Working Folk

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911), Preface

When we meet with a new interpreter, eager to impart a revelation, we set ourselves to challenge and compare his impassioned message with the ruling spirit of the age, the Zeitgeist, as the Germans call it. Thus when Mr. Verinder speaks of the land-usages and laws of our times, and sets against them the ancient orders and directions of the Pentateuch, we are aroused at once to question and to find out how this new view of possession and occupation fits in with the dominant thoughts of today. From these sacred books he builds a creed for working folk: that the earth is the Lord's, and that any occupier who claims more than the ancient Jubilee gave is a bold interloper; and he bases on these early Scriptural regulations a new brotherhood between the man of labor and the soil on which his sinews work. ... Read the whole preface