Oded Borowskia
Deferred payment—using credit cards and checks instead of currency and coin—is a modern invention. But people have been using money, whether paper or metal, for a very long time. The Hebrew Bible mentions many different monetary denominations, and archaeologists frequently find coins and weights at dig sites.
For centuries, ancient peoples exchanged goods by bartering or by weighing out precious metals or jewels as payment for purchases. Under the barter system, people exchanged goods and services with one another according to various rates. For example, one donkey was worth three sheep or fixing a plow was worth two large clay pots. An example of barter in the Bible is 1 Kings 5:10–11, when Hiram of Tyre traded cedar and cypress timber to build Solomon’s Temple in exchange for wheat and oil.
When social structures became more complex and specialized, the barter system no longer worked well. If a seller wanted cattle and a prospective buyer only had sheep, they needed either a middleman or a new payment method in order to work out an exchange.
A FALCON seems to take flight on this coin from the fourth century BC. The inscription at upper right reads, “Yehud,” the Hebrew name of Israel while it was a Persian province.
To solve this problem, payment with precious metals or, less often, with stones was introduced. Payment was made either by weighing out specific quantities of metals, such as gold or silver, or by handing over bars of these metals molded into a standard shape and weight.
The Bible describes this method of payment several times. The most famous example is Abraham’s purchase for 400 silver shekels of the Cave of Machpelah as a burial ground for his family.
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And Abraham weighed out for Ephron the silver which he had named. .. 400 shekels of silver, according to the weights current among the merchants (Gn 23:16).
Since coins were not yet in existence, this reference is most likely to metal bars or to weight units. Weighing was done by using balance scales and standard weights. From Deuteronomy 25:13, where it is stated, “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small,” we can infer that cheating sometimes occurred.
In Biblical times, there were two standards, or systems, of weight: Babylonian and Phoenician. Both used “heavy” and “light” sets of weights. The heavy ones weighed approximately twice as much as their lighter counterparts. The Babylonian system also included “royal” heavy and light weights, which weighed more than their “common” counterparts.
Weight Units
The Bible mentions a number of weight units—the kesitah, kikar (talent), shekel, beqa, mina (maneh), gerah and pim. Very little is known about the kesitah although it is mentioned three times in the Bible (Gn 33:19; Jos 24:32; Jb 42:11). The kikar is mentioned several times. From Exodus 38:25–26, which lists the donations given to the Tabernacle, it is possible to calculate that one kikar equaled 3,000 shekels:
Coin Equivalents
10 gerahs
1 beqa
2 beqas
1 shekel
60 (50 in Phoenician system) Shekels
1 mina
60 minas
1 kikar (talent)
The silver of those of the community who were recorded came to 100 talents (kikar) and 1,775 shekels by the sanctuary weight: a half-shekel a head, half a shekel by the sanctuary weight, for each one who was entered in the records, from the age of twenty years upward, 603,550 men.
The mina is mentioned only once in the Bible. King Solomon made “200 shields of beaten gold—600 shekels of gold to each shield—and 300 shields of beaten gold—three minas of gold to each shield” (1 Kgs 10:16–17).
The shekel is the most frequently mentioned unit in the Bible. The Israelite shekel probably weighed about 11.4 gm or 0.4 oz, making its weight roughly equivalent to an American half dollar. The prophet Amos preached against:
You who trample upon the needy,. .. saying “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah [volume measured] small and the shekel great, and deal deceitfully with false balances. .. and sell the refuse of the wheat? (Am 8:4–6).
The beqa, which was half a shekel, is mentioned twice in the Bible, in Exodus 38:26 and in Genesis 24:22, where Abraham’s servant meets Rebekah, who offers to water his camels and
When the camels had done drinking, the man took a gold ring weighing a beqa, and two bracelets for her arms weighing ten gold shekels.
The smallest unit was the gerah. Ten gerahs made a beqa and 20 gerahs equaled a shekel, as we learn from the instructions for the Israelite census in Exodus 30:13:
This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerahs to the
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shekel—a half shekel as an offering to the Lord.
Weights Found
Sometimes weights found at archacological sites can illuminate the meaning of a Biblical term. A case in point is that of the pim, a Hebrew word whose modern translation was changed entirely by an archaeological discovery. The word pim made only one appearance in the Hebrew Bible, in 1 Samuel 13:21, which describes the uneasy relationship between the Israelites and the Philistines. Since 1611, when the King James Version of the Bible translated the word pim as “file,” most English-speaking readers have understood this passage to read:
.. . there was no smith found throughout all the land of Israel: for the Philistines said, Lest the Hebrews make them swords or spears: But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock. Yet they had a file [Hebrew pim] for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads (1 Sm 13:19–21, King James Version).
The pim was understood to be a file to sharpen tools.
The understanding changed when an archaeological excavation unearthed a weight stone bearing the inscription “pim.” The pim weighed two-thirds of a shekel. Making use of the knowledge gained from this discovery, the translators of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible rendered 1 Samuel 13:20–21 as,
.. . but every one of the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, or his sickle; and the charge was a pim for the plowshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads.
Early Coins
Coins appeared in the Holy Land in the seventh century B C. “Shekel” became the name of a coin once coins began to be minted in Palestine. Balances did not disappear, however. Ancient coins did not bear marks on their edges that could reveal signs of tampering as many modern coins do. Coins with pieces cut off were difficult to detect, and counterfeit coins created problems for those seeking full value for their goods. Sometimes only a balance could prove whether coins were worth their stated value.
The first coins were minted in Lydia and Aegina in the middle of the seventh century BC. Croesus, king of Lydia (560-546 B C), was probably the first to mint pure silver and gold coins.
When coins became the conventional method of payment in the ancient world, they were usually minted only by independent states. In special
A SILVER SHEKEL. Struck in Jerusalem during the first year of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (AD 66), this coin bears on its obverse side a chalice and the inscription, in paleo-Hebrew, “shekel of Israel.”
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cases of limited autonomy, as for example in Israel during the Persian period, rulers sometimes granted local authorities under their control permission to mint coins.
The earliest coins had images on only one side, but by the middle of the sixth century BC the Athenians were issuing coins with images on both the front (obverse) and back (reverse). Other states soon followed suit.
Most ancient coins were produced by a process called striking. First a craftsman engraved the patterns for both sides on pieces of hard metal. The engraved pieces of metal are known as dies.” (The Greeks used hard bronze for dies; iron was first used for dies in Roman times.) Then the craftsman set the obverse die into an anvil and inserted a piece of metal called a blank. This became the coin on top of the die. Then he put the end of the metal bar bearing the reverse die on top of the blank and struck the other end of the bar with a sledgehammer. The process of striking coins offered many opportunities for error and consequently the quality of ancient coins varied greatly.
The first coins bearing Hebrew script date from the fifth century BC and are inscribed with the word beqa. In the fourth century BC small coins with the inscription yehud, the name of Israel while it was a province under Persian rule, were minted. Both the beqa and the yehud coins were minted by permission of the Persians.
During the Hellenistic period (332–37 BC), several mints were established in Palestine. The first, founded by Alexander the Great in Akko, was followed by others in Jaffa, Ashkelon and Gaza. Alexander and, later, local rulers, as well as a variety of pagan symbols were depicted on coins issued by these mints.
THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE FACADE is represented by columns on this coin from the Bar-Kochba Revolt (AD 132–135). The object at center may be a representation of the Ark.
Jewish Coinage
Jewish coinage began during the period of Jewish independence under Hasmonean rule. Scholars still argue who was the first Hasmonean king to mint coins—John Hyrcanus 1 (134–104 BC) or Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BC). Hasmonean coins were inscribed with the king’s name in either Hebrew or Greek, his title and a Hebrew inscription that read “Council of the Jews.” These coins bear symbols such as a pomegranate, a palm frond, a star or an anchor.
During the Roman period, starting in 37 BC Herod and his descendants minted coins. Some bear the symbols used by the Hasmoneans, while others imitate their Greek and Roman counterparts. The Roman governors in Palestine also minted coins and added Roman dates.
Although with Herod coins no longer bore Hebrew inscriptions, the symbols used in most cases were designed to avoid offending the Jewish
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population. However, Herod’s son Philip departed from this approach. He minted coins with the Roman emperor and pagan temples and gods on them. As had been the case during the Hasmonean period, coins struck by Herod and his descendants were only in small denominations and minted in bronze. Larger denominations and silver coins used in the local economy came from other sources, such as the Phoenician cities.
New Testament Coins
Greek, Roman, Tyrian (from the city of Tyre) and other coins were current in the Holy Land during New Testament times. Mark 12:42 records the story of the widow’s mites:
Then one poor widow came and threw in two mites, which make a quadrans.
The quadrans was the smallest Roman coin minted at the time. The “mites” were leptons, the smallest Greek copper coins.
During Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem, his enemies asked him whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Rome. Jesus asked for a coin and inquired whose likeness and inscription it bore. When his enemies answered, “Caesar’s,” he said,
Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s (Mt 22:21).
The coin brought to Jesus was a denarius, a silver coin minted by the Romans.
The 30 shekels of silver Judas Iscariot received for betraying Jesus were probably minted in Tyre.
Later Coins
Jewish coinage was revived during the First Revolt against the Romans (AD 66–70). Silver coins were minted in denominations of a shekel (drachma) and half a shekel (tetradrachma). Smaller denominations were bronze. All of these coins were dated according to the years of the revolt and carried inscriptions in the ancient Hebrew script used in the First Temple period. The inscriptions read “Holy Jerusalem,” “For the Freedom of Israel” and bore such symbols as a grapevine leaf, a citron, a palm frond and a pomegranate.
When Judea was crushed and Jerusalem destroyed in AD 70, the Romans issued a special coin, which has on one side the figure of Vespasian, the Roman emperor, and, on the other, a woman, Judea, sitting under a palm tree weeping. On some coins a soldier or Victory is depicted near the sitting woman. All coins have the inscription “Judea Capta,” or “Captive Judea.”
The last Jewish coins were issued in silver and bronze during the Second Jewish Revolt, the Bar-Kohkba Revolt, against Rome (AD 132–135). These coins are dated to the year of the revolt and bear symbols similar to those from the First Jewish Revolt. The inscriptions, containing the names and titles of the leaders of the revolt, are also in the Hebrew script used during the First Temple period.
The modern state of Israel has brought matters full circle, issuing many coins in different denominations that use these ancient symbols. In 1980 the shekel was revived to replace the Israeli lira (pound).
(Reprinted with permission from Biblical Archaeology Review, 19/5 [Sept/Oct 1993], pp. 68-70)