Jeremiah's Prophecy on 17 Shekels of Silver

Matthew 27:9-10 concludes the final story of Judas Iscariot with a quotation from the Hebrew Scripture showing how the events around his final days were predicted. In the New King James Version of the Bible, it is translated as:

These verses can be more literally translated as:

What Matthew means in these two verses is that the chief priests took the thirty silver coins to buy the potter's field, whose price had been set by the children of Israel in the time of Jeremiah the prophet.

In the book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah received the word from God about 17 shekels of silver, which was recorded in Jeremiah 32:6-15,

In this passage, the prophet tells us that he purchased a field in Anathoth from Hanamel, his uncle's son, with a price of 17 shekels of silver. The deed was sealed and kept in an earthen vessel that may have lasted for many days (verse 14). The houses, fields, and vineyards would be possessed again in this land by purchasing them according to the price of 17 shekels of silver sealed in the original purchase deed.

Why did God instruct Jeremiah to keep the purchase deed for many days? This was because God had the foreknowledge that the chief priests would purchase the potter's field with the price according to the original purchase deed. Since Anathoth is located about 3 miles north of Jerusalem, it is likely that the field Jeremiah purchased should have been the potter's field Matthew referred to.

What silver coins did the chief priests pay Judas Iscariot for his betrayal? According to the information in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekel, it was customary among the Jews to annually offer a half-shekel coin to the temple treasury, for the upkeep and maintenance of the temple precincts and on the purchase of public animal-offerings during the second temple period. This practice did not only apply to the Jews living in the land of Israel, but also to the Jews living outside the land of Israel. This information leads us to believe that the chief priests paid Judas half-shekel coins, which were offered by the Jews.

In 2008, a Judaea half-shekel coin was discovered in Horvat Ethry. The coin was minted in 67/68 AD and weighed 6.69 grams. It has "Half Shekel" imprinted in Hebrew, chalice with beaded rim, date above/"Jerusalem is holy" in Hebrew, sprig of three pomegranates (see the website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JUDAEA_Half_Sheke.jpg).

Since an ancient shekel in the time of Jeremiah was equal to 11 grams, one 6.69-gram Judaean half-shekel coin in the time of Messiah should have weighed 6.69 grams/(11 grams/ ancient shekel ) = 0.6082 ancient shekels. Then 30 Judaean half-shekel coins should have weighed 30×0.6082 ancient shekels = 18.245 ancient shekels.

If Matthew is right, the 30 Judaean half-shekel coins with the weight of 18.245 ancient shekels must contain exactly 17 shekels of silver. If we know the purity of the silver coins, we can calculate their silver content. It was known that the Tyrian shekel coins were issued by the Tyrians between 126 BC and 56 AD. After the Roman Empire closed down the mint in Tyre, the Roman authorities allowed the Jewish Rabbani to continue minting Tyrian shekels in Palestine, but with the requirement that the coins should continue to bear the same image and text to avoid objections that the Jews were given autonomy. They were replaced by the First Jewish Revolt coinage in 66 AD. This information leads us to believe that the Judaea half-shekel coin should have the same purity as the Tyrian shekel coin, which contained about 94% of silver.

With 94% of silver in the coins, the 30 Judaean half-shekel coins should have contained 17.15 ancient shekels of silver, very close to 17 ancient shekels priced for the field in the time of Jeremiah. According to the information in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius, the Denarius coin between 64 and 68 AD actually contains 93.5% silver. Using this more accurate number for the purity, we find that the 30 Judaean half-shekel coins contain 17.06 ancient shekels of silver, in excellent agreement with the prophecy of Jeremiah.

Matthew was right about the perfect fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah. However, Biblical scholars claim that the purchase of the potter's field was the fulfilment of a prophecy of Zechariah in Zechariah 11:12-13:

Matthew usually quoted the Hebrew Bible liberally from the source materials. But the verses in Matthew 27:9-10 do not exactly match any Hebrew Bible text. The closest Hebrew Bible text is Zechariah 11:13. One immediate complication with this verse is that if it quotes Zechariah, why does the author attribute it to Jeremiah? This misattribution has been noted since the earliest days of Christianity, and a number of explanations have been given. Many scholars have accepted that this was simply a mistake on the part of the writer. Other arguments to preserve Biblical inerrancy are that Jeremiah was a shorthand to refer to any of the prophets. All these arguments are handwave and have no foundation.

Now we have proved that Matthew did not make a mistake in quoting the prophecy of Jeremiah. The correctness of Matthew concerning the prophecy of Jeremiah further demonstrates that the author of the Gospel of Matthew was a true disciple of Yeshua, who was the true witness of Yeshua's ministry and recorded the words of Yeshua exactly. We will also show that several other numerical prophecies of Yeshua recorded in the Gospel of Matthew were perfectly fulfilled in the events recorded in the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation. All these facts prove that the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of John, and the book of Revelation are the inspired Word of God.

The Gospel of Matthew is the earliest Gospel written by Matthew, one of the twelve disciples of Yeshua, as demonstrated in the Acts of Barnabas. The book of the Acts of Barnabas tells us that Mark and Barnabas used the Gospel of Matthew to preach after they departed from Paul. If the book of the Acts of Barnabas truly recorded the story of Barnabas, we may conclude that the Gospel of Mark was not the earliest Gospel but a short and modified version of the Gospel of Matthew.