Watts’ career-long research on the biblical book of Leviticus now hones
in on chapter 25. It contains utopian legislation for resetting
agriculture, land transactions, and slavery every 50 years, during what
it calls the “Jubilee” year. While the surrounding story of the exodus
to the promised land is famous for both inspiring freedom movements as
well as being used to justify settler colonialism in the Americas,
Africa, and the Middle East, the influence of this chapter’s vision of a
static agrarian community is less well known. Later Jewish and
Christian traditions have often used the Jubilee as a symbol of release
and freedom. Yet the distinction between native and foreign slaves,
freeing the former but not the latter in the Jubilee, has been used to
justify racialized chattel slavery. Watts’ exploration of the history of
Leviticus 25 in interpretation and economic practice offers a vantage
point for observing some of the social effects—both oppressive and
liberating—from envisioning economic futures based on a utopian vision
of the past.