Ancient coins and the Bible

One person is in "time- out". But remember religious comments can be those of belief, but also those of disbelief, so be aware of 'atheists' remarks as well.

Absolutely no more of this. Discuss coins not religion. Unbelievable !

 

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Well said!

 

http://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/shi...rchDateType=0&store_order_by=&solditems=False

A link to some pre-coinage silver shekels at VCoins.

 

I've seen those before. Maxim Shick has all the good stuff, but how could you even begin to verify the authenticity of those things, short of digging them out of an archeological site yourself? I've bought most of my rare Nabataeans from him, and I'm certainly not suggesting he's selling anything phony, but really - how do you tell the difference between ancient and modern scraps of silver?

I have the same reservations about buying any sort of proto-money.

 

I don't know how my comment ended up in the quote?? Sorry everyone.

 

Lots of people like to sell nefarious "proto-currency". I never buy anything unless its well documented. Chinese "things" are also sold many times as "proto-currency".

Regarding the shekel, yes it was a unit of weight, so any reference in the bible you have to understand that. A reference to a shekel is really a reference to a certain amount of weight, not a coin in particular. Almost all civilizations had weight system long before coinage, and coinage was an offshoot of this system.

Regarding the Bible, (keeping it areligious), like many historical documents there have been "issues" in relying solely on it. However, there has been a lot of verified information that came from it, probably higher than average. So, its A document to use for historical research, a pretty good one, but of course should not be relied solely. Quite a few historical sites, actually, have been found due to it.

 

I've seen this hack-silver before and have wondered what it was....

 

Do any of you guys collect proto monies or hacksilber? Please post pics if so.

 

This is actually a great thread, glad I stumbled on it. My recolection is that a Skeckel is weight as a cubit would be length. However it is touchy for sure but, without getting religoius I will ask a question. In the Old Old days, money as we know it did not exost but trade did. It was not always a chicken for a coat or whatever. It was many things but Gold/Silver was always used for barter. In the meantime I got one of these,


these..

 

I looked at that 'hack silver' and how could that be discerned from just lumps of silver ore ? And references just use vague terms such as 'high quality silver' such as from dinner ware, jewelry , etc. but that did not resemble such. The price seemed out of line as it appears easy to fake without lab tests.

 

It does point out the eventual necessity for bona fide coinage in commerce. The very concerns we have about it today, namely weight, fineness, and authenticity, are the same concerns an ancient trader would have had.

 

I got a nice early depiction of Jesus...

Bronze Anonymous Follis,
Class A1, 24 mm x 21 mm x 7.36 grams
John I Tzimisces
Constantinople mint, 969 - 976 A.D.
Obv. EMMANOVHL, facing head of Christ, two pellets in each cross limb, Pallium and colobium, holding ornamented Gospels with both hands, to left IC, to right XC;
Rev. + IhSuS / XRISTuS / bASILEu / bASILE (Jesus Christ Kingof Kings)
Ref: SBCV1793


A wee emerald Jesus...

 

Here is a hacksilber ingot, c. 8-6 centuries BC, Israel. 21 x 14 x 5 mm, 8.4 grams. Cut in antiquity from a larger piece. Possibly an overweight Pym or underweight Nezef?

Similar ingots were found at Ein Gedi, Israel in a terra cotta cooking pot, hidden in a building destroyed near the end of Iron Age II, early 6th century BC (Avi-Yonah Encylcopedia of the Holy Land, volume 2, p. 374.)

The basic weight in use was the shekel, weighing 11.4 g on average. Other weight groups include, but are not limited to, the following:

(1) Beqa, a half shekel (Ex. 38:26), 5.7 g. (2) Nezef, averaging 9.12 g. The Judaean equivalent to an Egyptian qedet. (3) Pym, 7.6 g. (1 Samuel 13:21) The Judaean equivalent to the Phoenician shekel.

The weight of this ingot is identical to the Mesopotamian shekel. During the 9th to 6th centuries BCE in the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, the common form of expressing prices was in quantities equivalent to one shekel (8.4 g) of silver.

In ancient times, livestock were often used in barter. Indicative of this is the fact that the Latin word for money (pecunia) is drawn from pecus, meaning “cattle.” However, livestock (Ge 47:17) and foodstuffs (1Ki 5:10, 11) were obviously not a convenient medium of exchange.

Instead, pieces of precious metals began to be used, the weight being checked at the time the transaction was made.

Ge 23:16 "Abraham weighed out to E′phron the amount of silver that he had spoken in the hearing of the sons of Heth, four hundred silver shekels current with the merchants."; Jer 32:10 "Then I wrote in a deed and affixed the seal and took witnesses as I went weighing the money in the scales."

The usual Hebrew term translated as “money,” keseph, literally means “silver.” (Ge 17:12) There was no coined money in Israel during the First Temple Period (1006-586 BCE). Rather, it consisted of cut pieces of silver and gold, or molded for convenience into bars, rings, bracelets, having a specific weight. - Ge 24:22

At Judges 5:19, bâtsa‛ keseph, which is commonly rendered as, “No gain of silver did they take,” literally means to break off or cut off silver.

 

Dude.


U Rock!

 

I can understand the weighing, the use of a balance was long established
But how did they determine the purity? Specific gravity didn't come until about 250BC, the use of acids in analysis by Islamic chemists has been mentioned in several books, but no confirmed dates, so how would they know if it was a 90% glob, or a 40% glob? Usually when something is used for transaction of value, the total amount of the actual valuable material is important.

 

Good point but let's assume that our ancestors were no dummies either. No different than today. Unless if you tried to cheat the penalty was death...

 

I am sorry, the 'no dummies' does not do it. I assume if they were no dummies, they would have a way of telling purity, and it would be somewhere mentioned. If they couldn't tell you were cheating, they were just using the threat and most likely got cheated.

 

Apparently they did have ways of checking the purity. In this text for example, the author talks about silver hoards which "contained linen-wrapped bundles of Hacksilber that had been weighed according to standards and checked for purity before being sealed with bullae." And a little later: "The Phoenicians were thus aware of the essential practices involved in coining metal, namely using a device to indicate weight and purity verification of metal pieces" ...

Or look here: "When the Persians gained control of the Near East, Asia Minor and Egypt in the mid-6th c. BC, they also inherited from their Assyrian and Babylonian predecessors a concern for systematic quality control over gold and silver purity". So it was possible, I just don't know how they did it.

Christian

 

I have to take my hat off to the mods here....nice job guys