Samaritans, the Jubilee and Jesus

Question

In the Wikipedia page about Jubilee, an anonymous writer added the following text:

"Jesus declared a Yovel by referencing Isaiah in 27 A.D., i.e. the 1666 year of entry into Canaan and the 34th 49 year Yovel Cycle according to the present day Samaritan Calendar."

I would like to know whether this claim has any evidence, so that I know whether to keep it in that page or remove it.

Answer 1

The Samaritan Calendar places the year of entry into the Promised Land in the Spring of 1639 BC (or is it 1638 BC?).

If the above were true then AD 27 would approximate to the 34th Jubilee.

In my opinion, and with very good evidence posted elsewhere on stack exchange, the Israelites did not enter the Promised Land in 1639 BC, they entered in the Spring of 1406 BC. The Jubilee-Sabbath years began in the month Tishri (in Sept/Oct), so the year of entry was the year starting Tishri 1407 bc.

Another problem is that the Jubilee-Sabbath cycle started from scratch on the return from the Babylonian Captivity. The year of return from Babylonian Captivity can be calculated to 533 bc (See "From Abraham to Paul - a Biblical Chronology" by Andrew Steinmann). This would mean the only Yovel (Jubilee) in the lifetime of our Lord would have been about AD 5.

Finally, it is the view of many that our Lord was born about late 2 bc, began his ministry about ad 30, and died and rose again in April ad 33.

Answer 2

I think the anonymous contributor is referring to Luke 4.

16 [Jesus] went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
           because he has anointed me
           to proclaim good news to the poor.
      He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
           and recovery of sight for the blind,
      to set the oppressed free,
19       to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:16-20 (NIV)

A Yovel, I assume is a Jubilee, and if this is the story that the contributor is referring to, then he is saying that Jesus was declaring a Jubilee (probably in verse 19), along with other significant theological points. However, saying confidently that this occurred in AD27 is quite tenuous. We don't know exactly when this story happened (if at all) because we don't know how old Jesus was at the time and we aren't even sure what year he was born (though most scholars agree on 4BC).

I found an article that discusses the theological significance, according to the Catholic perspective, on this verse and that it mentions Jubilee.

In light of this, the information in general is relevant, and somewhat interesting to the topic of that Wikipedia article, but it needs to be completely rewritten to include that this is not a universal understanding of these verses (I've never heard that Jesus was proclaiming a literal Jubilee) and especially that the year is unknown, but we could guess it within about a six year window (based on theories for Jesus' birth year and how old he was at this point).