On Hebrew-Samaritan Coins (1781) - Page 18

...chius (1) have taught, and after them Montanus (2), Masius (3), Villalpandus (4), Eisenschmidius (5), and as many as have written about the coins and weights of the Hebrews, have proven through many experiments that the shekel is a tetradrachm (a silver coin worth four drachmae)? Or would it not be an injustice to Josephus Flavius Josephus, the 1st-century Jewish-Roman historian. if someone believed that such a serious writer was thinking of those "Assyrian shekel" ghosts original: "Assyriacorum larvis" — "Assyrian" refers to the modern square Hebrew script. Bayer is mocking the idea that Josephus was referring to the crude, cast-metal forgeries with square Hebrew letters often found in his own time., which we encounter everywhere, cast or melted down in various sizes and weights (and certainly not according to any defined law), and very rarely struck with a hammer, offered for sale at crossroads and in barbershops—indeed, found almost anywhere?

Furthermore, there still exist today in the collections of the learned certain silver coins of Trajan, both Latin and Greek, upon which the type, Jewish symbols, and a Samaritan inscription Simon

For the Freedom of Jerusalem original Samaritan script: 𐤔𐤌𐤏𐤅𐤍

𐤋𐤇𐤓𐤅𐤕 𐤉𐤓𐤅𐤔𐤋𐤌 have been overstruck here and there. Learned men, considering these to be more recent than Simon Maccabeus, attribute them to his namesake Bar Kokhba—who stirred up the greatest turmoils in Judea under Hadrian—and thus date them to the second century of our Salvation, believing them to have been restruck in the likeness of the ancient ones. Regarding these, see Souciet (6), Henrion (7), and the catalog of Samaritan coins of the illustrious William Hunter (8). Indeed, even Basnage, although he was of a mind most alienated from Samaritan coins, asserts that many of them were fabricated by the Jews in the second century of the Church (9).

The second, and what seems to be the "prize-winning" argument of Mr. Tychsen, contains three points. I. That the passage in Maccabees (1 Maccabees 15:6), which reads in Greek:

And I have permitted you to make a stamp for your own coinage in your country, original Greek: Καὶ ἐπέτρεψά σοι ποιῆσαι κόμμα ἴδιον νόμισμα τῇ χώρᾳ σου

provided an opportunity for impostors to fabricate Samaritan coins and release them to the common people. II. Nor would the Greek version be any more secure, since the Syriac Translator, instead of the striking of one's own coinage, translated it as the authority for deciding sentences (10). III. Indeed, he argues this version is to be preferred over the others, since the Jews had no peculiar coins of their own, and Josephus, the Christians, and the Teachers of the Hebrews maintain a deep silence regarding the power of minting his own coinage granted to Simon by Antiochus.

(1) According to Montanus in Ephron.
(2) On the Shekel. (3) Commentary on Joshua, chapter 7.
(4) Volume 3, Apparatus on weights and measures, chapter 22.
(5) On weights and measures, section 1, chapter 4.
(6) Dissertation on Samaritan coins, page 15.

(7) Volume 3, Royal Academy of Inscriptions, etc., page 184.
(8) Below, page 13, numbers 4 and 5.
(9) Jacques Basnage, History of the Jews, Book 6, ch. 24, n. 28, and Book 2, ch. 10, n. 5 at the end.
(10) Paris and London Polyglot Bibles.