The Bible and popular music both seem to agree that love makes the world go ‘round. (1Corinthians 13 is called the ‘love chapter’.) Yet many or perhaps most people think it is money that makes the world go ‘round. Even scripture says, Ec.10:19 “Money answers all things”. Money talks, in other words. This topic is about money…its forms and use, in ancient history and in the Bible.
Our English word ‘money’ comes from the Latin word moneta, which was named after the Roman goddess Juno Moneta, queen of the gods. The later Latin term for money or coin was numisma (from the Greek nomisma). Today, the study of coins and paper money is called numismatics.
Monetary economics studies the functions of money. Money functions as a: medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, commodity.
Most money today is fiat money; that is, legal tender of little intrinsic worth, backed by the faith and credit of the issuing government. Wikipedia: Fiat Money “Fiat money is a currency without intrinsic value, established by government regulation or law.” Fiat currency is irredeemable. Four modern fiat currencies are the: USA dollar, Euro, Swiss franc, Chinese yuan.
The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics “Commodity money is a medium of exchange that may be transformed into a commodity, useful in production or consumption. Although commodity money is a thing of the past, it was the predominant medium of exchange for more than two millennia.” That was long before there was paper money.
Here’s a lengthy quote from Wikipedia: History of Money. “The history of money concerns the development of means of carrying out transactions involving a medium of exchange. Money is any clearly identifiable object of value that is generally accepted as payment for goods and repayment of debts within a market or which is legal tender within a country.”
“Many things have been used as medium of exchange in markets including, for example, livestock and sacks of cereal grain (from which the shékel is derived) – things directly useful in themselves. But also sometimes merely attractive items such as cowry [sea] shells or beads were exchanged for more useful commodities. Precious metals, from which early coins were made, fall into both categories.”
“Barter…an individual possessing any surplus of value, such as a measure of grain or a quantity of livestock could directly exchange that for something perceived to have similar or greater value or utility, such as a clay pot or a tool. The capacity to carry out barter transactions is limited in that it depends on a coincidence of wants. The seller of food grain has to find the buyer who wants to buy grain and who also could offer in return something the seller wants to buy.”
“The Mesopotámian civilization developed a large scale economy based on commodity money. The shekel was the unit of weight and currency, first recorded circa 3000 BC, referring to a specific weight of barley, and equivalent amounts of silver, bronze, copper, etc. The Babylonians and their neighboring city states later developed the earliest system of economics as we think of it today, in terms of rules on debt, legal contracts and law codes relating to business practices and private property. Money was not only an emergence, it was a necessity. Law codes formalized the role of money in civil society. They set amounts of interest on debt, fines for ‘wrongdoing’, and compensation in money for various infractions of formalized law.”
“It has long been assumed that metals, where available, were favored for use as proto-money over such commodities as cattle, cowry shells, or salt, because metals are at once durable, portable, and easily divisible. The use of gold as proto-money has been traced back to the 4th millennium BCE when the Egyptians used gold bars of a set weight as a medium of exchange, as had been done in Mesopotamia with silver bars.” (end of long quote from Wikipedia: History of Money.)
Anciently, prior to coinage, weights or bars or rings of silver and gold were used as money payment in exchange for goods, services, etc. That’s more convenient than trying to match wants for bartering.
Money is a store of value; it has purchasing power for future wants/needs. Wikipedia: Store of Value “A store of value is the function of an asset that can be saved, retrieved and exchanged at a later time, and be predictably useful when retrieved. More generally, a store of value is anything that retains purchasing power into the future.” Silver and gold had value and retain purchasing power over time.
Money also functions as a unit/means of account for determining the value of goods, services, etc. Again, some forms of money are a commodity.
Smith’s Bible Dictionary: Money “Uncointed money – It is well known that ancient nations that were without a coinage weighed the precious metals, a practice represented on the Egyptian monuments, on which gold and silver are shown to have been kept in the form of rings [Job.42:11]. We have no evidence of the use of coined money before the return from the Babylonian captivity [after 540 BC]; but silver was used for money, in quantities determined by weight, at least as early as the time of Abraham.”
Mesopotamian Economics “Silver rings were used in Mesopotamia and Egypt as currency about 2,000 years before the first coins were struck. Silver in Mesopotamia functioned like our money today. It’s a means of exchange. People use it for storage of wealth, and use it for defining value. Silver became the standard of value sometime between 3100–2500 BC. A shekel of silver became the standard currency. To pay their bills ordinary people used less valuable money made of tin, copper or bronze. Barley was also used as currency. The advantage with it was that small weighing errors made little difference and it was difficult to cheat someone.” The silver shekel anciently became the commercial standard.
Silver is commodity money. Wikipedia: Commodity Money “Commodity money is money whose value comes from the commodity of which it is made…objects that have value in themselves (intrinsic value) as well as value in their use as money. Commodity money is similar to barter, but has a single recognized unit of exchange.” Commodity money has built-in value, and thereby is a store of value too.
Laura Valeri Sumerian Currency “The earliest form of money that we know of was the clay token. There were 3 main types of clay tokens: grains, human labor, livestock. Clay tokens found in Susa, Iran have been dated to 3300 BC….The standard of Sumerian currency was silver, not gold. According to many sources, the value of silver was fairly stable, thus making it a reliable ore to stabilize what would otherwise be a complex and wildly fluctuating barter market.” Clay tokens were representative money.
Representative money (and fiat money) differs from commodity money. Wikipedia: Representative Money “Representative money is any medium of exchange that represents something of value, but has little or no value of its own (intrinsic value).” In USA history e.g., gold certificates (issued 1863–1933) and silver certificates (issued 1878–1964) were forms of representative money. They had no intrinsic value (except the minimal value of the paper), but could be redeemed for coins of gold and silver.
Robert A. Mundell The Birth of Coinage “Historically, the use of representative money predates the invention of coinage. In the ancient empires of Egypt, Babylon, India and China, the temples and palaces often had commodity warehouses which issued certificates of deposit as evidence of a claim upon a portion of the goods stored in the warehouses, a form of ‘representative money.”
Ancient Egypt and Babylon used representative money. But I don’t find scriptural indication (other than in the apocryphal Tobit) that the Lord’s theocracy of ancient Israel used representative money.
‘Money’ in the Bible was silver (or gold). It was wealth. Commodity money. In the Greek LXX and Greek New Testament (NT), money is Strongs g693, g694, g695, g696 árguros. The chemical symbol for silver, #47 on the periodic table, is Ag, derived from the Greek. (In Hebrew, silver is kéhsef h3701.)
Smith’s Bible Dictionary: Money “Its [silver’s] earliest mention is in the generic sense of the price paid for a slave (Ge.17:13). The 1,000 pieces of silver paid by Abimélech to Abraham (Ge.20:16) and the 20 pieces of silver for which Joseph was sold to the Ishmaelites (Ge.37:28) were probably rings such as we see on the Egyptian monuments in the act of being weighed. In the first recorded transaction of commerce, the cave of Machpeláh is purchased by Abraham for 400 shekels of silver [Ge.23:16]. The shekel weight of silver was the unit of value through the whole age of Hebrew history, down to the Babylonian captivity.”
Their shekels were often silver ingots, or silverlings. Richard Tice Bekahs, Shekels, and Talents “Where no metal is mentioned, silver is usually intended.” Silver was weighed, not counted (prior to the advent of coinage). The shekel was a measure of weight.
Beginning with Genesis, the following verses show that commodity money (usually silver) is the Biblical standard. (The Greek LXX more easily compares with the NT.) Silver fulfilled the functions of money…a medium of exchange, a store of value, a means of account. And it’s a useful commodity.
Ge.13:2 “Abrám was very rich in livestock, in silver [g694] and in gold.” He had wealth. Ge.23:9-16 “Abraham weighed out for Ephrón 400 shekels of silver [g694], the commercial standard.”
Silver was commonly used by merchants in the land of Canáan and the ancient Near East, ca 2000 BC. Cambridge Bible Ge.23:16 “Pieces of good metal used in commercial exchange.” Brian Gabriel Ancient Egyptian Forms of Money “Silver became such an important metal used as money that the Egyptian word for silver, ‘hedj’, eventually came to mean ‘money.” (Papýrus wasn’t used as currency.)
In Ge.24:53, 44:2-4, the LXX Greek term translated as silver is g693, “made of silver”. In Ge.24:35, 31:15, 42:25-28, 35, 43:12-23, 44:1, 8, 47:14-18, the term is g694, “silver”. In Ge.17:12-13, 23, 27, it’s g696.1, “bought with silver”. Later in Je.6:29, the refiner is a “silversmith”, g695. (I won’t quote the verses referenced.) The apocryphal Tobit 4:20–5:3, 9:2-5 refers to depository receipts for silver.
For His theocracy of ancient Israel, God prescribed the “shekel of the sanctuary” in the tabernacle holy place as the standard weight of silver. Matthew Poole Commentary Ex.30:13 “The standard by which all shekels were to be examined was kept in the sanctuary.” Pulpit Commentary Ex.30:13 “At the date of the exodus coins were unknown; ‘shekel’ meant a certain weight.” (A Greek term for shekel weight was dídrachm, g1323. Smith’s Bible Dictionary “The shekel and the didrachmon were of the same weight.”)
Ex.30:12-16 “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘This is what everyone who is numbered shall give, half a shekel according to the shekel [h8255 Hebrew] of the sanctuary (the shekel is 20 geráhs), as an offering to the Lord….You shall take the silver [g694] given….” God told Moses to levy a poll tax in silver (g694) on the men of military age. (This became the basis for the temple tax. cf. Mt.17:24-27.)
{Sidelight: Ex.38:25-26 “The silver [g694] from those of the community who were numbered was 100 talents and 1,775 shekels. A half-shekel [békah h1235] a head for those who were numbered from age 20 and up, for 603,550 men.” This silver bekah/half-shekel tax for the tabernacle was taken from all non-Levite soldiers. (A shekel weighed approximately 0.4 ounce, or 180 grains of barley.) Barnes Notes “The talent contained 3,000 shekels.” So 100 talents of silver = 300,000 shekels. Add the 1,775 shekels, and the total = 301,775 shekels. This amount is exactly 603,550 half-shekels or bekahs. It also matches the population figure of Nu.1:45-47. So the amount of silver taken as tax confirms the apparent number of Israelite/mixed multitude fighting men of that time.}
Elsewhere in the Péntateuch, God said the silver (g694) shekel of the sanctuary weight was to be used for valuations. Le.5:15 “He [a man] shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord; according to your valuation in silver by the shekel of the sanctuary.”
The redemption of consecrated vows was valued according to the age of the person. e.g. Le.27:3 “If your valuation is a male from 20–60 years old, your valuation shall be 50 shekels of silver by the shekel of the sanctuary.” Le.27:16 instructs about valuing in silver the consecrated portion of a man’s field.
Le.27:25 “Every valuation of yours shall be after the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel shall be 20 gerahs.” The “shekel of the sanctuary” (weight) was God’s set standard of value.
Another example of this shekel standard is Nu.3:50. “From the firstborn of the sons of Israel, he collected silver weighing 1,365 shekels, according to the shekel of the holy place. And Moses gave the redemption money to Aaron and his sons, as the Lord had commanded Moses.” And another example is the offering made by an Israelite tribal leader (Nahshón of Judah) for use in the tabernacle, recorded in Nu.7:13. “His offering was one silver platter weighing 130 shekels, and one silver bowl weighing 70 shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary.”
The Lord commanded their money system be based on the weight of the silver shekel in the holy place! Silver was the medium of exchange in God’s theocracy of ancient Israel. Silver (and gold) was commodity money that had intrinsic value, useful for other purposes. Here’s some modern uses….
Silver is used for: Jewelry, coinage, silverware, making mirrors (it’s the best reflector of visible light known), dental alloys, solder and brazing alloys, electrical contacts and batteries. Silver paints are used for making printed circuits. In digital photography, silver salts are important in producing high-quality images. Silver threads are woven into fingertips of gloves so they can be used with touchscreen phones. Silver nanoparticles are used in clothing. Silver has antibacterial properties that can effectively kill lower organisms. (from Periodic Table: Silver) Silver is also used in antimicrobial lab coats, bandages & dressing to prevent the spread of infection, in water purification in third world countries. Hip-joint implants use silver bearing coatings. Silver is used in 3D printing, solar panels, double-pane windows, windshields, musical instruments (high-end). It has many industrial applications. Silver is said to be the world’s 3rd most useful commodity (water is 1st, oil is 2nd).
Gold is used for: Jewelry, coinage, art, decoration, architectural ornament, protecting electrical copper components (because gold conducts electricity, although silver is the best conductor). Thin gold wires are used inside computer chips to produce circuits. Gold alloys are still used for dental fillings. Gold nanoparticles are increasingly being used as industrial catalysts. (from Periodic Table: Gold)
{{Sidelight: Platinum is used for: Jewelry, coinage, catalytic converters for vehicles (extensively); in the chemicals industry for the production of nitric acid, silicone, and benzene. It’s used for computer hard disks and thermocouples. Platinum is also used to make optical fibers and LCDs, turbine blades, spark plugs, pacemakers and dental fillings. (from Periodic Table: Platinum)}}
Doug Newman Honest Money, the Bible and the Constitution “Biblical money isn’t fiat money that can be created at will. Biblical money is always tied to a specifically defined weight of precious metal.”
This topic of money, as regards honest weights & measures and the concept of usury/interest…is continued in “Money (2) – Biblical Honest Weights, Usury”.