shekels

122:9.1Moses had taught the Jews that ev­ery first-born son be­longed to the Lord, and that, in lieu of his sac­ri­fice as was the cus­tom among the hea­then na­tions, such a son might live pro­vided his par­ents would re­deem him by the pay­ment of five shekels to any au­tho­rized priest. There was also a Mo­saic or­di­nance which di­rected that a mother, af­ter the pass­ing of a cer­tain pe­riod of time, should pre­sent her­self (or have some­one make the proper sac­ri­fice for her) at the tem­ple for pu­rifi­ca­tion. It was cus­tom­ary to per­form both of these cer­e­monies at the same time. Ac­cord­ingly, Joseph and Mary went up to the tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem in per­son to pre­sent Je­sus to the priests and ef­fect his re­demp­tion and also to make the proper sac­ri­fice to in­sure Mary’s cer­e­mo­nial pu­rifi­ca­tion from the al­leged un­clean­ness of child­birth.

157:1.4It is not strange that you have a rec­ord of Pe­ter’s catch­ing a fish with a shekel in its mouth. In those days there were cur­rent many sto­ries about find­ing trea­sures in the mouths of fishes; such tales of near mir­a­cles were com­mon­place. So, as Pe­ter left them to go to­ward the boat, Je­sus re­marked, half-hu­mor­ously: “Strange that the sons of the king must pay trib­ute; usu­ally it is the stranger who is taxed for the up­keep of the court, but it be­hooves us to af­ford no stum­bling block for the au­thor­i­ties. Go hence! maybe you will catch the fish with the shekel in its mouth.” Je­sus hav­ing thus spo­ken, and Pe­ter so soon ap­pear­ing with the tem­ple tax, it is not sur­pris­ing that the episode be­came later ex­panded into a mir­a­cle as re­corded by the writer of Mat­thew’s Gospel.

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.

173:2.3It was al­to­gether proper that the tem­ple rulers and the of­fi­cers of the Jew­ish San­hedrin should ask this ques­tion of any­one who pre­sumed to teach and per­form in the ex­traor­di­nary man­ner which had been char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus, es­pe­cially as con­cerned his re­cent con­duct in clear­ing the tem­ple of all com­merce. These traders and money-chang­ers all op­er­ated by di­rect li­cense from the high­est rulers, and a per­cent­age of their gains was sup­posed to go di­rectly into the tem­ple trea­sury. Do not for­get that au­thor­ity was the watch­word of all Jewry. The proph­ets were al­ways stir­ring up trou­ble be­cause they so boldly pre­sumed to teach with­out au­thor­ity, with­out hav­ing been duly in­structed in the rab­binic academies and sub­se­quently reg­u­larly or­dained by the San­hedrin. Lack of this au­thor­ity in pre­ten­tious pub­lic teach­ing was looked upon as in­di­cat­ing ei­ther ig­no­rant pre­sump­tion or open re­bel­lion. At this time only the San­hedrin could or­dain an el­der or teacher, and such a cer­e­mony had to take place in the pres­ence of at least three per­sons who had pre­vi­ously been so or­dained. Such an or­di­na­tion con­ferred the ti­tle of “rabbi” upon the teacher and also qual­i­fied him to act as a judge, “bind­ing and loos­ing such mat­ters as might be brought to him for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

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.

• amount of temple tax

126:5.5The pay of a com­mon day-la­bor­ing car­pen­ter was slowly di­min­ish­ing. By the end of this year Je­sus could earn, by work­ing early and late, only the equiv­a­lent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it dif­fi­cult to pay the civil taxes, not to men­tion the syn­a­gogue as­sess­ments and the tem­ple tax of one-half shekel. Dur­ing this year the tax col­lec­tor tried to squeeze ex­tra rev­enue out of Je­sus, even threat­en­ing to take his harp.

• amount of temple tax

157:1.1As Je­sus, with An­drew and Pe­ter, tar­ried by the lake near the boat­shop, a tem­ple-tax col­lec­tor came upon them and, rec­og­niz­ing Je­sus, called Pe­ter to one side and said: “Does not your Mas­ter pay the tem­ple tax?” Pe­ter was in­clined to show in­dig­na­tion at the sug­ges­tion that Je­sus should be ex­pected to con­tribute to the main­te­nance of the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of his sworn en­e­mies, but, not­ing a pe­cu­liar ex­pres­sion on the face of the tax col­lec­tor, he rightly sur­mised that it was the pur­pose to en­trap them in the act of re­fus­ing to pay the cus­tom­ary half shekel for the sup­port of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, Pe­ter replied: “Why of course the Mas­ter pays the tem­ple tax. You wait by the gate, and I will pres­ently re­turn with the tax.”