[Avodah] How much is an Omer?

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Feb 03, 2010 at 11:40:29AM -0600, Chanoch (Ken) Bloom wrote:
: On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 13:58 +0100, Arie Folger wrote:
: > Just a tangential point: Of course he weighed it, as minted coins with
: > standard valuation were not invented yet. Silver, gold or brass was
: > paid in weight. KNLAD.

: Bava Kamma 97b: What was the coin of Abraham Avinu? ??? An old man and an
: old woman on the one side, and a young man and a young woman on the
: other.

: i.e. Avraham minted a coin, so it could very well have been invented
: before he bought Ma'arat HaMachpelah.

There is no indication that that coin was minted by Avraham avinu.
Any more than a Sacagawea Dollar was coined during her lifetime.
Avraham acted in a way that caused later rulers to mint such coins in
his honor.

Back in 2003 I suggested the reverse -- that Avraham made commemorrative
coins, but it had nothing to do with money. It was just a way to carry a
lesson in your pocket.
(C.f. http://www.soulcoin.com/HumilityandJoy.html )


However, I understood "oveir lasokher" to mean that Avraham did use some
kind of standardized pre-weighed sheqel pieces.

Current theory is that the oldest coins were the Aegina Chelone coins,
which started minting in 700 BCE at the earliest. (There is one that
old at the Bibiliotech Nationale, Paris.)

Avraham avinue bought Me'aras haMachpeilah in 1677 BCE (or perhaps 168
years earlier, depending on your beliefs about Galus Bavel). Well before
the earliest known coin. But I have two bits of wiggle room:

First, the earliest coin found so far isn't necessarily the earliest coin.

Second, we're not talking about coins, disc-shaped and pictures stamped on
them. Rather, some precursor to coins. Something that by common agreement
were accepted as something more than batering against metal. Premeasured
pieces of known weight and purity.

See Rashi ad loc -- it was some kind of currency that would be accepted
anywhere.

Last Dec, Rn Leah Aharoni posted the following to mail-jewish
<http://ottmall.com/mj_ht_arch/v57/mj_v57i52.html#CQR>:
    Gershon Bar Kochva, an Israeli military historian and a resident of
    Hebron, discussed this topic in a recent lecture.

    According to Bar Kochva, at the time of Avraham, the standard practice
    was to carry precious metals in pre-cut slabs (sort of like Toblerone
    chocolate bars) and break of as many pieces as was necessary for a
    particular transaction. In Hebrew, this breaking off was call btziya,
    hence the Hebrew expression "betza kesef."

    According to Bar Kochva, Avraham's 400 shekels were equivalent to
    approximately US$ 700,000.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is capable of changing the world for the
micha at aishdas.org        better if possible, and of changing himself for
http://www.aishdas.org   the better if necessary.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning