CHAPTER X. The Systems of Egypt, Babylon, and Palestine.

But although the Babylonian shekel was the official standard of the empire there can be no doubt that the old local standards lingered on, or rather held their ground stubbornly in not a few cases. We saw above that the Aramaean peoples had especially preferred the double shekel, and from it they developed the so-called Phoenician or Graeco-Asiatic silver standard. Gold being to silver as 13·3:1, one double shekel of 260 grains of gold was equal to fifteen reduced double shekels of silver of 225 grains each. Now it is important to note that the Phoenician shekel or stater was always considered not as a didrachm but as a tetradrachm; a fact which is explained by its development from the old double shekel, which of course was regarded as containing four drachms, and which at the same time explains why it is that in the New Testament the Temple-tax of the half shekel is called a didrachm, the term applied to the shekel itself in the Septuagint. When the Jews coined money under the Maccabees, they struck their silver coins on this Phoenician standard, and their shekel was always regarded as a tetradrachm. For the ancient half shekel of the Sanctuary they soon substituted the half of their shekel coins, that is about 110 instead of 65 grains of silver. This change probably took place under the Maccabees; silver had then probably become much more plentiful in Judaea as shown by the fact that they were able to issue a silver coinage. When those who collected the Temple-tax asked Christ for his didrachm, he bade Simon Peter go to the sea and catch a fish, in the mouth of which he would find a stater, “that