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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 3177954, member: 83956&quot;][ATTACH=full]818185[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Here is one of my university’s coins, and a write up I did to go along with it. If something in my write up is incorrect, please let me know.</p><p><br /></p><p>tl;dr: Jews struck this coin just before the Sack of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to defy the Romans.</p><p><br /></p><p>So this coin is actually not one of mine, but it is one I&#039;m working with. For the past several weeks, Beth Adams&nbsp; and I have been cataloging 32 Biblical, Greek, and Roman coins that are on indefinite loan to Union University. This is one of the more interesting specimens. It comes from the second year of the First Jewish Revolt, circa 67-68 A.D. Even a casual reader of the New Testament can discern the tensions between the native Jewish population of Judea and the Roman client kings, governors, and procurators. While there had been plenty of skirmishes between these parties during the first century, things really came to a head in 66 A.D., when Jewish forces overcame the Roman garrison in Jerusalem. Soon there was an all-out insurrection that threatened to destabilize Roman hegemony in the region. Only the brutal actions of Vespasian and his son Titus would quell this revolt. Titus sacked Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and burned the Temple, and the last holdouts at Masada were eliminated in 73. But for a period between 66 and 70 A.D., while the Jewish people still controlled Jerusalem, they struck their own native coinage as an act of political independence. On one side of this coin (in the frame on the right) is the Paleo-Hebrew inscription ציון חרות (HERUT ZION; “The Freedom of Zion”), along with a vine leaf with small branch and tendril. On the other we see an amphora that was involved in Jewish temple rituals. This amphora image may have been struck in response to Roman vessels that appeared on Roman coins in the region. The Roman vessels were used to pour libations out to the gods and would&#039;ve been offensive to the native monotheistic population. Thus the Jewish amphora on this coin was likely a direct answer to the offensive Roman numismatic iconography—a final act of defiance prior to Jerusalem’s fall and the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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