Monies of the Hebrews, of Babylon, and of Alexandria. The celebrated Prideaux will be my guide in this article, because his researches are truly in-depth, and because his equivalencies are based on the monies of England, which are not variable like ours. [1]

Among the ancients the most common way of counting [their money → ] was by talents, and of these talents they had subdivisions, which were usually into minas and drachms, i.e., of their talents into minas, and of their minas into drachms, but the Hebrews had besides these their shekels and half shekels, or bekas.

The value of the Hebrew talent is known from the thirty-eighth chapter of Exodus, verses 25 and 26 , for we read there that the sum produced by a tax of a half shekel per head paid by 603,550 persons was 301,775 shekels, and this sum converted to talents in the same passage is expressed as 100 talents plus a remainder of 1,775 shekels. We therefore need merely to subtract this remainder of 1,775 shekels from the total of 301,775, and by dividing the remaining number 300,000 by 100, which is the number of talents that this sum constituted according to Moses, we find that there were 3,000 shekels per talent.

We know besides that a shekel weighed about the same as three English shillings, and Ezekiel [45:12] tells us that there were 60 of them to a mina, and therefore 50 of those minas made a talent. [2]

As to their drachms, the Gospel of Saint Matthew shows that the shekel contained four, so that the drachm of the Jews was worth 9 English pence, for in chapter 17, verse 34 [ sic , for verse 24], the tribute that each individual paid annually to the Temple, which we know from elsewhere to have been a half shekel, is called a didrachm , which means a coin of two drachms. [3] If therefore a half shekel was worth two drachms, then a whole shekel was worth four. Josephus says that the shekel contained four drachms of Athens, which is not to be understood according to the weight but according to the valuation in common prices, for according to the weight the heaviest drachm of Athens did not exceed 8⅜d, money → of England, while a Hebrew drachm contained 9d, as I have said. [4] But what the Attic drachm lacked in weight to equal the Jewish, it apparently made up in fineness and by its value in trade. Allowing therefore nine English pence to be equivalent to the drachm, whether Attic or Jewish, the beka or half shekel is 1s 6d of England, the shekel 3s, the mina 9£ sterling, and the talent 450£ sterling.

Thus stood the ← money → of the Jews in the time of Moses and Ezekiel, and it was the same in the time of Josephus. This historian tells us that the mina of the Hebrews contained 2½ titles [ sic , for litras], which comes to exactly 9£ sterling, for the title is the Roman libra of 12 ounces, or 93 drachms [ sic , for 96 drachms], and therefore 2½ titles contained 240 drachms, which at 9d each come to exactly 60 shekels, or 9£ sterling. [5]

The talent of Alexandria was precisely the same, for it contained 12,000 drachms of Athens, which according to their value in Judea made up as many 9-pences of England, and consequently 450£ sterling, which is the same value as the Mosaic talent. Yet here it is to be observed that though the talent of Alexandria was worth 12,000 drachms of Athens, it contained only 6,000 drachms of Alexandria, which proves that the Alexandrine drachms were worth two of those of Athens. The Septuagint version made by the Jews of Alexandria therefore renders the word shekel in this place by the word didrachm, which means two drachms, intending thereby the didrachms of Alexandria. Following therefore the same method that we have followed for the talent of Judea, we will find that the drachm of Alexandria was worth 18d, ← money → of England; the double drachm or shekel, consisting of four [drachms] of Attica, 3s; the mina, consisting of 60 didrachms or shekels, 9£ sterling; and the talent, consisting of 50 minas, 450£ sterling, which is also the talent of Moses and the talent of Josephus.

The Babylonians counted by drachms, by minas, and by talents. The mina of Babylon contained 116 drachms of Athens, and the talent contained, according to some, 70 minas or 8,120 drachms of Athens, and according to others it contained only 60 minas or 7,000 drachms of Athens. It results from the latter equivalency, which seems to me more likely, that the silver talent of Babylon made in ← money → of England 218£ 15s sterling, and the talent of gold, on the basis of 16 of silver, 3,500£ sterling. But according to Dr. Bernard, who performed the most accurate evaluation, the silver talent of Babylon comes to 240£ 12s 6d sterling, and the talent of gold, on the basis of 16 of silver, comes to 3,850£ sterling.

All that we have just said only concerns silver. [6] The proportion of gold to this metal was ordinarily at 10 to 1, but sometimes [it was raised] from 10 to 11, to 12, or even to 13. During the time of Edward I in England it was, as among the ancients, at 10 to 1, but today it has risen to 16, and on that basis we have made the preceding calculations. These will appear more clearly in the following tables of equivalencies.

Those who desire greater detail may consult the book of Bishop Cumberland on the measures, weights, and monies of the Jews; Brerewood, De ponderibus, et pretiis veterum nummorum ; Bernard, De mensuris et ponderibus antiquis ; and other English scholars who have written on this topic. [7]

1. As Jaucourt indicates, this article is essentially an abridgement of Humphrey Prideaux, Histoire des Juifs et des peuples voisins, depuis la décadence des royaumes d’Israël & de Juda jusqu’à la mort de Jesus-Christ, 6 vols. (Amsterdam, Leipzig: Arkstée & Merkus, 1755), 1:lxii–lxix (or 1:xxii–xxiv in the quarto edition of the same year). This was the French translation of an English work, The Old and New Testament Connected in the History of the Jews and Neighbouring Nations, from the Declension of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah to the Time of Christ, 2 vols. (London: Knaplock & Tonson, 1718), 1:xvii–xxii. It appeared in thirteen English-language editions between 1716 and 1763, and in seven French-language editions between 1722 and 1755. Frequent similarity of wording shows that Jaucourt was working from the French translation.

2. The archaeological recovery of ancient Hebrew shekel weights fashioned of stone and bronze has demonstrated that the shekel weighed 11.33 grams, though Yigal Ronen has argued that, prior to a reform that probably occurred in about 700 BCE, the shekel must have had four-fifths of that weight. The eighteenth-century British shilling contained 5.5 grams of silver. Prideaux’s estimate of a shekel weight equivalent to the silver content of 3 shillings, or 16.5 grams, is therefore too high. Yigal Ronen, “The Enigma of the Shekel Weights of the Judean Kingdom,” The Biblical Archaeologist 59, no. 2 (June 1996): 122–125; Nicolas Baudeau, Encyclopédie méthodique: Commerce, 3 vols. (Paris: Pankoucke, 1783–1784), 3:271. Baudeau presents the intrinsic gold and silver content of each principal European currency unit in Dutch asen , where 1 aes = 0.048 grams.

3. In reality Matthew 17 includes only twenty-seven verses, and the passage in question begins at verse 24, as correctly noted in the English-language editions of Prideaux, but French-language editions of his book incorrectly give this citation as verse 34, an error that Jaucourt has reproduced.

4. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 3.195. For a modern English translation, see H. St. J. Thackeray, et al., eds., Josephus, with an English Translation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), 4:411. Josephus’ equation of the Attic tetradrachm to the Hebrew shekel is indeed incorrect as far as weight is concerned, but for the opposite of the reason given by Prideaux: the shekel was actually lighter. Prior to the second century BCE the Attic drachm weighed 4.31 grams and the tetradrachm 17.24 grams, while the shekel weighed just 11.33 grams. Indeed, Josephus’ anecdote concerns the time of Moses, so if Ronen is correct, then the shekel at that time weighed just 9.06 grams. Théodore Reinach has suggested that Josephus confused the Attic tetradrachm with the Phoenician tetradrachm. Kenneth W. Harl, Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 477–478, 482; Théodore Reinach, ed., Œuvres complètes de Flavius Josèphe, 7 vols. (Paris: Leroux, 1900–1932), 1:188n1; Ronen, “The Enigma of the Shekel Weights of the Judean Kingdom.”

5. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 14.106; Thackeray, et al., eds., Josephus, 7:503. This paragraph includes several errors of transcription. In addition to printing “93” for 96 drachms, Jaucourt has consistently misread Prideaux’s litre , a Latin word for pound (spelled litra in the English original), as titre , a French word that ordinarily means title.

6. This sentence is taken from Prideaux, but in fact Jaucourt has already introduced the topic of gold in the previous paragraph. In the mid-eighteenth century the official bimetallic ratio was 15.19 in Britain and 14.58 in France. That is, in Britain 15.19 ounces of minted silver (not 16 ounces) legally had the same value as one ounce of minted gold. Baudeau, Encyclopédie méthodique: Commerce , 3:270–271.

7. Richard Cumberland, An Essay towards the Recovery of the Jewish Measures & Weights, Comprehending their Monies; by Help of Ancient Standards, Compared with ours of England (London: Richard Chiswell, 1686); Edward Brerewood, De ponderibus, et pretiis veterum nummorum eorumq[ue] cum recentioribus collatione, liber unus (London: Ioannem Billium, 1614); Edward Bernard, De mensuris et ponderibus antiquis libri tres (Oxford: E Theatro Seldonio, 1688). These bibliographic references are also copied from Prideaux.