guineas.
The shekel (173 grs.) of this mina, of which the siglos is the half-shekel (see above), is Resiers intended in the reference Neh 5” to the table allowances of Nehemiah as a high official of Artaxerxes 1. Longimanus (see Babelon, op. cit. p. 6f., for the coins of this sovereign). The satraps of the Great King enjoyed to a limited extent (Lenormant, La monnaie dans Vantiq. ii. 16f., and esp. Babelon, op. cit. xxi ff.) the privilege of issuing silver (not gold) coins in their own name. With one of these, Bagoas, satrap of Egypt (c. 345-343) under Artaxerxes UI. Ochus, is generally identified the Bagoses of Josephus (Ant. ΧΙ. vii. 1, N. § 297), who under the circumstances there recorded imposed a tax of 50 shekels upon every lamb offered in the daily sacrifice. These must have been either Persian shekels, as above, or, since Bagoas’ Egyptian coinage is entirely on the Pheenician standard (see ap. Babelon, pp. 52-55), shekels on the Hebrew-Pheenician standard (224
).
Ἐξετς the document known as the Priests’ Code (P) is now universally recognized as having first received public sanction under the governorship of Nehemiah (c. 444 B.c.), we have reserved for this section the discussion of the monetary unit adopted therein for various important payments, viz. the so-called *‘shekel of the sanctuary’ + (&3pn dpe’, more probably ‘sacred shekel’), regarding which so much has been written and so many conjectures hazarded. The expression occurs in the following
assages of P only : Ex 301% 33. 38%-*8, Ly 51° 27%,
u 3:7: 50 713-86 (14 times) 1815, and in these it is used |
not only of silver and gold but of spices (Ex 8053.) and presumably copper (38%). This confirms the impression we derive from Ly 27 (‘ all thy estima- tions shall be reckoned according to the shekel of the sanctuary’) that part of P’s aim is to introduce a uniform shekel for all transactions.t From the numbers given Ex 3855. an easy calculation proves that 3000 ‘sacred’ shekels went to the talent. What, then, is the value of P’s shekel? Let us examine (1) The testimony of the text and the versions. In four of the passages cited (Ex 30%, Ly 27%, Nu 347 1818) the ‘shekel of the sanctuary’ is defined as consisting of 20 gerahs (Spz'a 793 ony), words which Ezekiel had already applied to his shekel (45!).§ Now the gerah—whether its original meaning be a seed-grain generally, or specially the seed of the carob tree (Low, Aramdische P/lanzen- namen, p. 317) or the lupin (Ridgeway, op. cit. 217) —was most probably a small Babylonian weight (cf. the giru of Nebuchadnezzar’s inscriptions, used in connexion with money, see Muss-Arnolt, Lez. s.v.), identified by Talmudic writers with the ny> or obol, by which it is rendered in the Targum of Onkelos. The same identification is adopted by
*The first being the weight of the whole, the second its equivalent in the later coinage of Darius, the third the same in sterling money.
+ This rendering probably presupposes that the standard weight was kept in the temple in accordance with a well-attested ancient custom. But this hardly suits the exilic or early post- exilic origin of P.
t In this, as in so much else, P continues the policy of Ezekiel who appears to contemplate a simplification of the standard measures (4510-12),
§ Hence it is possible that the words in question are every- where in P a gloss introduced from this passage of Ezekiel.
MONEY
the LXX (εἴκοσι d8oX0l).* The obol is, of course, the sixth of the Attic drachm, at this period=c. 11 93 grs., twenty of which give us a shekel of 224 grs. (cf. Josephus’ statement (Ant. II. vi. 7) that the Heb. talent =100 (Attic) minas, i.e. 3000 shekels= avin drachms or 60,000 obols ; hence 1 shekel=20 obols).
(2) The testimony of the New Testament and Josephus.—In the Ist cent. the amount of the tax paid by every adult Jew for the maintenance of the temple services had long been fixed at half a shekel, which, since the tax was ultimately based on Ex 30: (see next paragraph), must necessaril have been the feared > shekel. Now, on a well- known occasion in the life of our Lord (Mt 17%), the amount due by two persons was paid by a stater, which can only be a tetradrachm of Antioch or of Tyre (see §§ 4, 7, 8), both of them slightly reduced from the standard weight of 224 grs.t Josephus, also, in his references to this tax, uses in one place (Ant. XVIII. ix. 1) the same word as the evangelist (rd δίδραχμον ; cf. Mt 17%), in another (Wars, Vu. vi. 6) the equivalent δύο δραχμάς, while in a third (Ant. U1. viii. 2) he writes σίκλου τὸ ἥμισυ, the half-shekel. (3) The testimony of the Talmud. The Talmud repeatedly lays down the canon that all sums mentioned in the Pentateuch are to be reckoned in the money of Tyre (ἫΝ 93, see reff. in Zuckermandel, Ueber talmudische Ge- wichte u. Miinzen, pp. 5, 15); and in particular in Bekhoroth viii. 7, with reference to the very passages we are discussing, we read that ‘all pay- ments according to the sacred shekel are to be made in Tyrian (i.e. Phoenician) currency,’ in other words, according to the Hebrew-Phenician shekel of 224 grs. On the strength of this threefold testimony, we are justified in maintaining that ‘the shekel of the sanctuary’ is nothing but the ancient silver shekel of the country, fifteen of which (at 224 grs.) we saw (8 1) to be equivalent to the gold shekel of 253 ers. It was ‘sacred,’ not only as having been