Unholy Dilemma by Shuey Bill

Author:Shuey, Bill [Shuey, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2015-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

The threshing floor

“Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshing floor, that I may build an altar therein unto the Lord: thou shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may be stayed from the people.” 1 Chronicles 21:22

Even though an angel had accompanied David on his visit to Ornan, and scared the man nearly to death, David insisted on paying the full value for the property. The price would have been about fifteen pounds (in weight) of gold or roughly $283,200.00 by today’s standard value of gold. So the property itself was not terribly expensive. But the 100,000 talents of gold and 100 million talents of silver that David supposedly provided to his son Solomon for the construction of the temple was no small amount. When we convert the talents to pounds, the gold would have weighed about 7,539,809 pounds, and the silver 75,398,093 pounds. Their value on today’s market would be $889,697,505.72 and $1,221,449,117.41 respectively—quite a bit of pocket change!

There is no evidence to suggest the Israelites were ever more than a confederation of nomadic tribes which drifted into Canaan. They were, after all, conquered with comparable ease; first the northern tribes by Assyria, and then their southern kinfolk by Babylonia. The reality is the Israelites cannot be confirmed as major role players in Middle Eastern politics during the time period in question. Neither can a David or Solomon be independently verified as ever having existed, let alone as dynamic, influential leaders. Therefore, there is no reason to view the writer’s claim of this tremendous volume of gold and silver as anything more than sheer embellishment of his story or downright fabricated nonsense.

More money problems

“and gave for the service of the house of God of gold five thousand talents and ten thousand drams, and of silver ten thousand talents, and of brass eighteen thousand talents, and one hundred thousand talents of iron.”

1 Chronicles 29:7

The problem here is not so much the inflated amount of money, even though the amount the writer claimed was an outrageous amount—but the source and date of the coinage. A dram is the same as a darics. 3 The problem here is the darics was first struck by the great Darius, son of Hystaspes (521-485 BCE). So are we therefore expected to believe the that Israelites dealt in coinage which was not minted for another 400 years—and gave these non-existent coins as their offering for the building of the temple?

The other possibility is that this part of Chronicles was not written or rewritten until sometime during the sixth or fifth century BCE and the writer merely used the coinage of the day. No matter the explanation, the writer’s claim does add another layer of disbelief into an already highly incredible narrative.

The value of Pi

“Also he [Solomon] made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.”

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