banking

• commercial credit first practiced at Dalamatia

66:5.12It was among these en­light­ened groups ed­u­cated in the Dala­ma­tia schools that the first com­mer­cial credit was prac­ticed. From a cen­tral ex­change of cred­its they se­cured to­kens which were ac­cepted in lieu of the ac­tual ob­jects of barter. The world did not im­prove upon these busi­ness meth­ods for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years.

• early banker was valorous man of tribe

69:5.2The early banker was the val­or­ous man of the tribe. He held the group trea­sures on de­posit, while the en­tire clan would de­fend his hut in event of at­tack. Thus the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of in­di­vid­ual cap­i­tal and group wealth im­me­di­ately led to mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion. At first such pre­cau­tions were de­signed to de­fend prop­erty against for­eign raiders, but later on it be­came the cus­tom to keep the mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tion in prac­tice by in­au­gu­rat­ing raids on the prop­erty and wealth of neigh­bor­ing tribes.

• ancient interest rate was 100%

69:5.63. Van­ity—long­ing to dis­play one’s prop­erty ac­cu­mu­la­tions. Ex­tra cloth­ing was one of the first badges of dis­tinc­tion. Col­lec­tion van­ity early ap­pealed to the pride of man.

• early creditors controlled body after death

69:5.85. Power—the crav­ing to be mas­ter. Trea­sure lend­ing was car­ried on as a means of en­slave­ment, one hun­dred per cent a year be­ing the loan rate of these an­cient times. The mon­eylen­ders made them­selves kings by cre­at­ing a stand­ing army of debtors. Bond ser­vants were among the ear­li­est form of prop­erty to be ac­cu­mu­lated, and in olden days debt slav­ery ex­tended even to the con­trol of the body af­ter death.

• courts determine interest rates in continental nation

72:5.51. Le­gal rates of in­ter­est on in­vested cap­i­tal.

• Moses said his people would lend but not borrow

96:5.4Moses was a be­liever in Prov­i­dence; he had be­come thor­oughly tainted with the doc­trines of Egypt con­cern­ing the super­nat­u­ral con­trol of the Nile and the other el­e­ments of na­ture. He had a great vi­sion of God, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere when he taught the He­brews that, if they would obey God, “He will love you, bless you, and mul­ti­ply you. He will mul­ti­ply the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land—the corn, wine, oil, and your flocks. You shall be pros­pered above all peo­ple, and the Lord your God will take away from you all sick­ness and will put none of the evil dis­eases of Egypt upon you.” He even said: “Re­mem­ber the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth.” “You shall lend to many na­tions, but you shall not bor­row. You shall reign over many na­tions, but they shall not reign over you.”

• honest wealth entitled to interest

132:5.19“5. Hon­est wealth is en­ti­tled to in­ter­est. As long as men bor­row and lend, that which is fair in­ter­est may be col­lected pro­vided the cap­i­tal lent was le­git­i­mate wealth. First cleanse your cap­i­tal be­fore you lay claim to the in­ter­est. Do not be­come so small and grasp­ing that you would stoop to the prac­tice of usury. Never per­mit your­self to be so self­ish as to em­ploy money-power to gain un­fair ad­van­tage over your strug­gling fel­lows. Yield not to the temp­ta­tion to take usury from your brother in fi­nan­cial dis­tress.

• Judas deposited funds

147:2.1Early on the morn­ing of Tues­day, March 30, Je­sus and the apos­tolic party started on their jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, go­ing by the route of the Jor­dan val­ley. They ar­rived on the af­ter­noon of Fri­day, April 2, and es­tab­lished their head­quar­ters, as usual, at Beth­any. Pass­ing through Jeri­cho, they paused to rest while Ju­das made a de­posit of some of their com­mon funds in the bank of a friend of his fam­ily. This was the first time Ju­das had car­ried a sur­plus of money, and this de­posit was left undis­turbed un­til they passed through Jeri­cho again when on that last and event­ful jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem just be­fore the trial and death of Je­sus.

• Judas deposited funds

163:2.11Je­sus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He re­quired only the twelve and the sev­enty to ded­i­cate all of their worldly pos­ses­sions to the com­mon cause. Even then, he pro­vided for the prof­itable liq­ui­da­tion of their prop­erty, as in the case of the Apos­tle Mat­thew. Je­sus many times ad­vised his well-to-do dis­ci­ples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Mas­ter re­garded the wise in­vest­ment of ex­cess earn­ings as a le­git­i­mate form of in­sur­ance against fu­ture and un­avoid­able ad­ver­sity. When the apos­tolic trea­sury was over­flow­ing, Ju­das put funds on de­posit to be used sub­se­quently when they might suf­fer greatly from a diminu­tion of in­come. This Ju­das did af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with An­drew. Je­sus never per­son­ally had any­thing to do with the apos­tolic fi­nances ex­cept in the dis­burse­ment of alms. But there was one eco­nomic abuse which he many times con­demned, and that was the un­fair ex­ploita­tion of the weak, un­learned, and less for­tu­nate of men by their strong, keen, and more in­tel­li­gent fel­lows. Je­sus de­clared that such in­hu­man treat­ment of men, women, and chil­dren was in­com­pat­i­ble with the ide­als of the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven.

• negligent servant should have obtained interest

171:8.6“And when these stew­ards were sub­se­quently called to­gether for an ac­count­ing, the first came for­ward, say­ing, ‘Lord, with your pound I have made ten pounds more.’ And his mas­ter said to him: ‘Well done; you are a good ser­vant; be­cause you have proved faith­ful in this mat­ter, I will give you au­thor­ity over ten cities.’ And the sec­ond came, say­ing, ‘Your pound left with me, Lord, has made five pounds.’ And the mas­ter said, ‘I will ac­cord­ingly make you ruler over five cities.’ And so on down through the oth­ers un­til the last of the ser­vants, on be­ing called to ac­count, re­ported: ‘Lord, be­hold, here is your pound, which I have kept safely done up in this nap­kin. And this I did be­cause I feared you; I be­lieved that you were un­rea­son­able, see­ing that you take up where you have not laid down, and that you seek to reap where you have not sown.’ Then said his lord: ‘You neg­li­gent and un­faith­ful ser­vant, I will judge you out of your own mouth. You knew that I reap where I have ap­par­ently not sown; there­fore you knew this reck­on­ing would be re­quired of you. Know­ing this, you should have at least given my money to the banker that at my com­ing I might have had it with proper in­ter­est.’

• Judas deposited funds

172:2.3Early that morn­ing David Zeb­e­dee had turned over to Ju­das the funds re­al­ized from the sale of the equip­ment of the Pella en­camp­ment, and Ju­das, in turn, had placed the greater part of this money in the hands of Si­mon, their host, for safe­keep­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the ex­i­gen­cies of their en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem.

• extensive system in Jerusalem temple

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

173:1.4These tem­ple money-chang­ers not only con­ducted a reg­u­lar bank­ing busi­ness for profit in the ex­change of more than twenty sorts of money which the vis­it­ing pil­grims would pe­ri­od­i­cally bring to Je­ru­sa­lem, but they also en­gaged in all other kinds of trans­ac­tions per­tain­ing to the bank­ing busi­ness. Both the tem­ple trea­sury and the tem­ple rulers prof­ited tremen­dously from these com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ties. It was not un­com­mon for the tem­ple trea­sury to hold up­wards of ten mil­lion dol­lars while the com­mon peo­ple lan­guished in pov­erty and con­tin­ued to pay these un­just levies.

• negligent servant should have obtained interest

176:3.4“As in­di­vid­u­als, and as a gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers, hear me while I speak a para­ble: There was a cer­tain great man who, be­fore start­ing out on a long jour­ney to an­other coun­try, called all his trusted ser­vants be­fore him and de­liv­ered into their hands all his goods. To one he gave five tal­ents, to an­other two, and to an­other one. And so on down through the en­tire group of hon­ored stew­ards, to each he in­trusted his goods ac­cord­ing to their sev­eral abil­i­ties; and then he set out on his jour­ney. When their lord had de­parted, his ser­vants set them­selves at work to gain prof­its from the wealth in­trusted to them. Im­me­di­ately he who had re­ceived five tal­ents be­gan to trade with them and very soon had made a profit of an­other five tal­ents. In like man­ner he who had re­ceived two tal­ents soon had gained two more. And so did all of these ser­vants make gains for their mas­ter ex­cept him who re­ceived but one tal­ent. He went away by him­self and dug a hole in the earth where he hid his lord’s money. Pres­ently the lord of those ser­vants un­ex­pect­edly re­turned and called upon his stew­ards for a reck­on­ing. And when they had all been called be­fore their mas­ter, he who had re­ceived the five tal­ents came for­ward with the money which had been in­trusted to him and brought five ad­di­tional tal­ents, say­ing, ‘Lord, you gave me five tal­ents to in­vest, and I am glad to pre­sent five other tal­ents as my gain.’ And then his lord said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful ser­vant, you have been faith­ful over a few things; I will now set you as stew­ard over many; en­ter forth­with into the joy of your lord.’ And then he who had re­ceived the two tal­ents came for­ward, say­ing: ‘Lord, you de­liv­ered into my hands two tal­ents; be­hold, I have gained these other two tal­ents.’ And his lord then said to him: ‘Well done, good and faith­ful stew­ard; you also have been faith­ful over a few things, and I will now set you over many; en­ter you into the joy of your lord.’ And then there came to the ac­count­ing he who had re­ceived the one tal­ent. This ser­vant came for­ward, say­ing, ‘Lord, I knew you and re­al­ized that you were a shrewd man in that you ex­pected gains where you had not per­son­ally la­bored; there­fore was I afraid to risk aught of that which was in­trusted to me. I safely hid your tal­ent in the earth; here it is; you now have what be­longs to you.’ But his lord an­swered: ‘You are an in­do­lent and sloth­ful stew­ard. By your own words you con­fess that you knew I would re­quire of you an ac­count­ing with rea­son­able profit, such as your dili­gent fel­low ser­vants have this day ren­dered. Know­ing this, you ought, there­fore, to have at least put my money into the hands of the bankers that on my re­turn I might have re­ceived my own with in­ter­est.’ And then to the chief stew­ard this lord said: ‘Take away this one tal­ent from this un­prof­itable ser­vant and give it to him who has the ten tal­ents.’