money

• first used in 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.

• earliest was fish, goats, or cows

69:4.5The first weights were grains of wheat and other ce­re­als. The first medium of ex­change was a fish or a goat. Later the cow be­came a unit of barter.

• universal language of trade

70:3.5The ab­sence of a com­mon lan­guage has al­ways im­peded the growth of peace groups, but money has be­come the uni­ver­sal lan­guage of mod­ern trade. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is largely held to­gether by the in­dus­trial mar­ket. The gain mo­tive is a mighty civ­i­lizer when aug­mented by the de­sire to serve.

• cannot love

127:2.8Some­thing had to be done. He must state his po­si­tion, and this he did bravely and diplo­mat­i­cally to the sat­is­fac­tion of many, but not all. He ad­hered to the terms of his orig­i­nal plea, main­tain­ing that his first duty was to his fam­ily, that a wid­owed mother and eight broth­ers and sis­ters needed some­thing more than mere money could buy—the phys­i­cal ne­ces­si­ties of life—that they were en­ti­tled to a fa­ther’s watch­care and guid­ance, and that he could not in clear con­science re­lease him­self from the obli­ga­tion which a cruel ac­ci­dent had thrust upon him. He paid com­pli­ment to his mother and el­dest brother for be­ing will­ing to re­lease him but re­it­er­ated that loy­alty to a dead fa­ther for­bade his leav­ing the fam­ily no mat­ter how much money was forth­com­ing for their ma­te­rial sup­port, mak­ing his never-to-be-for­got­ten state­ment that “money can­not love.” In the course of this ad­dress Je­sus made sev­eral veiled ref­er­ences to his “life mis­sion” but ex­plained that, re­gard­less of whether or not it might be in­con­sis­tent with the mil­i­tary idea, it, along with ev­ery­thing else in his life, had been given up in or­der that he might be able to dis­charge faith­fully his obli­ga­tion to his fam­ily. Ev­ery­one in Naz­a­reth well knew he was a good fa­ther to his fam­ily, and this was a mat­ter so near the heart of ev­ery no­ble Jew that Je­sus’ plea found an ap­pre­cia­tive re­sponse in the hearts of many of his hear­ers; and some of those who were not thus minded were dis­armed by a speech made by James, which, while not on the pro­gram, was de­liv­ered at this time. That very day the chazan had re­hearsed James in his speech, but that was their se­cret.

• apostles and evangelists advised to take m., not take m.

140:9.3Je­sus ad­vised them to take nei­ther money nor ex­tra cloth­ing, say­ing, “The la­borer is wor­thy of his hire.” And fi­nally he said: “Be­hold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be you there­fore as wise as ser­pents and as harm­less as doves. But take heed, for your en­e­mies will bring you up be­fore their coun­cils, while in their syn­a­gogues they will cas­ti­gate you. Be­fore gov­er­nors and rulers you will be brought be­cause you be­lieve this gospel, and your very tes­ti­mony shall be a wit­ness for me to them. And when they lead you to judg­ment, be not anx­ious about what you shall say, for the spirit of my Fa­ther in­dwells you and will at such a time speak through you. Some of you will be put to death, and be­fore you es­tab­lish the king­dom on earth, you will be hated by many peo­ples be­cause of this gospel; but fear not; I will be with you, and my spirit shall go be­fore you into all the world. And my Fa­ther’s pres­ence will abide with you while you go first to the Jews, then to the gen­tiles.”

• apostles and evangelists advised to take m., not take m.

163:1.3Be­fore Je­sus laid his hands upon the heads of the sev­enty to set them apart as gospel mes­sen­gers, ad­dress­ing them, he said: “The har­vest is in­deed plen­teous, but the la­bor­ers are few; there­fore I ex­hort all of you to pray that the Lord of the har­vest will send still other la­bor­ers into his har­vest. I am about to set you apart as mes­sen­gers of the king­dom; I am about to send you to Jew and gen­tile as lambs among wolves. As you go your ways, two and two, I in­struct you to carry nei­ther purse nor ex­tra cloth­ing, for you go forth on this first mis­sion for only a short sea­son. Salute no man by the way, at­tend only to your work. When­ever you go to stay at a home, first say: Peace be to this house­hold. If those who love peace live therein, you shall abide there; if not, then shall you de­part. And hav­ing se­lected this home, re­main there for your stay in that city, eat­ing and drink­ing what­ever is set be­fore you. And you do this be­cause the la­borer is wor­thy of his sus­te­nance. Move not from house to house be­cause a bet­ter lodg­ing may be of­fered. Re­mem­ber, as you go forth pro­claim­ing peace on earth and good will among men, you must con­tend with bit­ter and self-de­ceived en­e­mies; there­fore be as wise as ser­pents while you are also as harm­less as doves.

• widow’s mites

172:4.2And now, as the evening drew on and the crowds went in quest of nour­ish­ment, Je­sus and his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers were left alone. What a strange day it had been! The apos­tles were thought­ful, but speech­less. Never, in their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus, had they seen such a day. For a mo­ment they sat down by the trea­sury, watch­ing the peo­ple drop in their con­tri­bu­tions: the rich putting much in the re­ceiv­ing box and all giv­ing some­thing in ac­cor­dance with the ex­tent of their pos­ses­sions. At last there came along a poor widow, scant­ily at­tired, and they ob­served as she cast two mites (small cop­pers) into the trum­pet. And then said Je­sus, call­ing the at­ten­tion of the apos­tles to the widow: “Heed well what you have just seen. This poor widow cast in more than all the oth­ers, for all these oth­ers, from their su­per­fluity, cast in some tri­fle as a gift, but this poor woman, even though she is in want, gave all that she had, even her liv­ing.”

• render tribute m. to Caesar

174:2.2Tues­day morn­ing, when Je­sus ar­rived in the tem­ple court and be­gan to teach, he had ut­tered but few words when a group of the younger stu­dents from the academies, who had been re­hearsed for this pur­pose, came for­ward and by their spokesman ad­dressed Je­sus: “Mas­ter, we know you are a righ­teous teacher, and we know that you pro­claim the ways of truth, and that you serve only God, for you fear no man, and that you are no re­specter of per­sons. We are only stu­dents, and we would know the truth about a mat­ter which trou­bles us; our dif­fi­culty is this: Is it law­ful for us to give trib­ute to Cae­sar? Shall we give or shall we not give?” Je­sus, per­ceiv­ing their hypocrisy and crafti­ness, said to them: “Why do you thus come to tempt me? Show me the trib­ute money, and I will an­swer you.” And when they handed him a denar­ius, he looked at it and said, “Whose im­age and super­scrip­tion does this coin bear?” And when they an­swered him, “Cae­sar’s,” Je­sus said, “Ren­der to Cae­sar the things that are Cae­sar’s and ren­der to God the things that are God’s.”

• Judas › turned over apostolic funds to David

178:2.10David Zeb­e­dee had much busi­ness to trans­act with Ju­das so that he was eas­ily pre­vented from fol­low­ing Pe­ter, John, and Philip, as he so much de­sired to do. When Ju­das gave David a cer­tain sum of money for pro­vi­sions, David said to him: “Ju­das, might it not be well, un­der the cir­cum­stances, to pro­vide me with a lit­tle money in ad­vance of my ac­tual needs?” And af­ter Ju­das had re­flected for a mo­ment, he an­swered: “Yes, David, I think it would be wise. In fact, in view of the dis­turbed con­di­tions in Je­ru­sa­lem, I think it would be best for me to turn over all the money to you. They plot against the Mas­ter, and in case any­thing should hap­pen to me, you would not be ham­pered.”

• apostles and evangelists advised to take m., not take m.

180:0.2“You well re­mem­ber when I sent you forth with­out purse or wal­let and even ad­vised that you take with you no ex­tra clothes. And you will all re­call that you lacked noth­ing. But now have you come upon trou­blous times. No longer can you de­pend upon the good will of the mul­ti­tudes. Hence­forth, he who has a purse, let him take it with him. When you go out into the world to pro­claim this gospel, make such pro­vi­sion for your sup­port as seems best. I have come to bring peace, but it will not ap­pear for a time.

• Judas › threw 30 pieces of silver over temple floor

186:1.2All of these Jews loathed Ju­das; they looked upon the be­trayer with only feel­ings of ut­ter con­tempt. Through­out the trial of Je­sus be­fore Cai­a­phas and dur­ing his ap­pear­ance be­fore Pi­late, Ju­das was pricked in his con­science about his traitorous con­duct. And he was also be­gin­ning to be­come some­what dis­il­lu­sioned re­gard­ing the re­ward he was to re­ceive as pay­ment for his ser­vices as Je­sus’ be­trayer. He did not like the cool­ness and aloof­ness of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties; nev­er­the­less, he ex­pected to be lib­er­ally re­warded for his cow­ardly con­duct. He an­tic­i­pated be­ing called be­fore the full meet­ing of the San­hedrin and there hear­ing him­self eu­lo­gized while they con­ferred upon him suit­able hon­ors in to­ken of the great ser­vice which he flat­tered him­self he had ren­dered his na­tion. Imag­ine, there­fore, the great sur­prise of this ego­tis­tic traitor when a ser­vant of the high priest, tap­ping him on the shoul­der, called him just out­side the hall and said: “Ju­das, I have been ap­pointed to pay you for the be­trayal of Je­sus. Here is your re­ward.” And thus speak­ing, the ser­vant of Cai­a­phas handed Ju­das a bag con­tain­ing thirty pieces of sil­ver—the cur­rent price of a good, healthy slave.

• Judas › carried m. bag in deep pocket

186:1.3Ju­das was stunned, dum­founded. He rushed back to en­ter the hall but was de­barred by the door­keeper. He wanted to ap­peal to the San­hedrin, but they would not ad­mit him. Ju­das could not be­lieve that these rulers of the Jews would al­low him to be­tray his friends and his Mas­ter and then of­fer him as a re­ward thirty pieces of sil­ver. He was hu­mil­i­ated, dis­il­lu­sioned, and ut­terly crushed. He walked away from the tem­ple, as it were, in a trance. He au­to­mat­i­cally dropped the money bag in his deep pocket, that same pocket wherein he had so long car­ried the bag con­tain­ing the apos­tolic funds. And he wan­dered out through the city af­ter the crowds who were on their way to wit­ness the cru­ci­fix­ions.

• Judas › threw 30 pieces of silver over temple floor

186:1.6As Ju­das left the San­hedrin cham­ber, he re­moved the thirty pieces of sil­ver from the bag and threw them broad­cast over the tem­ple floor. When the be­trayer left the tem­ple, he was al­most be­side him­self. Ju­das was now pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the true na­ture of sin. All the glamor, fas­ci­na­tion, and in­tox­i­ca­tion of wrong­do­ing had van­ished. Now the evil­doer stood alone and face to face with the judg­ment ver­dict of his dis­il­lu­sioned and dis­ap­pointed soul. Sin was be­witch­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous in the com­mit­ting, but now must the har­vest of the naked and un­ro­man­tic facts be faced.