The fabricated and manufactured history of "ancient Palestine" has been slapped in the face again.
More archaeological coinage has been unearthed that proves that Jews are the true indigenous people of the legitimate and sovereign nation of Israel. From INN:
A coin from the Second Temple, used in the half-shekel census, was found in excavations in the City of David, just below and east of Jerusalem’s Old City. The upcoming Purim festival features the half-shekel prominently in its observance.
The ancient silver coin was discovered in an archaeological excavation that is being conducted in the main Second Temple-era drainage channel of Jerusalem. The foreign coin is of the denomination used during the turbulent Second Temple period to pay the Biblical half-shekel head-tax.
This coming Thursday night (Saturday night for Jerusalemites), before reading the Megillah (Scroll) of Esther, Jews worldwide will contribute a sum of money to charity in remembrance of that half-shekel command.
The commandment to pay the half shekel to the Temple is in the weekly Torah portion of Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-16):
And the L-rd spoke to Moshe, saying:
When you take the sum of the children of Yisrael after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul to the L-rd, when you count them; that there be no plague among them, when you put a number to them.
This they shall give, every one that passes among them that are to be counted, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary, (a shekel is twenty gera), a half shekel shall be the offering for the L-rd.
Every one that passes among them that are counted, from twenty years old and above, shall give the offering of the L-rd.
The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give the offering of the Lord, to make atonement for your souls.
And you shall take the atonement money of the children of Yisrael, and shall designate it for the service of the Tent of Meeting; that it may be a memorial to the children of Yisrael before the L-rd, to make atonement for your souls.
At the time of the temple’s construction, every Jew was commanded to make an obligatory donation of a half shekel to the edifice. This modest sum allowed all Jews, of all economic levels, to participate in the building the Temple. After the construction was completed, they continued to collect the tax from every Jew for the purpose of purchasing the public sacrifices and renewing the furnishings of the Temple. The collection occurred every year on the first day of the month of Adar when the “heralding of the shekelim” took place, that is to say the beginning of the collection of the money and it ended on the first day of the month of Nissan, when ‘there is a new budget’ in the temple and the purchase of public sacrifices was renewed.
The annual half shekel head-tax was later donated in shekels and half shekels from the Tyre mint where they were struck from the year 125 BCE until the outbreak of the Great Revolt in 66 CE. At the time of the uprising, the tax was paid using Jerusalem shekalim, which were specifically struck for this purpose. In the rabbinic sources, the Tosefta (Ketubot 13:20) states: “Silver mentioned in the Five Books of Moses is always Tyrian silver: What is Tyrian silver? It is Jerusalemite.” Many have interpreted this to mean that only Tyrian shekels could be used to pay the half shekel head-tax at the Jerusalem temple.
The shekel that was found in the excavation weighs 13 grams and bears the head of Melqart, the chief deity of the city of Tyre (equivalent to the Semitic god Baal) on the obverse and an eagle upon a ship’s prow on the reverse. The coin was struck in the year 22 CE.
Despite the importance of the half-shekel head-tax for the economy of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, only seven other Tyrian shekels and half shekels were heretofore found in the excavations in Jerusalem.
A poster added the following comment:
It of course would have been preferable had the Jews owned their own Mint.
If such a Jewish Mint ownership was possible then the Jews would certainly have struck the shekel with Jewish state signs different from the Tyrian silver that bears the head of Melqart, equivalent to the Semitic god Baal the chief deity of the city of Tyre.
Yet in spite of the lack of such Jewish Mint ownership , we see the Jews preserving their own beliefs and not influenced by the Melqart significance and symbols on the Tyrian silver, but due to economic constraints foreign to Jews , the Jews realism used the Tyran silver and redirected it to Jewish holiness purposes as ordered by the G'D of Israel.
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