David Merrill wrote,
Quote:
My opinion is that Jesus got into terrible trouble for disrupting the franchise on the drachma and shekel. The Herodians were hoarding the coinage and using other currencies in circulation for the Temple expenses. However, when it came time to pay up the half-shekel Temple Tax, suddenly domestic currency was the only acceptable currency.
So a pilgrim had to purchase drachmas and shekels at an inflated price, being as how they had been contracted out of circulation.
This brings forth the essence of Jesus using the testimony of a Herodian priest against him. The priest pulled a Tiberias denarion from his purse, clearly making the Temple Tax and Temple matters a dominion of Caesar's.
This also explains why Jesus would have become so irate as to overturn the moneychangers' franchise tables.
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David, The essay, JESUS OF NAZARETH, ILLEGAL-TAX PROTESTER, available at
http://www.jesus-on-taxes.com, provides a plethora of evidence from scripture and other sources to support the conclusion that Jesus was crucified for, as it says in Luke, CH. 23, "forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor."
Your contrary opinion and your explanation offer little to support them, and some of what you present as facts, so far as my research can decipher, are not facts. For instance, what evidence can you point to indicating that, as you declare, "The Herodians were hoarding the coinage and using other currencies in circulation for the Temple expenses"??? What evidence do you have that Herodians were even responsible for Temple finances, when in fact the Temple was located and was under Pilate's jurisdiction--not Herod's.
David, there are many "economic laws" that were not understood until recent years, but were equally in force before they were "discovered" as they are today. Economics, or catalactics as it is known in its broader sense, is the science of human action. It has added enormously to human understanding in recent decades. Many ancient "historical events" recorded as factual have been re-evaluated and relegated to the status of myths since the science of human action demonstrated that the event could not possibly have transpired as recorded. Your description on the monetary situation in the Roman territory that was once Israel seems to me conflict with Gresham's Law. If you would like to understand Gresham's law, Google has over a million returns. A good place to start is the website,
http://eh.net