This is part two of a series which began here (The Half Shekel Temple Tax ) in which I answer back, hoping not to rebut but to glorify, some observations Peter Leithart made in a thought-provoking piece about the Temple Tax as atonement (Atonement Money ).
Adding economic detail, such as the actual silver value of the temple tax at the time of the Exodus and how it changed between the giving of the Torah and the practice during Second Temple Judaism, reveals both economic and theological dimensions not normally seen by commentators.
I’ll give you the conclusions before the math, because…well, readers tend to drop off during the math parts.
The specifics of the Temple Tax as given in Exodus 30:13 define the amount due as a “half Shekel” “according to the Shekel of the temple”. An examination of the LXX allows us to find an outside reference point to define that value in terms of well-known Greek units of measurement. That passage defines a shekel as one didrachma in translation, which obviously means two drachmas.
But in Matthew 17, (the incident with the question about the temple tax,) a shekel is defined as two didrachmas—that is, four drachmas.
So, we see a conflict: a shekel is two drachmas in Exodus and four drachmas in Matthew. The exchange rate between pagan money and temple money had doubled by the Second Temple period. Temple shekels doubled in price.
It took twice as much pagan silver to buy a temple shekel in the First Century as had originally been required in Exodus. This amounted to a doubling of everyone’s taxes (and offerings). Imagine if you filled out your tax form and calculated the amount due and then on top of all of that, the IRS was unwilling to accept regular dollars as payment but instead insisted that you pay them in IR$Bucks, and imagine on top of that, that it took two of your regular dollars to buy one IR$Buck. This amounts to paying double the tax.
Likewise, imagine a church which requires a tithe, but won’t accept pagan US Dollars, but instead requires ChurchBuck$. You’d go to church, and just inside the doors were special ATMs which could change your dollars for ChurchBuck$, but it takes two dollars to buy one ChurchBuck. It’s like that. Would it be hard to understand the Messiah visiting a church like that and using a cudgel to turn over such crooked ATMs in a place which bears His name? Does this make the incident with the moneychangers more understandable?
Ordinary faithful Jews who were trying to be obedient to Torah were being subjected to double taxation.
This plays out powerfully in the account where Peter and Jesus discuss paying the Temple Tax.
Peter is asked whether Jesus paid the tax:
“And when they had come to Capernaum, those who collected the two-drachma tax came to Peter, and said, “Does your teacher not pay the two-drachma tax?”” (Matt. 17:24 NAS)
Note my italics. This passage confirms what I said above, that the definition of a shekel and therefore the half-shekel tax has doubled. As Matthew records, the tax had become two drachmas during Jesus’ time. It’s a half-shekel tax, and if a half shekel is two drachmas than a whole shekel must be four drachmas, because 2 X 2=4. Remember that in Exodus 30 a Shekel is two drachmas. So the value of the shekel doubled from the time of Exodus 30 to the time of Matthew 17.
This is confirmed later in the passage when Jesus sends Peter to catch a fish and take a coin from its mouth to pay the tax for both of them.
“…go to the sea, and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a stater. Take that and give it to them for you and Me.” (Matt. 17:27 NAS)
Again, please note my italics. A stater is given to them “for you and Me”. A stater equals four drachmas. Jesus and Peter are paying the amount demanded by the collectors (two half Shekels), so once again, we see Matthew 17 asserting a four drachma shekel, twice the amount required by God in Exodus. We’ll see below that Josephus a generation later will also confirm the value of shekel described by Matthew.
So, looking at both the fact that the exchange rate doubles the tax, and at the fact that Jesus is paying for Peter, too, we see that Jesus is paying not one drachma as the Torah required, but four. He’s paying four-fold.
But it gets deeper than that, because a major theme of the passage is that Jesus is exempt from the tax as a son of the King. So we see that Jesus is paying four-fold atonement when He owes no atonement at all. He is redeeming four others.
I wouldn’t be much of a Theopolitan if I neglected to point out that ‘four’ in scripture is associated with global completeness, i.e., the four corners of the earth, or the four rivers flowing out of Eden into the world. I suggest that by paying a four-fold atonement, when none was due from Him, Jesus is redeeming the world.
This is a bit more speculative, but if Leithart is correct (and he makes a good case) that the Temple Tax is an atonement in anticipation of Holy War, then perhaps this passage hints that Jesus is about to engage in Holy War Himself.
And while we’re speculating…since the reason Jesus gives for exemption from the tax is His status as a son of the King, can we read that back into Exodus 30? If the temple tax is not required from sons of the King, and yet it is required from Israelites as an atonement, does that suggest that the tax itself involves themes of familial alienation and adoption? If sons of the King don’t pay such taxes, this suggests that without atonement, Israel was not fully a son. Atonement would then be the ritual restoration of sonship.
For those with an appetite for financial detail, here’s an appendix which should more than satiate that appetite.
Appendix with more detailed calculations:
Exodus:
In Exodus 30:13, the LXX, a shekel = didrachma = two drachmas.
Exodus 38:26, in Hebrew the amount of the tax = 1 bekah = 1/2 shekel. In LXX Greek translation the tax due = “mia drachma“, i.e., one drachma.
This all fits together coherently; the math makes sense. LXX Ex 30:13 translates shekel as didrachma, but 38:26 defines it as “suclos” an obvious Hellenic borrow-word of shekel. This shows that the Greek translations are used interchangeably. Two Greek words are used to translate “shekel,” and examination which goes beyond the scope of this study found that the words are used interchangeably whether in a sacred or secular context. The temple shekel was not of different value than the secular one, at least not if the Rabbis who translated the LXX knew what they were doing.
Matthew:
In Matthew 17:24 the amount of the tax = 1 didrachma = 2 drachmas = 1/2 shekel.
In Matthew 17:27 1 stater = one shekel = 2 didrachmas = 4 drachmas.
Josephus:
In Antiquities 3.194 and 3.195 1 shekel = 4 drachmas. Note Josephus’ use of present tense: “which shekel is a piece among the Hebrews, and is equal to four Athenian drachmas.” {b} (Ant. 3:195 JOE). Italics mine.
All of this analysis is consistent with the view that the exchange rate of secular coinage to temple coinage was weakened in such a way as to double the burden on the people every time they engaged financially with the Temple economy.
Jerry is the author most recently of The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics (https://www.amazon.com/Maker-Versus-Takers-Justice-Economics/dp/1642933708). He is Editor of Town Hall Finance, serves on the Editorial Board of Salem Communications, is Resident Economist with Kingdom Advisors and President of Bowyer Research. He holds a Sacred Theology Licentiate from the Collegium Augustinianum and a Bachelor’s degree from Robert Morris University.