The Tyrian (from Tyre) coins contained the highest silver content of all the coins being used by pilgrims throughout the Jewish Diaspora of that time. Craftily, the Sadducean “Board of Directors” of Temple, Inc. decided that the only half-shekel coin they would permit to be used to pay each Jew’s annual Temple tax (for a month prior to Passover and twenty days thereafter) would be Tyrian half-sheckels.12 So all those pilgrims that brought other coins, such as bronze and low-silver content coins from