athen, was in part, covered with pens for sheep, goats, and cattle,
for the feast and the thank-offerings. Sellers shouted the merits of
their beasts, sheep bleated, and oxen lowed. It was, in fact, the great
yearly fair of Jerusalem, and the crowds added to the din and tumult,
till the services in the neighboring courts were sadly disturbed.
Sellers of doves, for poor women coming for purification from all parts
of the country, and for others, had a space set apart for them. Indeed,
the sale of doves was, in great measure, secretly, in the hands of the
priests themselves: Hannas, the high priest, especially, gaining great
profits from his dove cotes on Mount Olivet. The rents of the sheep and
cattle pens, and the profits on the doves, had led the priests to
sanction the incongruity of thus turning the Temple itself into a noisy
market. Nor was this all. Potters pressed on the pilgrims their clay
dishes and ovens for the Passover lamb; hundreds of traders recommended
their wares aloud; shops for wine, oil, salt, and all else needed for
sacrifices, invited customers; and, in addition, persons going across
the city, with all kinds of burdens, shortened their journey by crossing
the Temple grounds. The provision for paying the tribute, levied on all,
for the support of the Temple, added to the distraction. On both sides
of the east Temple gate, stalls had for generations been permitted for
changing foreign money. From the fifteenth of the preceding month
money-changers had been allowed to set up their tables in the city, and
from the twenty-first,--or twenty days before the Passover,--to ply
their trade in the Temple itself. Purchasers of materials for offerings
paid the amount at special stalls, to an officer of the Temple, and
received a leaden cheque for which they got what they had bought, from
the seller. Large sums, moreover, were changed, to be cast, as free
offerings, into one of the thirteen chests which formed the Temple
treasury. Every Jew, no matter how poor, was, in addition, required to
pay yearly a half-shekel--about eighteen pence--as atonement money for
his soul, and for the support of the Temple. As this would not be
received except in a native coin, called the Temple shekel, which was
not generally current, strangers had to change their Roman, Greek, or
Eastern money, at the stalls of the money-changers, to get the coin
required. The trade gave ready means for fraud, which was only too
common. Five per cen