ABSTRACT

Michael Schluter's contribution to the birth of Jubilee 2000 was confined to the use of the year 2000 itself and not to the use of the Jubilee pattern for debt remission. Schluter later, when the campaign was already under way, spoke several times in support of Jubilee 2000. The name Jubilee comes from Yobel, 'the sound of the Ram's Horn'. Jubilee 2000 deals with sovereign debt of states and it is agnostic as to whether this Jubilee is to be a one off event, or whether it can be part of a regularly occurring pattern. The Biblical pattern offers its own special approach to debt remission. The biblical Jubilee referred to individual debt. The Biblical period between Jubilees was every 49 years, in the Jubilee provision in Leviticus 25, or every 7 years, in the debt remission command in Deuteronomy 15. The idea of Jubilee occurs, of course, both in the Old Testament and in the New.