Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > History and Archeology

About the surcharge of money changers

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HT:
We know the shekel and half shekel of Tyre were the only acceptable currencies in Temple. So if a Jew buys the half/shekel with the money-changer(s), he may play the surcharge about 5.5 prutot. However, if he pay the half shekel to the Temple directly, he still pays 5.5 prutot. David Hendin says 'in order for the Temple to get full value' in his article (http://www.amphoracoins.com/content.asp?s=articles, <SURCHARGE OF THE MONEY CHANGERS>). But I'm not clear about his answer, so can anybody explain for me again?
The second thing I don't understand is that, if a Jew gives a shekel of Tyre to the Temple, he should pay 11 prutot as the surcharge and get back the half shekel. Again, can anyone tell me the reason to charge double 'kolbon' in this case?
Waiting for answer, thanks very much!

Robert_Brenchley:
The Temple was the holiest place on earth to a Jew, and therefore any transaction involving it had to be free of any suspicion that the people involved were skimping in any way whatsoever. The Rabbis always erred on the safe side in matters of the Law; for instance, the maximum coroporal punishment allowed by the Torah was forty lashes, so they would give thirty-nine just in case they miscounted and went over the forty by mistake. The same approach is found here; it would be legal to pay a shekel and get half a shekel change, as it was the pure silver required by the Torah. But the giver would be gaining at the expense of the money-changer, and this was considered a bit too dodgy. But remember that this is the Talmud, and thus no earlier than 3rd Century AD. The exact amount of the surcharge was uncertain by this time; can we be sure that the rest is correct?

Jesus' attack on the Temple, which is explicitly said to have involved the money-changers, could be relevant here; the taxpayer was forced to go beyond the necessary in order to be straight with the moneychangers, but was he perhaps being ripped off in return? Torah, after all, requires generosity towards the poor, and most taxpayers were probably poorer than the moneychangers!

PeterD:
It's a bit like if you buy a theatre ticket at an agency, they charge a booking fee. If you I am a spammer from the theatre they still charge a booking fee! That's business.

HT:
But I don't understand the reason of the Temple to charge the double or just a kolbon. Half shekel of each man is not enough? The tax itself is the expenditure of Temple, right? Is the  surcharge (kolbon) for the Temple to exchange the local money (currency in Jerusalem) with the money-broker?

I guess, if it is, then the silver shekel and half shekel of Tyre are just the tokens in Temple? When a Jew purchases the half shekel from the the broker(s) in Temple, he would pay 5.5 prutot as a kolbon to the broker, and do not use to pay the kolbon to the Temple, right? But if the half shekel is not bought from the demanded broker(s) in Temple, then the Jew should pay the kolbon to the Temple? Right?Then the question is: how can the priests in Temple to identify which half shekel coins come from the brokers or not? Looks like the priests transfer the benefit to the brokers and the brokers transfer the benefit to the Temple, thus they can make more money, ah??

If I guess it wrong, please tell me the reason for the priests to charge the surcharge.
When a Jew gives a shekel, he should gives 11 prutot to get the change of half shekel. Why the Jew is charged with double kolbon but not the one only? What are those kalbanot stand for?

Some questions about the Temple tax: (1)Before the minting of shekel of Tyre, how do the Jews used to play the Temple tax? (2)How can a Jew to prove his payment to the Temple?

Robert_Brenchley:
There really aren't definite answers to a lot of this; we can only guess as they never wrote it down, or if they did it didn't survive. Remember that all we have is what someone wrote down two or three centuries after the destruction of the Temple, when the whole system obviously ceased altogether, and there were aspects of the setup the writer admits to being unsure of himself. I've given my best guess, and I really can't do more.

Originally, the shekel of silver was a weight of pure silver; when coinage started, they substituted a tetradrachm as the weight was virtually the same. The tax had to be paid in ure silver so, while there's no evidence surviving, it's likely that they had some similar system with people making a nice living out of selling the punters silver to pay the tax with. I don't know what system, if any, they had for checking that the tax had been paid, but the Jews are known to have been very eager to pay it, so coercion wasn't needed. Legally, by New Testament times it was only binding in Judea, but money flooded in from Jewish communities everywhere.

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