Happy Guy Fawkes Day!

Well, I learned something and I'm going to look more into this. Much of the Roman culture as I've learned it is based on controlling lands and military force. It was much of a cast society, even with slavery. Obviously the urban centers had to use some money, but I didn't think it was on the scale of Western banking and commerce until the mid-1400's in Italy and Holland and up to the 16th Century for the rest of Europe.

Ruben

 

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There is considerable primary source material in this in the Hebrew literature and coinage as such wasn't used in daily economics, and least biblical times. That is not to say money wasn't important, because it is very important...but you didn't run down the block with a half sheckle to buy some milk every day.

Ruben

 

Thanks, GDJMSP. I'll check them out. Most of what I've studied focuses either on the Roman mints or solely on the physical process of striking the coins, with little of the attendant processes. I'll order these from the library system right away!

 

Indeed. Its dangerous to overgeneralize and talk about an "ancient economy". Different situations existed in different times at different places. I speak for the Roman economy in particular. The Hellenistic empires presumably functioned in a similar matter. Greek city states would have had a much more insular system, possibly with less circulating coinage.

Also, I wonder which period of history these Hebrew literary sources you speak of are from?

 

hmmm well, from the 8th century BCE there and about to about 300CE depending on the text and the sources.

The Gemora and Mishna on Contracts alone is very interesting study, but I didn't recommend them to you


Oh yes - there is One Rashi I can recall as an example which quotes an earlier work that says like this, "If a coin falls out of your pocket and rolls down the street and is found by a poor man who's family can now eat for a week, is this not an act of Mercy from God for which you get credit in the world to come... how much more so then ...."

Rashi is 10th century the original source is 3rd century BC.

Ruben

 

FWIW I don't consider the 1st century biblical times.

However the money changers were specific to the Temple because of the need for a sheckle for census and sacrifices, and it had to be an exact sheckle.


There were specific rituals with silver relating to the temple which involved the entire nation during the festivals creating an intense need for Sheckles at those times, but which was not part of normal commerce.

They didn't worry about international trade. They were specific for the Temple services. The sheckles themselves were a weight and the coins had to be an exact weight. If not they needed to be traded for proper coins of the exact weight. So they really didn't really care about their design and is further evident by the enormous variety of coinage found in Israel today.

There are discussions about how the coins were exchanged exactly and further about half sheckles and whole sheckles being drawn up from the silver that was collected by the exchanges and exactly how much they could charge for the money exchange.

In fact, originally the Temple administration itself did all the exchanges through out the city of Jerusalem, and then after Herod this changed for not good reason.

I've never read the story your quoting, but this would be the origin of the Rabbiums complaint about the money exchangers. They weren't really allowed and this was one of the functions of the Cohanim who ran the temple mount and would be a sore point which is covered repeatedly in the Mishnah and ancillary works of that time frame.

But to repeat, when I say Biblical, I'm talking Abraham and Jacob, not Herod

Oh yes. I'm not denying that, In fact in Israel it was religiously MANDATED as part of the census.

Ruben

 

That is interesting. Why do you say that

At 700 BC the Celts where still in Greece and Italy, the French in the Caucasus mountains and the Saxons, who knows where. At 700 BC Europe might have only had the BASQUES.

RUben

 

It is an interesting topic to wade through. But I still find it queer that Emperors that went to such trouble to make sure their coinage had grand images of themselves on them with all the symbolic trimmings still didn't make round coins which I believe was a technology that they could have mastered.

Not until the mid 1600's? wow

Ruben

 

Round coins are really only a stylistic matter. Yes, they were perfectly capable of making them round - but it required a degree of effort that the circulating coinage did not necessitate.

Coins were also struck that weren't rounded at all and intentionally serrated:

 

If the money changers were solely concerned with shekels, what were they changing them FROM? A tiny flaw in your logic...

Yes, they were concerned with checking the purity of the coinage, but this was ancillary to their changing one form of currency (foreign, bronze, etc) into another (shekels, aureii, etc).

 

Ah - I didn't know that you included the Oriental Middle East as Western.

Actually they were in Asia Minor, right? So the Persians had no coins at about this time. 600 BCE. The Temple was destroyed in 587 BC, late in Biblical history. Hmm

Ruben

 

The Oriental Middle East was under the influence of Greek, therefore Western, culture. Coinage originated here, any Persian sigloi or darics were struck for circulation in predominantly Greek areas. The interior of the Persian Empire remained premonetary until a much later date.

 

Indian coins were sometimes square or rectangular as they were easier to produce than round coins :kewl:
Here is one example

Sunga Empire half Karshapana 187-75 BC


And a example of how to produce small change in the time of Richard the Lion heart LOL

Richard I
The Lionheart or Cœur de Lion
1189 – 1199
Cut halfpenny
4 pellets to the central fleur of the crown
single left-hand curl
Class 4b

 

Interesting. We're getting a lot of history mixed up here though. Clearly from numerous Jewish sources a half shekel coin was needed PRIOR to 600 BCE. I just spent an hour looking it up and in theory in goes back to the Exodus itself, which might not be excepted as scientific proof. But it is clearly covered in multiple Jewish Aramaic sources which quote even earlier sources...so it does go back deep into Israelite civilizations and the half shekel, http://bible.ort.org/books/pentd2.asp?action=displayanchor&pentid=P2393#P2393

which is sourced from this biblical reference, was a mandate that involved the Preisthood exchanging and minting half shekel coins for the purpose of the census and also for core sacrificial rituals. And that would date back to at least to 1100 BCE.

Now the Greek and Persians where going at it for a long time and the Persians were not overwhelmed by the Greeks, of even really threatened by them until the destruction of the Persian forces by Alexander the Great about 333BC and 331 BC. So it might be true that Persian coins were made in Greece, but I think the Persians absorbed the Lydians long before that and Greek influence on Persia was limited until this time.

One of the reasons I know this is because it ties into the story of Chanukah about 100 years later, and the Book of Macabees is not a sanctioned part of the Hebrew Bible...ie - it is post biblical.

 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125612