Widow's Mites...

Jewelry by John F. Baumrucker, MD

Own a piece of ancient history!

 

 

Alexander Jannaeus Mites (above) $125. Pontius Pilate (not shown)US$175.
Pendants are done in 14K gold, and are genuine coins from ancient Israel.

To Order:

by mail:
Widows Mites
Dr. John F. Baumrucker
171 Hospital Drive
Highlands, NC 28741

by fax:
828 526 0023

by email: Dr John F. Baumrucker

A short history of the coinage of Israel

There were no coins minted during the vast ancient period of Israel, until the Maccabean or Hasmonean era. We find many mentions of shekels and talents in the bible, but these references are to weights of metal, not to coins, which were first minted in the sixth century B.C. Even in Egypt, there were no coins until the time of Alexander the Great, 256-232 B.C., when Ptolemy began minting coins. Interestingly, coinage continued in Egypt through the Greek era, and then the Roman, but disappeared again when the yoke of foreign rule was broken, apparently as the need for coins was not found necessary. Cyrus, King of Persia allowed the Israelites to return to their homeland after the exile in 538 B.C. Israel was part of the Persian Empire until the time of Alexander the Great who conquered Tyre in 332, and then took Jerusalem without a fight. Alexander's reason to conquer this area and also Egypt, was to keep from getting flanked on the way to the real prize, the Persian Empire.

He defeated Darius, The Great King of Persia in 331 B.C. and then claimed land all the way to India. When Alexander died on the way back to Greece, his empire was divided by his generals. Ptolemy got Egypt, and Seleucos took over the former Persian Empire. Most of the time, Israel was ruled by the Seleucid Empire. This changed when Antiochus IV, then ruler of the Seleucid Empire, placed his statue in the temple, and used swine to sacrifice, thereby desecrating the temple. This caused a revolt led by Judas Maccabeus of the house of Hasmonea, and thus the Maccabean, or Hasmonean Revolt. As unlikely as it could be, this revolt, with the help of God Himself, was successful. The history of this period is told in I Maccabees and II Maccabees which is found in the Apocrypha. The first Hasmonean to mint coins was John Hyrcanus I who ruled from 135 B.C. to 104. The coins of this king are rare.

Under Alexander Jannaeus many coins were made, and many exist to this day. Alexander was a grand-nephew of the great leader of the revolt. He was both high priest and King. He managed to gain control over the entire coastline of Palestine from Mount Carmel in the north, to Egypt in the south. Thus his kingdom was basically equivalent to that ruled by King David. Unfortunately, his success created dissension, especially among the Pharisees who believed in living according to the law, or Torah. Jannaeus neglected his religious duties, and surrounded himself with opulence and his Hellenization of the area disturbed many. A civil war broke out, and his enemies asked Demetrius III of Syria to fight on their side. Jannaeus was defeated, but that defeat reunited the Jews, and they eventually drove Demetrius out again. The coins of Jannaeus are the most common of all ancient Jewish coins, and surely circulated during the times of Jesus.

After the death of Jannaeus in 76 B.C., his Queen, Salome Alexandra ruled until her sons, Hyrcanus II, and Aristobulus II were old enough to rule. They fought over who would be king, and both independently made deals with the great Roman general, Pompey the Great, to resolve the fraternal feud. Thus, Pompey's armies marched into Jerusalem without a fight and started a long era of Roman rule. Since Aristobulus was the stronger of the two brothers, Pompey had him put into a prison in Rome, but allowed the weaker brother to rule under the leadership of the Roman Empire. Hasmonean rule, for all practical purposes came to an end at this time. John Hyrcanus II continued to rule until 40 B.C. when he died.

In 40 B.C. the eldest son of Aristobulus II, Mattathias Antigonus, bribed the Parthians to Invade Jerusalem. At this time the Romans had divided Israel into two parts, one controlled by Hyrcanus, and the other by Herod, who was part Jew, part gentile, and part Roman. Indeed, he was a very complex individual. When the invasion occurred, Herod fled, Hyrcanus was killed, and Antigonus took over temporily. Herod gathered his troops and retook Jerusalem in 37 B.C. Herod was a great builder and a cunning leader. He married a Hasmonaen princess to make him more compatable to the people. He then rebuilt the temple, healing wounds with the priestly sect. Being a megalomaniac and paranoid, he built many fortresses, to protect him not only from the invaders from elsewhere, but from his own people. Being under the protectorship of Rome, there was little chance that either would harm him. He was a great leader, despite himself, and all subsequent kings of Israel were named "Herod" as an honor to him, much like all Roman emperors were named Caesar after Julius Caesar.

When Herod died in 4 B.C., his sons were given parts of the Kingdom over which to rule. Archelaus ruled over Judaea and therefore, Jerusalem. He was a harsh ruler, and after complaints from the religious leaders to the emperor, Augustus, Herod Archelaus was deposed, with Rome setting up a procurator to rule the province. Herod Antipas fared much better ruling over his territiory, which included Galilee, from 4 B.C. to 40 A.D. He is known best for ordering the execution of John the Baptist, and to whom Jesus was sent by the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate when he found that Jesus was a Galilean. Herod Agrippa I ruled from 37-44 A.D., and is the "Herod" mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles verses 1-23. He died in Caesarea at the age of 54. Israel was ruled by the procurators from that time until the Jewish Revolt which started in 66 and finished in 70 A.D. with the destruction of the temple, which event was foretold by Jesus, and the death of the Zealots at Masada.

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The Story of the "Widow's Mite"

MARK 12: 41-44: And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury; and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she cast in two mites, which make a farthing (two cents). And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, verily I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury; for they all did cast in from their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, all she had to live on.

The phrase, "Widow's Mite," comes from this passage in Mark. These coins were minted by the kings of Israel known as the Hasmoneans. They ruled from 135 B.C. until the time of Herod who assumed the throne in 40 B.C. Most of the coins were minted between 103 B.C., Alexander Jannaeus, and 40 B.C., John Hyrcanus II. The coins of the Herodian rule are strictly not widow's mites, but are commonly included in this description because they look similar, and were made the same way, meaning, very crudely.

The coins: These coins were very crudely made as they were not valuable even in the era that they were minted. Coin making was basically unchanged from the earliest process, which went something like this. Two dies were fashioned from hardened bronze, the front, obverse, and the back,the reverse. One of these dies was placed in an anvil, and the other was held in one hand and in the other was a hammer. The piece of metal that was to become the coin was placed on the lower die in the anvil and struck with the upper die held in the hand. The result was a coin. Although this method was crude, some of the most beautiful coins ever minted were made in this fashion. The Greeks excelled in this process, beginning in the sixth century B.C.

Unfortunately, the Jews did not make beautiful coins. In fact they invented a method to mass produce their coinage. Some of the coins that you will receive will have evidence of these methods. First, instead of making the coin blank, a planchet, one at a time, they cast a string of planchets all attached to each other. This allowed the strip of planchets to be pulled through the dies allowing the coins to be made faster. No effort was made to produce "perfect" coins as the Greeks had tried. Therefore, most of the coins are partly or mostly off center. Secondly, you may be able to see remnants of the coin or coins that were next to the one you have.

While no attempt was made to make the coins beautiful, that doesn't mean that there was no meaning to these pieces. This could not be further from the truth, as evidenced by Jesus' use of these coins in his parable above. The obverse of these coins usually shows two cornucopia with a pomegranate, a sign of fertility, between them. The reverse has dialog written not in the Hebrew that was used at the time, which is the same square writing used today, but the paleohebrew used during the time of King David, thus trying to envoke the pride in the government that existed at that time.

Unfortunately, the die makers were often illiterate, didn't understand paleohebrew, and had to inscribe the letters backwards in the die. It is easy to understand why the inscriptions on these coins is difficult to read, even for experts, and some are just nonsense. A typical inscription would read, "Yehonatan the high priest and the council of the Jews." Remember that you start at the right when reading Hebrew.

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