RECENTLY a friend who knows thatI am religious gave me a medal that

he thought might be of interest. He didnot know what it was but he thoughtit had something to do with religion.(Figure 1) With a little research I wasable to discover that it was a false shekel,also known as a shekel medal or token.I found the story of these medals tobe quite fascinating although rathercomplicated. Also it can be confusingbecause these medals play a role in thehistory of Judaism (the Jewish religion)and in the history of Christianity. There-fore I will try to explain the story insimple terms starting at the beginning.You will need to know something aboutthe Jewish festival called Passover,which is celebrated by the Jews everyyear. It commemorates a time, probably

in the 13th century BC, when the Jewsescaped from slavery in Egypt and madetheir way to the land which is aboutwhere the modern state of Israel istoday. God told the Jews that if they putthe blood of a lamb on the sides and topsof the door-frames of their houses (Fig-ure 2) they would not be affected by aplague that would kill the firstborn sonsof the Egyptians. He would “pass over”them. (Figure 3) When this happenedthe pharaoh told the Jews to leave, whichthey did in a hurry. The story of thePassover is in Chapter 12 of the bookof Exodus in the Bible. In Chapter 13,however, the Jews are told that althoughthe firstborn sons of the Egyptians werekilled, the firstborn sons of the Jewsbelong to God. If they did not want themto serve in the temple in Jerusalem

they would have to redeem them. Thismeant that they must give somethingto God in return for each firstbornson, then and in the future. In Hebrew“Redeem the son” is PIDYON HABEN.In the Pidyon Haben ceremony thefather gives to a cohen (a Jewish manwho is descended from the first priest,Aaron) the equivalent of five silver shek-els for his firstborn son. This amountof money is stipulated in the book ofNumbers: When they are a month old,you must redeem them at the redemption

The Western Wall (Wailing Wall) in Jerusalem. (Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 1 – My false shekel. It is white metal, 35 mms in diameter and weighs 18.53 grams.Below the vessel on the obverse is SPENCER LONDON.

Figure 2 – In ancient Egypt a father puts theblood of a lamb above his door. (WikimediaCommons: from the book, “With the childrenon Sundays”, 1911)

price set at five shekels of silver, accordingto the sanctuary shekel, which weighstwenty gerahs. (Numbers 18:16) Thirtydays after the birth of Jesus he wastaken by his parents, Joseph and Mary,to the temple in Jerusalem and pres-

ented to a priest called Simeon. (Figure4) This episode is recorded in Luke’sgospel (Luke 2:22-40). Luke wrote thatJoseph and Mary offered a pair of dovesor two young pigeons (for the purifica-tion of a woman after childbirth, accord-

ing to Leviticus 12:8), but he does notmention the payment of five shekels. Ifthey did not pay the money, they musthave offered Jesus to the service of God.If they did pay the money, then Josephand Mary bought Jesus from God and

Figure 4 – “Presentation of the Christ Child in the Temple” by Hans Holbein the Elder, 1465-1524. (Wikimedia Commons)

Figure 3 – The Angel of the Lord sees the blood on the doorframe. (Wikimedia Commons: from the book, “Bible pictures and what they teach us”, by Charles Foster, 1897)

Figure 5 – Tetradrachm of Tyreminted in 92/91 BC. (Triton XIX, Lot 297)

he did not belong to God. The fact thatLuke wrote that Joseph and Mary haddone everything required by the Law(Luke 2:39) suggests the latter. What were the shekels that mighthave been given to Simeon? To answerthis we will have to know somethingabout the ancient economy of the Mid-dle East. Before the invention of coinagein the 7th century BC people weighed outlumps of silver to buy things. In about1500 BC Abraham bought a field for“four hundred shekels of silver, accord-ing to the weight current among themerchants.” (Genesis 23:16b) So origi-nally a shekel was a weight that varied

from time to time, but it was about 14grams. The word “shekel” was a wordin the Semitic language which wasthe language used in Canaan, the landbordering the eastern shore of the Medi-terranean Sea. This region includedJudaea, the homeland of the Jews. Whencoins started to circulate in the regionit was part of the Persian Empire andthe coin that took the place of the shekelweight was a silver coin that was inGreek called a siglos. The Greek name“siglos” was derived from the Semitic“shekel”. After Alexander the Great

conquered the Persian Empire in the 4th

century BC the names used for coinswere derived from the Greek language,and the common Greek coin was a drach-ma. When cities in the eastern part of theRoman Empire began to mint coins,the names of the coins were multiplesof the drachma. For example, the coinsminted at Tyre from 126 BC were di-drachms and tetradrachms. (Figure 5)Tyre was an important commercialcentre for the whole region and its coinswere used by the Jews in the 1st centuryAD. Not only did the Jews need thesesilver coins for the Pidyon Haben butthey needed them to pay for the upkeepof the temple in Jerusalem. In the bookof Exodus this temple tax was stipu-lated to be half a shekel annually.(Exodus 30:13) Fortunately we knowwhat half a shekel was in the 1st centurybecause in his gospel Matthew tells usthat the temple tax was a didrachm(Matthew 17:24). A Tyrian didrachmweighed 7 grams and looked the same asa tetradrachm, which weighed 14 grams.Therefore if Joseph and Mary boughtJesus from God they would have paidfive Tyrian tetradrachms. The temple in Jerusalem was dest-royed by the Romans in 70 AD at theend of the Jewish Revolt which began

Figure 6 – Shekel minted during the Jewish Revolt from 66 to 70 AD. The date above the omer vessel is Year 5. (Gemini Auction III, Lot 248)

Figure 7 – False shekel, German, 16th century,cast brass, 30 mms diameter. There is asmoking censer on the obverse and an almondbush on the reverse. (Image courtesy ofChen Eliyahu)

Figure 8 – False shekel, 18th century, silver, 29 mms diameter. There is a smoking censer onthe obverse and an almond bush on the reverse. Part of the loop remains at the top. Falseshekels were often worn as badges by pilgrims. (Image courtesy of Chen Eliyahu)

Figure 9 – False shekel, 18th century. There is a smoking censer on the obverse and an almond bush on the reverse. (Image courtesy of Chen Eliyahu)

in 66 AD. During the revolt the Jewsissued their own silver coins and theycalled them shekels. (Figure 6) The half-size coins were called half shekels. Onthe obverse there is an object that lookslike a chalice, but the beaded borderwould make it difficult to drink fromand some scholars think it is the omervessel, used for offering grain in thetemple. Above the omer vessel areHebrew letters indicating the year of therevolt, from 1 to 5. The surroundinginscription on the shekel is in an oldHebrew script and it means “shekel ofIsrael.” On the reverse there is a branch

with three pomegranates on it. Somescholars think it represents the high-priest’s staff (with metal pomegran-ates on the top). The surrounding in-scription means “Jerusalem the holy”. After the fall of the Roman Empirein about 500 AD Europe entered theMedieval Period. It is also known asthe Dark Ages because civilizationregressed and the people in generalwere ignorant. But the Jews clung totheir traditions, and although they wereno longer required to pay the temple taxthey still had to pay the five shekels forthe Pidyon Haben. The times were diffi-

cult and communications had deterior-ated. What were they to do?In the late Middle Ages some peoplecame up with a solution. They wouldmake copies of an ancient shekel whichcould be used for the Pidyon Haben.The shekel that they chose to copy wasthe shekel of the Jewish Revolt (66-70AD), but they did not know that it wasfrom that time. It seems they thoughtit was from the time of the Maccabeanrevolt which began in 166 BC and whichresulted in Judaea being an independ-ent nation until Roman rule came in 6AD. They believed that the coin hadbeen issued by Simon Maccabeus whenhe was in power from 142 to 135 BC.Frederic Madden in his book, History ofJewish Coinage, which was publishedin 1854, stated that Simon Maccabeuswas the first to strike coins in Judaea,and the coins of Simon Maccabeusshown in the book have a chalice on theobverse and three buds on the reverse.Barclay Head in the 2nd edition of hisHistoria Numorum, published in 1910,agreed with Madden that these coinswere issued by Simon Maccabeus. Sub-sequently archaeologists have demon-strated that these coins were struckduring the Jewish Revolt from 66 to 70AD, and scholars now believe that SimonMaccabeus did not issue coins. To complicate matters the people mak-ing the shekel copies misinterpreted

Figure 10 – Didrachm of Rhodes, c. 250-230 BC. Obverse: the sun-god, Helios. Reverse: a rose.Rhodon in Greek means “rose”. The woman in the left field is the goddess Athena, not the“beloved” in the Song of Songs. (Leu Numismatics AG, Auction 91, Lot 172)

Figure 11 – False shekel, silver, 16th century, from Goerlitz. There is a smoking censer on theobverse and an almond bush on the reverse.

Figure 12 – False shekel, brass, probably made between 1890 and 1920. There is a smokingcenser on the obverse, and an olive branch on the reverse.

Figure 13 – False shekel made in America inabout 1857. On the reverse the Hebrew in-scription starts at 5 o’clock and is read anti-clockwise. Hebrew is read from right to left.

the images on the shekels. They thoughtthe year number above the chalice wasthe smoke rising from an incense burnerand they thought the branch on thereverse was the rod of Aaron that hadmiraculously branched and blossomedas recorded in the book of Numbers:“Aaron’s staff, which represented thehouse of Levi, had not only sprouted buthad budded, blossomed and producedalmonds.” (Numbers 17:8) The inscrip-tions put on these false shekels or censerpieces were the same as on the originalcoins but they were in a more moderntype of Hebrew script. Chen Eliyahu (of Eliyahu’s Judaica)lives at Rehovot in Israel and he haskindly given me permission to showthree of his false shekels. He considersthe oldest (Figure 7) to be German andfrom the 16th century, and the others(Figures 8 and 9) from the 18th century.Mine (Figure 1) is probably from thelate 19th century. There are no pome-granates on the reverse of these coinsbecause Aaron’s staff was made of woodfrom an almond tree. So far we have been looking at thesecoins through Jewish eyes. Christianssaw them differently. During the MiddleAges the Christians in Europe wereintensely religious and many of themmade the dangerous pilgrimage toJerusalem. They continued to do thisduring the Crusades and for centuriesafterwards, and they often returnedwith a souvenir from the Holy Land.What could be a better souvenir than anexample of one of the thirty pieces ofsilver that were paid to Judas Iscariotfor betraying Jesus?Today scholars consider that the thirtypieces of silver were probably tetra-drachms of Tyre, but the makers of thesouvenirs did not know this and theysold the false shekels (with a censer onthe obverse and Aaron’s rod on the re-verse) to the pilgrims as “Judas coins”.Another coin that was believed to be theJudas coin was a silver coin of Rhodeswith the radiate head of Helios on oneside and a rose on the other (Figure10), and copies were sold to pilgrims.They were told that the thirty piecesof silver had miraculously changed toshow the face of Christ wearing thecrown of thorns, and the rose was thebiblical rose of Sharon. In the Song ofSongs the “beloved” says, “I am a rose ofSharon, a lily of the valley.” (2:1) On the website of the American IsraelNumismatic Association there is adetailed article about false shekels byMarvin Tameanko. It is entitled “FalseShekels”, the Medals that influencedModern History. Much of the informa-tion in this article comes from his article.In it he says that most historians “con-nect the earliest pieces with George

Emerich, 1422-1507, the burgomeister(mayor) of the city of Goerlitz, in Prussia.It was believed that he fabricated thefirst censer tokens after his return froma pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1465 andsold them as souvenirs at a reproductionof the Church of the Holy Sepulchre hebuilt in Goerlitz in 1480.” In 1940 BrunoKisch wrote an article entitled ShekelMedals and False Shekels in which hecatalogued 81 specimens from variouscountries, but did not include piecesproduced in England. As my false shekelhas SPENCER LONDON on it MarvinTameanko suggested that it might have

been made for use in Masonic ritualsbecause there was a London firm, Toye,Kenning and Spencer, which madeMasonic jewellery and ritual imple-ments at the end of the 19th century. After being given a false shekel by myfriend I bought three more on eBay.The first (Figure 11) is silver with anold patina and the dealer said it wasmade at Goerlitz in the 16th century. Thesecond (Figure 12) is unusual becausethe branch seems to be bearing olives,not almonds. Perhaps the engraverwas not Jewish and did not know theHebrew Scriptures. The third (Figure

Figure 14 – 50-prutah coin issued by Israel in 1949. It bearsthe same design as the coin in Figure 6.

Figure 16 – 10-lira coin issued by Israel in 1973 and 1974. The Hebrew wordsare the same as on the coin in Figure 15.

Figure 15 – 10-lira coin issued by Israel in 1970, 1971 and 1972. On the bottom of the reversethe three Hebrew words, read from the right, mean “coin redeem the son,” that is, it is a PidyonHaben coin. The Hebrew in the centre means “Redeem every first-born son.”

13) has a particular feature: the Hebrewinscription starts at 5 o’clock as on theoriginal revolt shekel, not at 11 o’clockas on all the other false shekels. Thissuggests that the engraver was awareof the inscription on the original revoltshekel. According to Tameanko thisengraver, Mr A. Nicholas, was in Amer-ica and his false shekels were used asillustrations of biblical coins by Sundayschools. He said that in 1857 the NewYork Herald published an advertisementfor the sale of such a “Sunday School”shekel which was labelled a “facsimileof the shekel of the sanctuary.”When the state of Israel was createdin 1948 the first coins that were issuedreproduced the designs on ancient coins.The 50-prutah coin has three pome-granates on the obverse and is 50%silver. (Figure 14) It could have beenused for the Pidyon Haben but it wasnot placed in circulation. In 1970 Israelbegan to issue specific Pidyon Haben

coins (Figures 15, 16 and 17). Alsodealers sold sets of five Pidyon Habencoins with the certificate to be signed bythe cohen. (Figure 18)Should the Pidyon Haben be revivedfor Christians? You could argue thatJesus was circumcised, redeemed andbaptized, and the first Christians wouldcertainly have redeemed their firstbornsons. Although the temple in Jerusalemwas destroyed in 70 AD Christianscould pay the Pidyon Haben coins to anordained member of the church. How-ever, Paul of Tarsus argued that Chris-tians do not have to follow the JewishLaw in that way. It seems that he didnot object to such cultural practices ascircumcision, but he denied that theywere necessary for a person to be accep-table to God. Anyway, it is amazingwhat information can be derived froma coin, and I am grateful to my friendfor giving me my first false shekel.

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Figure 18 – Set of five Pidyon Haben coins with the certificate. (Image courtesy of Menachem Coins).

Figure 17 – 25-lira coin issued by Israel in 1976. A similar coin issued in 1977 is smaller buthas a higher percentage of silver. The Hebrew on the reverse means, “With the redemptionmoney, shalt thou redeem them.” It is the beginning of Numbers 18:16. Bexley Stamp & Coin Accs. ............22

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