The Temple Tax and the Prince’s Levy Confusion seems to exist over the half-shekel (or didrachma) Temple tax and the levy for the provision of sacrifices for public worship as administered by the prince. Schürer seems to hold that this tax was a post-exilic levy in replacement of the part tithe in Ezekiel. When listing the priest’s dues as they came to be levied by tradition rather than the law, he says that: All the dues listed so far constituted the priest’s personal income. From these must now be distinguished imposts directly intended for the maintenance of public worship. The most important was the half-shekel or didrachma tax. A levy of this sort did not exist before the exile because until then the expenses of public service were defrayed by the king (Ezek. 45:17 ff, LXX 46:13-15). But it was paid already in the time of Nehemiah, though it then amounted to a third of a shekel (Neh. 10:33-4). The increase to half a shekel can only have been increased after Nehemiah. The relevant passage in the Pentateuch in which the half shekel valuation tax is prescribed (Exod. 30:11-16) should therefore be regarded as a later addition to the Priestly Code. The actual payment of this tax in the time of Jesus is reliably attested (Schürer, ibid., pp. 270-271). This statement by Schürer is most extraordinary. It rests entirely on the assumption of the Priestly Code argument, which divides the authorship of the Torah and rests on the premise that Exodus and Numbers were written after Deuteronomy, Ezekiel and Nehemiah (see esp. p. 258). It assumes that the later practice in accordance with Exodus 30:11-16 is evidence that the text in Exodus was not in existence at the time of Nehemiah. This is incorrect reasoning. The restoration of Nehemiah was to restore the Laws as found in the Pentateuch. The text in Exodus specifies the weight at twenty gerahs to the shekel. The Babylonian system appears to have been based on divisions of sixty (or thirty gerahs to the shekel) – hence the deliberate specification in Exodus. That system extended to the Medo-Persians, and would make twenty gerahs, two-thirds of a Medo-Persian shekel. Rather than indicating the non-existence of Exodus 30:11-16 in the Pentateuch at the time of Nehemiah, it would appear to make Nehemiah’s restoration absolute and literal. When Judah regained its independence, it was no longer tied to the Medo-Persian system of weights and measures but rather could implement its own. The alternative case is that under Nehemiah the third shekel reduction was instituted to alleviate hardship, but that would have involved an alteration to the Law which Nehemiah was restoring and must be rejected on that ground. Whichever is the case, however, there seems little evidence for Schürer’s assumption.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 10:30:06 +0000
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