Reddit:The old testament, new testamant, and the Koran all have passages

[SecularMotion]

denouncing and prohibiting practice of collecting interest on loans, so when and how did this practice become accepted in society?

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y5ti8/eli5_the_old_testament_new_testemant_and_the/

[DetlefK]

1. IIRC, it's not outlawed in the Old Testament...

That's why the Jews were the only ones capable of running a profitable banking-system in the Middle-Ages.

And because most bankers were Jews, that's where the anti-semitic trope of the greedy Jew was born.




(And No, I didn't read the link. I refuse to read reddit.)

[trotsky]

2. Meh, Reddit is like the rest of the Internet.

There are some pretty cool things in the Science and "Today I Learned" subreddits quite frequently.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. OT says Jews cannot charge interest to Jews, but can to non-Jews

Wikipedia seems a good place to start for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

[TexasProgresive]

3. I think that the prohibition of usury is

it is the making of money with money as opposed to making money by the production of goods and services. Our modern world is structured so that the wheels of industry would grind to a halt without usury. One thing the Christian prohibition of usury did was to increase antisemitism in Europe. Most businesses were prohibited for Jews but money lending was allowed. When a king wanted to go to war he had to go to the Jews for funding. The same was true for business people, refer to "The Merchant of Venice."

I think this has stitched a thread in the warp and weft of the Eurocentric fabric. It would explain the prejudice against Jews for money hoarding and lending. I have not had the pleasure of knowing many Jewish people but all in my experience have been wonderful people. The exception was one fellow in Air Force Tech School- he was a arrogant bastard, but that had nothing to do with him being Jewish. There's probably one or two of those in every family.

[Act_of_Reparation]

4. There are a lot of things in those books that aren't acceptable today.

Thankfully.

[Igel]

5. Because it was done outside of the areas governed by those legal systems.

And was maintained where the systems interfaced.

The problem is that if you look at the loans offered they were more like pay-day or loanshark loans. You didn't borrow a lot of money for frivolous things and under the legal system, at least in the OT, you couldn't pay it back over that many years. You borrowed money against next week's wages to feed your family. And in the OT, if worse came to worse you made yourself a ward of another for a time period, receiving money and going into slavery to pay off your debts. Not sure if it's better or worse than debtor's prison, but at least somebody took care of your wife and kids when you screwed up or couldn't.

All the injunctions and exhortations in the OT are against oppressing people. If I want to buy a $60k car instead of a $14k car I'm not being all that oppressed.

In a primarily agrarian society huge heaps of money are also scarce, and what would you do with them? A family with its kids and animals can't work 1000 acres. Those with that kind of money are typically rulers or merchants. Or run a temple. And merchants very often had a rough time.

Once you start going more industrial--setting up a larger-scale pottery works or doing copper smelting--you're no longer poor. Arguably reasonable interest for that purpose wouldn't be covered by the OT edicts. It's of interest, though, that the OT exhortations simply ignore widespread and large-scale trade or industry, even though copper smelting was attested rather early and must have been done either by somebody wealthy or with government sponsorship.

[Lordquinton]

7. There are places that have religious exceptions

For Islam to not charge interest on loans. (If this is untrue, please let me know)