more thing is of grave concern. Interest on debt! Kemet, Nubia outlawed interest on debt. Perhaps as a result of Maat. From its origins, Islam too prohibited loans with interest. I am not sure if it still does. Atiga Jonas Atingdui. The Hebrew tradition also prohibited it but the converts to the tradition, that is Jews amended that position during the first century CE and authorized loans with interest. The Christian religion followed suit in the 15th century, and the Protestant and Catholic authorities even ended up promoting loans with interest. It’s amazing what primitive societies/peoples and backward religions will do to enslave their citizens or followers!

  3. Pope Nicholas V, (15 November 1397 – 24 March 1455), born Tommaso Parentucelli, and Pope from 6 March 1447 until his death, in January 1455, actually authorized the perpetual subjugation of populations considered “enemies of Christ.”

    Among other things, one such group of “Enemies of Christ” was Blacks! He enabled the enslavement of Africans during that period (in particular on the plantations created by the Portuguese in Madeira), and subsequently authorized the European conquistadors to do likewise in the New World. That is what I mean when I speak of Christian Nations, Markus Kennedy Katey!

    For the fun of it, here is an excerpt from the bull Romanus Pontifex: “We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso – to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit…”

    Also, as David Graeber describes, the conquistadors, including Hernán Cortés, had gone deeply into debt to finance their operations. As a result they exploited and despoiled the conquered populations all the more brutally in order to repay their own debts. See David Graeber, op. cit., p. 315 and following!

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