[Avodah] Sheqel Kesef

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 09:27:39PM -0400, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> I am working on trying to understand when the root k-s-f refers to the
> metal silver, and when it refers to generic money. At the same time, I'm
> working on when sh-q-l involves weights and weighing, and when it refers to
> a specific coin.

The first question: when did these distinctions first come into
existence?

Jumping to the end of the post first:
> NOTE: I am aware of a claim that coins were not yet invented in Avraham's
> time, or even in Moshe Rabenu's time....

Historians would tell you that the first coins were minted in the 5th or
6th century BCE. Meaning, you couldn't really put it much before Yirmiyahu
(even without the "missing years").

Which would mean that anything deOraisa would be about weights.

But the origins are shrouded in a bit of mystry. According to the World
History Encyc (a Google find; <https://www.worldhistory.org/coinage>:

    According to Herdotous (I, 94), coins were first minted by the
    Lydians, while Aristotle claims that the first coins were minted by
    Demodike of Kyrme, the wife of King Midas of Phrygia. Numismatists
    consider that the first coins were minted on the Greek island of
    Aegina, either by the local rulers or by king Pheidon of Argos.

Medrashically, we have the Avraham coin (BQ 97b). Even if we assume
that medrash was historical, it could have been more a medalion than
a coin. It could even have been a coin circulating then, but minted in
*commemoration* of Avraham & Sarah, Yitzchaq and Rivqa.

However, I think there is another medrash on which I would pin the
invention of coinage. Shemos 30:13, "*Zeh* yitenu kol ha'oveir al
hapiqudim, machatzis hasheqel..." The Tanchuma
(<https://www.sefaria.org/Midrash_Tanchuma%2C_Ki_Tisa.9.5>
quoted by Rashi) says Hashem showed Moshe a half-sheqel of fire from
under the Kisei haKavod.

The bit about from under the Kisei haKavod weakens my theory, but perhaps
the reason why Moshe needed to be shown what a half-sheqel looks like
was because Hashem wanted us to give coins, and coins weren't invented
yet. The first step was to mint the half-sheqels.

And then, if coinage was only used for the mitzvah of machatzis hasheqel,
it would explain why the idea of standardizing money didn't get picked
up by others for centuries, or parhaps waited reinvention. Then again, it
would mean we too didn't adopt standard coinage, despite its utility for
trade. Even though we picked up a coin every Adar to donate. Maybe the
feel was that it would be a chilul, that coins were for qodesh use only,
until coins became a thing in general society?

Conjecture atop conjecture, I know. Either way, Hashem showed Moshe a
half-sheqel, which implies it had a specific look. I think the Tanchuma
is saying that *halachically*, the mitzvah deOraisa was never about
giving just a lump of metal of a certain weight. And thus, should be
assumed to be historical.

Now, jumping back up:
> Bereshis 23:16 tells of when Avraham Avinu purchased land from Efron for a
> burial plot. This pasuk ought to be a good source of information on these
> questions, as it contains each of those roots twice. Unfortunately, I am
> puzzled by this pasuk.

I would take the purchase of Me'aras haMachpeilah with sheqlim that
were "oveir lasocheir" to imply chunks of metal. Standardized silver
pieces, whether coins or something else, wouldn't be ranked in terms
of acceptability.

> One idea that occurred to me is that these coins were larger than normal,
> but Avraham did not give 400 of them to Efron. Instead he gave Efron a
> smaller number, but he weighed them out to show Efron that he was indeed
> getting his full 400 sheqel *weight* of silver....
> 
> Most likely, I'm simply unfamiliar with the idiom. Maybe the verb "to
> weigh" *IS* how they speak about counting coins. Anyone else have a guess?

There is also the purity issue. I have no idea, before Archimedes
had his Eureka! moment about how to check the volume of something of
a given weight, how they would know whether something was 95% or 99.9%
silver. Maybe oveir lasokheir refers to how it looked -- no businessman
would doubt the purity.

----

Then there are the philosophical issues, which you raise in the opening
but don't focus on in the rest of the email.

1- Silver as an easy thing to barter with vs. "money".

This is harder, because it's a shades of gray issue. I would think that
once you charge interest rather than renting out your merchandise, you're
lending money. But without a ribbis market and compounding interest,
I am not sure where to put that end of the spectrum.

2- When does "kesef" not mean "silver"? Which is only possible after
there is enough of a concept of money for "kesef" to translate to.

For this, at least, we have halachic indicators. When is a gold piece
money, and when is it a commodity? Bava Metziah pereq 4 -- Gold is qoneh
kesef, kesef isn't qoneh zahav. At least WRT to qinyan, it isn't a foreign
exchange deal with money vs money -- gold is a commodity, it is bought
with silver.

Also means that silver is more than just the local convenient thing to
carry around to barter with. Silver is money.

We end up with a weird position, in that silver chunks are more "money"
than gold coins! (Probably only seems weird to people who aren't thinking
in a language where kesef = kesef.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Spirituality is like a bird: if you tighten
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   your grip on it, it chokes; slacken your grip,
Author: Widen Your Tent      and it flies away.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF                          - Rav Yisrael Salanter