By Dr. David Lincicum, University of Notre Dame — The Conversation US — 28 April 2021
Debates over compensating a group of people for past injuries or abuses date back to at least the early centuries of the common era. The classic text for thinking about reparations is the biblical story of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt, in which God promises Moses that the departing Israelites shall “plunder the Egyptians” — taking gold, silver and clothing from their former enslavers. Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, writing in the first century, argued literally: “For what resemblance is there between forfeiture of money and deprivation of liberty, for which men of sense are willing to sacrifice not only their substance but their life?” The Israelites were in the right to take material goods since the Egyptians had deprived them of the far greater good of freedom.
Two centuries later, the early Christian theologian Irenaeus of Lyons made a remarkable case for reparations in his treatise “Against Heresies,” arguing that the Israelites deserved to be repaid for their forced labour: “In what way did the Israelites act unjustly, if out of many things they took a few?” Shortly after, Tertullian of North Africa imagined a court in his own day hearing the claims of “the Hebrews,” arguing that no amount of gold and silver could repay their hardship: “If their legal representatives were to display in court no more than their shoulders scarred with the abusive outrage of whippings, any judge would have agreed that the Hebrews must receive in recompense not just a few dishes and flagons… but the whole of those rich men’s property.”
Particularly notable is that Tertullian made the case for reparations to be paid to the descendants of the Israelites who had been forcibly enslaved centuries earlier. Although his argument was driven by a debate about scriptural interpretation, its logic strikingly anticipates contemporary cases for reparations — including those debated in the United States, where a House committee voted this month to create a commission to consider reparations for the descendants of enslaved people.