The Temple Tax: A Half-Shekel to Support the Second Temple

Jews throughout the world supported the Temple and its regular offerings through an annual half-shekel tax. The tax was associated with the half shekel that the Israelites contribute to the Tabernacle in Exodus 30:12–16, although there is no clear evidence of an annual half-shekel tax prior to the late Roman period. The Septuagint, followed by Philo, translates the biblical shekel as didrachmon, making the half shekel one drachma, but Josephus and the Gospel of Matthew (17:24) indicate that at the end the Second Temple period, the tax was two drachmas.

Philo’s philosophical work Who Is the Heir of Divine Things interprets the biblical characterization of the half shekel as “ransom for the soul” (Exodus 30:12) to mean that the half shekel is apportioned to God so that God will release the soul from passions and wrongdoings. In On the Embassy to Gaius, which recounts his diplomatic mission to Gaius Caligula on behalf of the Jews of Alexandria, Philo reminds the emperor of his great-grandfather Augustus’ support of Jewish practice, producing a letter from the Roman proconsul in Augustus’ time stating that the Jews should not be prevented from collecting the Temple tax. Josephus cites the same decree by Augustus in Jewish Antiquities, where he also describes how the tax was collected from the Jews of Babylonia. In The Jewish War, Josephus relates that after the destruction of the Temple, the Jews were forced to pay an equivalent two-drachma tax to Rome (see also “The Jewish Tax”). The Mishnah details the procedure for collecting the tax, which includes taking collateral from people who have not yet paid.