Second, the assumption that usury is something that one properly practices on one’s enemies, and therefore, by extension, that all commerce partakes something of the nature of war, never entirely disappears. Calvin, for instance, denied that Deuteronomy only referred to the Amalekites; clearly, he said, it meant that usury was acceptable when deali

Greek philosophers belonged to, or were employed by, the landowning class; they therefore disapproved of interest. Mediaeval philosophers were churchmen, and the property of the Church was mainly in land; they therefore saw no reason to revise Aristotle’s opinion. Their objection to usury was reinforced by anti-Semitism, for most fluid capital was

Family and property, then, were not for the ancient Jew simply what they are to the modern western world. Both carried religious and cultural significance far beyond personal, let alone ‘individual’, identity and security. Both functioned symbolically within the total Jewish worldview. To both, Jesus levelled a direct challenge: those who followed

Christian Jews until then had operated within the covenant of Judaism, praying in synagogues and regarding Jesus as the fulfillment of the messianic promises within Judaism.