The Coins Of The Bible

THE COINS OF THE BIBLE Based on Mark 12:41-44

Florence Banks in her book Coins Of Bible Days says that the

handling of ancient coins does with time what radio and TV do with

space. There are hundreds of miles between us and California, but

TV eliminates those miles, and puts people there in our presence

here. So Bible days are hundreds of years back, and a great gap

separates us from the people who lived then. But to see and touch

the bits of silver, bronze, and gold that those people used, as we use

dimes and dollars, brings them nearer. She writes, "When we hold

in our palms the one thing we can hold which we have a reasonable

right to believe could have been in the hand of Nicodemus when he

bought the hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes for Jesus's burial;

in the hand of Martha when she went to market; in the hand of

Mary of Bethany when she bought her precious alabaster box of

spikenard, or in the money bag of Judus when he purchased food

for the disciples, we feel a closer acquaintance with those

personages of the Bible than we had ever dreamed we could."

Money in those days was not called in when it got old like it is

today. There were no banks, and so people hoarded money and

hid it in caves and wells, and buried it in the ground. That is why

archaeologists are able to find so much of that ancient money.

When Jesus told the parable of the treasure buried in the field He

was not dreaming up a hypothetical situation. He was speaking of

a common practice of His day. Many coins are also found in

ancient ships that have sunk, and so the result is there are actually

more coins available from the ancient world of Greece and Rome

than there are from the 18th century in the United States. There

are enough of the coins of Bible times available so you can own one

for just a few dollars.

The study of coins can make history come alive. The symbolism

has much meaning, for coins often had the image of some deity on

them. This led to people using them as magic and good luck

charms. Some use to put coins under their pillow to cure

headaches because the god on the coin was a god of healing. Jewish

coins, however, did not follow the imagery of other people, for God

commanded them not to make images. Of great interest to coin

collectors, however, is a coin that was made by the people in Gaza,

the Philistine City in about 400 B.C. It has a helmeted head of an

unknown male god on one side, and on the other is a bearded

figure of man seated in a winged wheel and holding a hawk on his

hand. Three Phoenician letters are also shown which are

transliterated as YHD or YHW. Kenneth Jacob in his book Coins

And Christianity says that this coin may be the only known

example of the God of the Israelites being depicted on a coin. The

Jews did not make the coin, but it was made by the people who

made coins to appeal to a number of different cults by using their

deities. This was their method of trying to open up trade. The

wings and the wheels fit the vision of Ezekiel. This unique coin is in

the British Museum.

The Jews learned the value of coins from others. For centuries

they used precious metals as money according to weight. The first

rich man mentioned in the Bible was Abraham. He lived in the

19th century B.C. Gen. 13:2 says, "Now Abram was very rich in

cattle, in silver, and in gold." In Gen. 23 we have an account of a

real estate transaction. Abraham bought a piece of property from

the Hittites for a burying place. When agreement had been

reached Abraham weighed out, "Four hundred shekels of silver,

according to the weights current among the merchants." This was

equal to about $220.00 in our money in the 1960's. Today we could

hand over $220.00 and a man could slip it into his billfold and go

about his business feeling no burden. In that day you had to have

bags to carry your metal weights to measure, and then a beast of

burden to carry away your profits.

Through most of the Old Testament the weight system was

used. This became so inconvenient that men had to devise an

easier way of transferring wealth. That is why coins became such a

helpful invention. Not all have caught on to this convenient idea

even in modern times. If you go to the small island of Yap in the