Ancient coins and the Bible

Throughout the Old Testament of the Bible ancient coinage is mentioned. In Judges chapter 16 ( the story of Samson and Delilah), it is written that Delilah was paid in shekels by the Philistines in return for her betrayal of Samson. The time period of Samson and Delilah predates the invention of ancient coins by thousands of years. My question is whether or not ancient coinage was around before 600 BC and is just permanently lost to time or is the Bible's interpretation of money different from the ancient coins we are accustomed to seeing today?

 

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I cannot answer your question authoritatively, but the Bible was written and rewritten from second or third hand stories - it's amazing that ANY of it has any historical accuracy.

 

I know archeologists who would beg to differ with ur opinion but I won't argue religion here, just want some info on opinions of the above question... Edited: anti faith statements are also not allowed. I've read elsewhere that it is possible that weighted silver ore was possibly used during these ancient times before 1000 b.c. and shekel was merely a term used to reference weight.

 

as far as I know, there weren't really coins around then. there was "proto-coin" type things, here is some interesting Chinese stuff...

http://primaltrek.com/chinesecoins.html#cowrie_shell_money

some of our members have some of these I know. Chinese stuff probably isn't what your're interested in though it is? there's that greek dolphin money stuff, that's pre-5th century bc.


this thread has some dolphin money..

http://www.cointalk.com/threads/ancients-black-sea-challenge.245084/#post-1896154

 

Recommended reading on the subject...

http://www.amazon.com/Money-Bible-Kenneth-Bressett/dp/0794823890

 

You cannot answer "authoritatively" yet, with confidence, you state it has little accuracy... interesting. The real question is about how far back the use of coins occurred.

 

I can't answer authoritatively with regard to the first use of shekels or any coins. EDITED

And that is the end of my participation in this thread. Edited.And that is where you should stop it.

 

There are anachronisms in the Bible, but to answer the question in the first post, the shekel was originally a unit of weight. Only much later did it refer to a coin.

 

Without getting into a religious debate here,
Edited : You just did.

As near as historians and archeologists have been able to ascertain this, coins, by the modern understanding, date back about as far as 500 BC or so, but "money" is definitely older than that by quite a bit (just look at the giant stone discs on the island of Yap; those are a lot older than coins but are definitely money). It depends on how strict a definition you use, but people were using means of exchange other than barter for quite a while before true coins existed, and a given measure of precious metals was almost an immediate precursor to what we'd define as coins. Quite a few coins and even names of currency evolved from a given measure of precious metal (especially gold and silver) so it is quite possible that was what was being referred to in the time of the Samson and Delilah event, and the biblical author in question was just using the modern (to him) equivalent in order for readers to understand what he was referring to (or it was just the best understanding he had of it).

"Shekel" is one such term; it originally did mean a certain measure of silver and only later was used to refer to a specific coin. ("Baht" comes to mind to for a more modern example of this.) Whether the biblical author of the story meant shekel in the older sense, or meant it in what was him the modern sense as an equivalent amount of money for the sake of easier understanding, is lost to history, but the former is at least as plausible as the latter explanation, if not more so.

 

It's been proven on more than one occasion. How can you make a blanket statement such as thus?

 

And I'm out of here. This debate borders on 'contrary to the rules' here at CT.

 

In the case of Delilah, shekel refers to a weight, so there is no discrepancy.

However, the author of Chronicles, writing during the beginning of the Second Temple Period (359-333 BC) anachronistically assumed coinage was in use during the building of Solomon's temple, and mentions contributions of darics.

With all due respect to the posters in this thread, you can't simply throw around blanket generalizations. Each mention of Biblical coinage has to examined individually. I would refer you again to the reference I posted above for a very balanced discussion of the matter.

 

I can't hear you......

 

I'd like to hope that there can be an intelligent discussion on coins mentioned in religious texts purely in context of the coins and their history , without it devolving into a religious debate over the merits or lack thereof of the religious text in question. But perhaps I'm just being naive lol and such a thing isn't possible. But well, one can hope.

 

A discussion of Biblical coinage doesn't need to be religious, any more than a discussion of US coinage needs to be political. Just sayin'...

 

Thanks for the feedback...according to other translations....the word money or monies is used in place of shekels so I assumed that shekels did not refer to coins and only weight of silver...so it's nice to receive this concurring feedback.

 

True, but in my experience every time anything even tangentially related to religion gets mentioned too many people feel a knee-jerk need to defend their faith or lack thereof. Let's keep this discussion to the coins in question and not try to argue how accurate the Bible is or isn't. Otherwise, let's lock the thread lol... but I'd prefer to keep to the coin discussion because it is interesting.

 

That's likely the case (the original text in Hebrew probably used shekels in the sense of a certain amount of silver rather than literal coins, and later translations used "money" or "monies" to avoid confusion rather than the more ambiguous literal translation).

 

The answer is right here.

I full heartedly agree, but it ain't going to happen in this thread.

Lock it down mods.

 

+1