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53-563: The word shekel is based on the triliteral Proto-Semitic root ṯql , cognate to the Akkadian šiqlu or siqlu , a unit of weight equivalent to the Sumerian gin2 . Use of the word was first attested in c.  2150 BC under the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad , and later in c.  1700 BC in the Code of Hammurabi . The Hebrew reflex of the root šql is found in

106-587: A list of the twelve tribes. However, the Tribe of Dan is omitted while Joseph is mentioned alongside Manasseh . In the vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem , the tribes' names (the names of the twelve sons of Jacob ) are written on the city gates ( Ezekiel 48:30–35 & Revelation 21:12–13 ). In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , a patriarchal blessing usually contains a declaration of

159-642: A mix of biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots. A triliteral or triconsonantal root ( Hebrew : שורש תלת־עיצורי , šoreš təlat-ʻiṣuri ; Arabic : جذر ثلاثي , jiḏr ṯulāṯī ; Syriac : ܫܪܫܐ , šeršā ) is a root containing a sequence of three consonants. The following are some of the forms which can be derived from the triconsonantal root k-t-b כ־ת־ב ك-ت-ب (general overall meaning "to write") in Hebrew and Arabic: Note: The Hebrew fricatives stemming from begadkefat lenition are transcribed here as "ḵ", "ṯ" and "ḇ", to retain their connection with

212-411: A pre- Natufian cultural background, i.e., older than c.  14500 BCE . As we have no texts from any Semitic language older than c.  3500 BCE , reconstructions of Proto-Semitic are inferred from these more recent Semitic texts. A quadriliteral is a consonantal root containing a sequence of four consonants (instead of three consonants , as is more often the case). A quadriliteral form

265-456: A sequence of five consonants. Traditionally, in Semitic languages, forms with more than four basic consonants (i.e. consonants not introduced by morphological inflection or derivation) were occasionally found in nouns, mainly in loanwords from other languages, but never in verbs. However, in modern Israeli Hebrew, syllables are allowed to begin with a sequence of two consonants (a relaxation of

318-621: A silver content of 6.87 grams. According to the Jewish historian Josephus , the annual monetary tribute of the half-Shekel to the Temple at Jerusalem was equivalent to two Athenian drachmæ , each Athenian or Attic drachma weighing a little over 4.3 grams. The First Jewish Revolt coinage was issued from AD 66 to 70 amid the First Jewish–Roman War as a means of emphasizing the independence of Judea from Roman rule and replacing

371-447: A strong wind'. The conjugation of this small class of verb roots is explained by Wolf Leslau . Unlike the Hebrew examples, these roots conjugate in a manner more like regular verbs, producing no indivisible clusters. Twelve Tribes of Israel The Twelve Tribes of Israel ( Hebrew : שִׁבְטֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל , romanized :  Šīḇṭēy Yīsrāʾēl , lit.   'Staffs of Israel') are, according to Hebrew scriptures ,

424-524: A subset of the verb derivations formed from triliteral roots are allowed with quadriliteral roots. For example, in Hebrew, the Piʿel, Puʿal, and Hiṯpaʿel , and in Arabic, forms similar to the stem II and stem V forms of triliteral roots . Another set of quadriliteral roots in modern Hebrew is the set of secondary roots. A secondary root is a root derived from a word that was derived from another root. For example,

477-564: A symbolic tradition as part of a national founding myth , although some scholars disagree with this view. Jacob, later called Israel, was the second-born son of Isaac and Rebecca , the younger twin brother of Esau , and the grandson of Abraham and Sarah . According to biblical texts, he was chosen by God to be the patriarch of the Israelite nation. From what is known of Jacob, he had two wives, sisters Leah and Rachel , and two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah . The twelve sons form

530-492: A tribe. The sons of Jacob were born in Padan-aram from different mothers, as follows: Deuteronomy 27:12–13 lists the twelve tribes: Jacob elevated the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh (the two sons of Joseph and his Egyptian wife Asenath ) to the status of full tribes in their own right due to Joseph receiving a double portion after Reuben lost his birth right because of his transgression with Bilhah. In

583-591: Is a word derived from such a four-consonant root. For example, the abstract quadriliteral root t-r-g-m / t-r-j-m gives rise to the verb forms תרגם ‎ tirgem in Hebrew, ترجم ‎ tarjama in Arabic, ተረጐመ täräggwämä in Amharic , all meaning "he translated". In some cases, a quadriliteral root is actually a reduplication of a two-consonant sequence. So in Hebrew דגדג ‎ digdeg / Arabic دغدغ ‎ daġdaġa means "he tickled", and in Arabic زلزل ‎ zalzala means "he shook". Generally, only

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636-434: Is widely known among all ancient peoples. Archaeology has found that many of these personal names of ancestors originally were the names of clans, tribes, localities, or nations. [...] if the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are those of mythological ancestors and not of historical persons, then many stories of the patriarchal and Mosaic age lose their historic validity. They may indeed partly reflect dim reminiscences of

689-696: The Land of Israel , but also to Jews living outside the Land of Israel. Archaeological excavations conducted at Horvat 'Ethri in Israel from 1999 to 2001 by Boaz Zissu and Amir Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have yielded important finds, the most-prized of which being a half-Shekel coin minted in the 2nd century CE, upon which are embossed the words "Half-Shekel" in paleo-Hebrew ( Hebrew : חצי השקל ). The same coin possesses

742-575: The Tribe of Levi ) are descendants of a single Levite ancestor who came to Europe from the Middle East roughly 1,750 years ago. The growth of this specific lineage aligns with the expansion patterns seen in other founding groups of Ashkenazi Jews. This means that a relatively small number of original ancestors have had a large impact on the genetic makeup of today's Ashkenazi population. Attributed arms are Western European coats of arms given retrospectively to persons real or fictitious who died before

795-574: The Tyrian shekel with its image of a foreign god which had previously been minted to pay the temple tax. The Bar Kochba shekel was issued from AD 132 to 135 amid the Bar Kokhba revolt for similar reasons. The Punic or Carthaginian shekel was typically around 7.2 grams in silver and 7.5 grams in gold (suggesting an exchange rate of 12:1). It was apparently first developed in Sicily during

848-510: The four canonical gospels are those who exchanged worshippers' baser common currency for such shekels. The “ 30 pieces of silver ” paid by the chief priests to Judas Iscariot in exchange for his betrayal of Jesus may be a reference to the Tyrian shekel. The shekel ( sheqel in direct transcription) replaced the Israeli pound ( Hebrew : לִירָה , lira ) in 1980. Its currency symbol

901-545: The tribes of Israel ), suggesting that there were other common measures of a shekel in use, or at least that the Temple authorities defined a standard for the shekel to be used for Temple purposes. According to Levitical law , whenever a census of the Israelites was to be conducted, every person that was counted was required to pay the half-shekel for his atonement ( Exodus 30:11–16 ). The Aramaic tekel , similar to

954-458: The 'period of the Judges' is widely considered doubtful. The extent to which a united Kingdom of Israel ever existed is also a matter of ongoing dispute. Living in exile in the sixth century BC, the prophet Ezekiel has a vision for the restoration of Israel, of a future in which the twelve tribes of Israel are living in their land again. According to Joshua 13–19 , the Land of Israel

1007-464: The Bible, the twelve tribes of Israel are sons of a man called Jacob or Israel, as Edom or Esau is the brother of Jacob, and Ishmael and Isaac are the sons of Abraham . Elam and Ashur , names of two ancient nations, are sons of a man called Shem . Sidon , a Phoenician town, is the first-born of Canaan ; the lands of Egypt and Abyssinia are the sons of Ham . This kind of mythological geography

1060-638: The English language via the Hebrew Bible , where it is first used in Genesis 23 . The term "shekel" has been used for a unit of weight, around 9.6 or 9.8 grams (0.31 or 0.32 ozt), used in Bronze Age Europe for balance weights and fragments of bronze that may have served as money. The earliest shekels were a unit of weight, used as other units such as grams and troy ounces for trading before

1113-625: The Hebrew shekel , used during the feast of Belshazzar according to the Book of Daniel and defined as weighed, shares a common root with the word shekel and may even additionally attest to its original usage as a weight. During the Second Temple period , it was customary among Jews to annually offer the half-Shekel into the Temple treasury, for the upkeep and maintenance of the Temple precincts, as also used in purchasing public animal offerings. This practice not only applied to Jews living in

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1166-607: The Hebrew words for "to weigh" ( shaqal ), "weight" ( mishqal ) and "consideration" ( shiqqul ). It is cognate to the Aramaic root tql and the Arabic root ṯql ( ث ق ل , in words such as thiqāl "weight", thāqil "heavy" or mithqal , a unit of weight). The famous writing on the wall in the Book of Daniel includes a cryptic use of the word in Aramaic: " Mene, mene, teqel, u-farsin ". Shekel came into

1219-603: The Hebrews' tribal past, but in their specific detail they are fiction." Norman Gottwald argued that the division into twelve tribes originated as an administrative scheme under King David. Additionally, the Mesha Stele (carved c. 840 BCE) mentions Omri as King of Israel and also mentions "the men of Gad ". Recent studies of genetic markers within Jewish populations strongly suggest that modern Ashkenazi Levites ( Jewish males who claim patrilineal descent from

1272-476: The Israelite national founding myth : the number 12 was not a real number, but an ideal number, which had symbolic significance in Near Eastern cultures with duodecimal counting systems, from which, among other things, the modern 12-hour clock is derived. Biblical scholar Arthur Peake saw the tribes originating as postdiction , as eponymous metaphor giving an aetiology of the connectedness of

1325-566: The Persian period would have required at least 22 shekels of income per year. Exodus 30:24 notes that the measures of the ingredients for the holy anointing oil were to be calculated using the Shekel of the Sanctuary (see also Exodus 38:24–26 , and similarly at Numbers 3:47 for payment for the redemption of 273 first-born males and at Numbers 7:12–88 for the offerings of the leaders of

1378-458: The advent of coins. The shekel was common among western Semitic speakers . Moabites , Edomites , and Phoenicians used the shekel, although proper coinage developed very late. Carthaginian coinage was based on the shekel and may have preceded its home town of Tyre in issuing proper coins. Coins were used and may have been invented by the early Anatolian traders who stamped their marks to avoid weighing each time used. Herodotus states that

1431-535: The ancient world range widely. The Code of Hammurabi (circa 1800 BC) sets the value of unskilled labour at approximately ten shekels per year of work, confirmed in Israelite law by comparing Deut 15:18 with Exod 21:32 . Later, records within the Achaemenid Empire (539–333 BC) give ranges from a minimum of two shekels per month for unskilled labour, to as high as seven to ten shekels per month in some records. A subsistence wage for an urban household during

1484-414: The basis for the twelve tribes of Israel, listed in the order from oldest to youngest: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. Jacob was known to display favoritism among his children, particularly for Joseph and Benjamin, the sons of his favorite wife, Rachel, and so the tribes themselves were not treated equally in a divine sense. Joseph, despite being

1537-496: The biblical narrative the period from the conquest of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua until the formation of the United Kingdom of Israel passed with the tribes forming a loose confederation, described in the Book of Judges . Modern scholarship has called into question the beginning, middle, and end of this picture and the account of the conquest under Joshua has largely been abandoned. The Bible's depiction of

1590-550: The consonantal root כ־ת־ב k-t-b. They are pronounced [ x ] , [ θ ] , [ β ] in Biblical Hebrew and [ χ ] , [ t ] , [ v ] in Modern Hebrew respectively. Modern Hebrew has no gemination ; where there was historically gemination, they are reduced to single consonants, with consonants in the begadkefat remaining the same. In Hebrew grammatical terminology,

1643-461: The descendants of the biblical patriarch Jacob (also known as Israel), who collectively form the Israelite nation . The tribes were through his twelve sons through his wives, Leah and Rachel , and his concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah . In modern scholarship, there is skepticism as to whether there ever were twelve Israelite tribes, with the use of the number 12 thought more likely to signify

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1696-491: The eponymous ancestors, and even whether the earliest version of this tradition assumes the existence of twelve tribes. Biblical lists of tribes, not all of which number 12, include the following: Scholars such as Max Weber (in Ancient Judaism ) and Ronald M. Glassman (2017) concluded that there never was a fixed number of tribes. Instead, the idea that there were always twelve tribes should be regarded as part of

1749-475: The first coinage was issued by Croesus , King of Lydia , spreading to the golden Daric (worth 20 sigloi or shekel), issued by the Achaemenid Empire and the silver Athenian obol and drachma . Early coins were money stamped with an official seal to certify their weight. Silver ingots, some with markings were issued. Later authorities decided who designed coins. As with many ancient units,

1802-631: The formation of actual words by adding the vowels and non-root consonants (or " transfixes ") which go with a particular morphological category around the root consonants, in an appropriate way, generally following specific patterns. It is a peculiarity of Semitic linguistics that a large majority of these consonantal roots are triliterals (although there are a number of quadriliterals, and in some languages also biliterals). Such roots are also common in other Afroasiatic languages. While Berber mostly has triconsonantal roots, Chadic , Omotic , and Cushitic have mostly biconsonantal roots, and Egyptian shows

1855-400: The good things We have provided you.' And they did not wrong Us, but they used to wrong [only] themselves." For thousands of years, Christians and Jews have accepted the history of the twelve tribes as fact. Since the 19th century, however, historical criticism has examined the veracity of the historical account; whether the twelve tribes ever existed as they are described, the historicity of

1908-554: The lineage of the recipient of blessing in relation to the twelve tribes of Israel. The Quran (7th century CE) states that the people of Moses were split into twelve tribes. Surah 7 ( Al-A'raf ) verse 160 says: "We split them up into twelve tribal communities, and We revealed to Moses , when his people asked him for water, [saying], 'Strike the rock with your cane,' whereat twelve fountains gushed forth from it. Every tribe came to know its drinking-place. And We shaded them with clouds, and We sent down to them manna and quails: 'Eat of

1961-727: The mid-4th century BC. It was associated with the payment of Carthage's mercenary armies and was repeatedly devalued over the course of each of the Punic Wars . The amount and quality of this currency however increased as a result of the Carthaginian Empire's expansion into Spain under the Barcid dynasty before the Second Punic War and recovery under Hannibal before the Third Punic War . Throughout, it

2014-700: The other of them was the original form of the Afroasiatic verb. According to one study of the Proto-Semitic lexicon, biconsonantal roots are more abundant for words denoting Stone Age materials, whereas materials discovered during the Neolithic are uniquely triconsonantal. This implies a change in Proto-Semitic language structure concomitant with the transition to agriculture . In particular, monosyllabic biconsonantal names are associated with

2067-475: The relation between: The Hebrew root ש־ק־ף ‎ – √sh-q-p "look out/through" or "reflect" deriving from ק־ף ‎ – √q-p "bend, arch, lean towards" and similar verbs fit into the shaCCéC verb-pattern. This verb-pattern sh-C-C is usually causative , cf. There is debate about whether both biconsonantal and triconsonantal roots were represented in Proto-Afroasiatic , or whether one or

2120-428: The root מ-ס-פ-ר ‎ m-s-p-r is secondary to the root ס-פ-ר ‎ s-p-r . סָפַר ‎ saphar , from the root s-p-r , means "counted"; מִסְפָּר ‎ mispar , from the same root, means "number"; and מִסְפֶּר ‎ misper , from the secondary root מ-ס-פ-ר ‎, means "numbered". An irregular quadriliteral verb made from a loanword is: A quinqueliteral is a consonantal root containing

2173-500: The root have not gained the same currency in cross-linguistic Semitic scholarship as the Hebrew equivalents, and Western grammarians continue to use "stem"/"form"/"pattern" for the former and "root" for the latter—though "form" and "pattern" are accurate translations of the Arabic grammatical term wazan (originally meaning 'weight, measure'), and "root" is a literal translation of jiḏr . Although most roots in Hebrew seem to be triliteral, many of them were originally biliteral, cf.

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2226-407: The second-youngest son, received double the inheritance of his brothers, treated as if he were the firstborn son instead of Reuben, and so his tribe was later split into two tribes, named after his sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. The Israelites were the descendants of twelve sons of the biblical patriarch Jacob . Jacob also had at least one daughter, Dinah , whose descendants were not recognized as

2279-532: The shekel had a variety of values depending on the era, government and region; weights between 7 and 17 grams and values of 11, 14, and 17 grams are common. A two-shekel weight recently recovered near the temple area in Jerusalem and dated to the period of the First Temple weighs 23 grams, giving a weight of 11.5 grams per shekel in Israel during the monarchy. When used to pay labourers, recorded wages in

2332-461: The situation in early Semitic, where only one consonant was allowed), which has opened the door for a very small set of loan words to manifest apparent five root-consonant forms, such as טלגרף ‎ tilgref "he telegraphed". However, -lgr- always appears as an indivisible cluster in the derivation of this verb and so the five root-consonant forms do not display any fundamentally different morphological patterns from four root-consonant forms (and

2385-518: The term "quinqueliteral" or "quinquiliteral" would be misleading if it implied otherwise). Only a few Hebrew quinqueliterals are recognized by the Academy of the Hebrew Language as proper, or standard; the rest are considered slang. Other examples are: In Amharic , there is a very small set of verbs which are conjugated as quinqueliteral roots. One example is wäšänäffärä 'rain fell with

2438-533: The tribal names are "not personal names, but the names of ethnic groups, geographical regions, and local deities. E.g. Benjamin , meaning "son of the south" (the location of its territory relative to Samaria ), or Asher , a Phoenician territory whose name may be an allusion to the goddess Asherah ." Historian Immanuel Lewy in Commentary mentions "the Biblical habit of representing clans as persons. In

2491-412: The tribe to others in the Israelite confederation. Translator Paul Davidson argued: "The stories of Jacob and his children, then, are not accounts of historical Bronze Age people. Rather, they tell us how much later Jews and Israelites understood themselves, their origins, and their relationship to the land, within the context of folktales that had evolved over time." He goes on to argue that most of

2544-570: The tribes receiving an allotment were: The twelve tribes of Israel are referred to in the New Testament . In the gospels of Matthew ( 19:28 ) and Luke ( 22:30 ), Jesus anticipates that in the Kingdom of God his disciples will "sit on [twelve] thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel". The Epistle of James ( 1:1 ) addresses his audience as "the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad". The Book of Revelation ( 7:1–8 ) gives

2597-544: The weight of any precious metal. With the 2014 series of notes, the Bank of Israel abandoned the transcriptions Sheqel and Sheqalim in favor of the standard English forms Shekel and Shekels . Triliteral The roots of verbs and most nouns in the Semitic languages are characterized as a sequence of consonants or " radicals " (hence the term consonantal root ). Such abstract consonantal roots are used in

2650-523: The word binyan ( Hebrew : בניין , plural בניינים binyanim ) is used to refer to a verb derived stem or overall verb derivation pattern, while the word mishqal (or mishkal ) is used to refer to a noun derivation pattern , and these words have gained some use in English-language linguistic terminology. The Arabic terms, called وزن wazan (plural أوزان , awzān ) for the pattern and جذر jiḏr (plural جذور , juḏūr ) for

2703-443: Was ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ , although it was more commonly notated as ש or IS . It was subdivided into 100 new agorot (אגורות חדשות). It was replaced in 1985 by the new shekel , due to hyperinflation . Its currency symbol is ⟨  ₪  ⟩ , although it is often notated as ש״ח or NIS . It is subdivided into 100 agorot . Both Israeli shekels are solely units of fiat currency , and not related to

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2756-441: Was divided into twelve sections corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel. However, the tribes receiving land differed from the biblical tribes. The Tribe of Levi had no land appropriation but had six Cities of Refuge under their administration as well as the Temple in Jerusalem . There was no land allotment for the Tribe of Joseph , but Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh , received their father's land portion. Thus

2809-636: Was more common for Carthage's holdings in North Africa to employ bronze or no coinage except when paying mercenary armies and for most of the coins to circulate in Iberia, Sardinia, and Sicily. The Tyrian shekel began to be issued c.  300 BC . Owing to the relative purity of its silver, it became the preferred medium of payment for the Temple tax in Jerusalem , despite its royal and pagan imagery. The money changers expelled by Jesus in

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