A Jewish Pseudo-Coin of Yehoshua Bin Nun, Ephrati

Abstract

An apparently unique bronze pseudo-coin, likely of the seventeenth century, which implicitly
references the prophet Joshua (Yehoshua bin Nun, Ephrati) is the subject of this article. A line
drawing of the type, possibly of this very coin, was published in Vilna in 1828 by Levinsohn, a
scholarly Hebraist who had seen and drawn the coin in a private Polish collection several years
earlier; the drawing was re-published in 1913 by Raffaeli in Jerusalem. It is suggested that the
coin may have been issued in support of then-current messianic expectations, specifically of
a Messiah, son of Joseph.