But how are we to gain a unit for estimating the worth of the ante-exilian coins, of which not one has come down to us ? Let us notice one or two facts connected with the Jewish post-exilian coins. During the exile the Israelites became intimately acquainted with the money-system which prevailed in Babylon. After their return home, and during the Persian dominion, we find mention made of a Persian coin, tinnii, the &wick (Ezra ii. 69 ; viii. 27 ; Neh. vii. 7o), which is Englished by ` drachm,' in the Greek Spaxkoti. The coin was so named after Darius, son of Hys taspes. These coins were made according to a foot, which was nearly the same as the Attic, and the standard weight of each was 16.14 Parisian grains. In the Greek period, under the Ptole mies and Seleucidm, the Jews used the coins of these princes (I Maccab. xv. 5, 6) ; but when they gained a short national independence under the Maccabees, they coined many of their own, as, for instance, in the first year of Simon Maccabmus. Coins of Simon and his followers are in existence, and have been carefully studied. Confining our remarks to the coins of Simon Maccabmus, we mention the following ascertained facts : they bear the old Hebrew or Samaritan characters, and not the square letter of the modern Hebrew, mhich is derived from the former tinder the influence of tachygraphy and caligraphy. These coins are exclusively of silver. The shekels and half-shekels belong to the first and second years of Simon's reign. Doubts prevail as to the genuineness of the coins bearing date the third and fourth years of his rule, but the shekels of his third year are admitted to be genuine. The coins of the first year bear the inscription rinp 1".6C71-0, Holy Jerusalem.' The weight of the shekel varies some what. The heaviest weighs 271i Parisian grains ; the greater part from 266 to 268 Parisian grains. The standard may approximately be taken at 274 Parisian gmins, to which 13ockh is led by com parison with other systems. Here, then, we have the weight of the shekel ; though we cannot say with certainty that it remained the same in every period of the earlier history, yet this becomes very probable when the retentiveness of customs which characterises the East is taken into account. Be sides, the change introduced by the Maccabees was a restoration of the old constitution under in• fluences which would cause the past to be rigidly reproduced. The shekel in the Pentateuch and Ezekiel is found equal to twenty gerahs. What shekel ? The inscription Holy Jerusalem' makes it likely that it was the sacred shekel. We thus, then, arrive at these conclusions :— Gerah = 13.7 Par. grains.
Bekah, or common shekel 137 Sacred shekel „ 274 Maneh • ,, 13,700 Talent „ S22,000 These conclusions find corroboration by being compared with the weights of other Eastern na tions, and the whole inquiry authorises the infer ence, that one general system prevailed in the more civilised nations, beinr, propagated from the East, from an early period o'f history.
In the N. T. (Matt. xvii. 24) the temple tax is a didrachm ; from other sources we know that this tribute' was half a shekel ; and in ver. 27 the stater is payment of this tax for two persons. Now the stater—a very common silver Attic coin, the tetradrachm—weighed 328.8 Parisian grains : thus not considerably surpassing the sacred shekel (274 Parisian grains). Are we, then, to hold the stater of the N. T. for an Attic tetradrachm ? If so, its agreement with the sacred shekel is striking. There is reason in the passage of Matthew and in early writers for regarding the two as the same. And
the Attic tetradrachm sank from its original weight of 328.8 to 3o8 and 304. This approximation must have gone on increasing, for under the empire a drachm was equal to a Roman denarius, which in the time of Tiberius weighed 69.8 Parisian grains. Four denarii were equal to 279 Parisian grains ; so that, if the denarius is regarded as an Attic drachm, the sacred shekel may be correctly termed a tetradrachm. With this Josephus agrees (Antiq. iii. 8. 2), who says that tbe shekel (ckXos), a Hebrew coin, contains four Attic drachms.
Names of measures of length are for the most part taken from members of the human body, which offered themselves, so to say, naturally for the purpose, and have generally been used in all times and places in instances where minute accu racy was not demanded. And though, within cer tain limits, these measures have approached to sameness--for the human foot, to take it as an example, may have been slightly over or somewhat under twelve inches, while it never in any genera tion extended to twenty-four inches—yet was there scope also for considerable latitude and diversity, and nothing like a system of normal measures can hence be gained, unless means are found for deter mining the average length of any one of these measures, or for fixing the length which it was intended to represent.
At the basis of the Hebrew system of measures of length lies nvA, cubit, the fore-arm, or the distance from the point of the elbow to the tip of the third finger. This is a word supplied by no Hebrew root, but derived from the Egyptian Mahe, si,mifying cubit,' which, with the same meaning, isfound in the Coptic in the form Mahi, and with the prefix, Ammahi.
A longer measure, applied in measuring build ings, was the nv (Ezek. xli. 8 ; Apoc. xxi. 15), rendered in the common version reed,' more pro perly rod.' In Judg. 16, Ehud's sword (not dagger') is said to have been in length in,a. As he wore this weapon under his mantle, the length of this measure may be approximately conjectured.
Smaller measures of length were—i. irrr, from a root meaning to expand (the hand), hence a span.' This word is found in the Egyptian, which seems to have borrowed it from the Shemitic. 2. rim, the breadth of the hand (1 Kings vii. 26 ; Exod. xxv. 25). 3. 3./ZYN, the finger (Jer. 2t), the denomination of the smallest measure of length. Thus we have the breadth of the finger, of the hand, of the span—the length from the tip of the little finger to the point of the thumb,—and the cubit.
In order to ascertain the length of these, we take the cubit as our standard. The longer measure, reed, or rod, consists, in Ezek. xli. 8, of six great cubits, that is, of six such cubits as were a hand breadth longer than the common cubit (Ezek. xl. 5; xliii. 13). The relation of zereth, span ; tepach, handbreadth • and ezba, finger, is not given in the O. T. BY comparing together Exod. xxv. io, with Josephus, Antig. iii. 6. 5, we find the span equal to half a cubit, for the length which Moses terms two cubits and a half Josephus designates five spans. The relation of tepach (handbreadth) and ezba (finger) to ammah (cubit) appears from their several names and their import in other sys tems. The handbreadth is four fingers ; the span contains three times the breadth of the hand, or twelve fingers. This is the view which the Rabbins uniformly take. We find a similar system among the Greeks, who reckoned in the cubit twenty-four fingers, six handbreadths, and two spans. The same was the case with the Egyptians.