And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: "When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel, according to their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel, according to their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the LORD, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary--the shekel is twenty gerahs--half a shekel for an offering to the LORD. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and upward, shall give the offering of the LORD. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less, than the half shekel, when they give the offering of the LORD, to make atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money from the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may be a memorial for the children of Israel before the LORD, to make atonement for your souls." [Exodus 30:11 - 16]
My thesis is that if you follow the various 'coin' references in the gospel you will find that the process of surrendering a coin at the start of the new year (= immersion in flames, weighing by scales and anointing) symbolized not only the judgment and resurrection of the soul but also the actual rites of the Alexandrian Church (which mirrored the expected judgment of the dead).
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."