HISTORY OF TITHING
Financial tithes and offerings are critical to the success of religion. It should not be necessary to say, but it is a fact that religion would not exist except for obedience to doctrines of tithing.

As is true for most major religious doctrines, there is much disagreement about tithing. An internet search for tithe, tithes and tithing will yield hundreds of sites where analysis of the pros and cons of tithing can be found. That there is such disagreement is a clue that none of the commentators/theologians, whether Jews or Christians, understand the spiritual meaning of tithing. This is the predictable result when people try to apply literal interpretations to the study of spiritual matters.

STUDY TIP: See Place Where God Will Place His Name for the spiritual understanding of the place to which tithes are to be brought.

Also see Religion is Commerce, Examples of Business and Commerce in Religion, Jesus and the Money-Changers in the Temple, and What Jesus Said About Money.

We do not doubt the sincerity of religious leaders who have done their best to make sense of the Biblical commands about tithing. No doubt they want to be “Biblical” in practicing their faith and try hard to make practical sense of confusing scriptures about the various kinds of tithes and when they should be given. But more than that, they have real self interest in tithes and offerings: If financial support does not come in, they are out of a job. God says such people are greedy for unjust gain. They preach about tithing and shamelessly ask for offerings, but they never remind people that God’s word is a free gift. When they ask to receive offerings that support their position that enables them to teach God’s word, they violate Jesus’ command about freely giving.

Failure of religious leaders to reconcile all scriptures on tithes and offerings into a comprehensive set of Biblical doctrines is what happens when anyone tries to interpret scripture from an Old/First Covenant perspective that is based on literal interpretations of scripture. Lacking a New Covenant perspective that gets to the symbolic meaning of the literal commandments, they will necessarily stumble and fail in their attempts to pull it all together in a way that makes sense and is defensible with respect to Old/First Covenant interpretations of the literal Bible.

STUDY TIPS: We have discussed the issue of literal and symbolic Biblical interpretations in Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 1, Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 2, and Literal or Symbolic Interpretation Part 3.

The tithing controversy is complicated by the fact that tithing was a common practice in ancient cultures. This Wikipedia article provides an historical overview of tithing in many different cultures and in many different eras. Tithing practices by other cultures are important to know because God has clearly said that his people should not follow the customs of other nations. Therefore, Jews and Christians who tithe according to their understanding of some scriptures make the mistake of violating other scriptures. It would not be like God to set them up for such a dilemma.

The following are quotes from Christian resources about the history of tithing. We do not vouch for the veracity of any of these resources. We include them here only to establish further historical evidence that material tithing was a common practice in ancient cultures.

Christianity Today
While the New Testament contains no explicit command to tithe, many have argued that this relationship between the Levites and the other tribes of Israel prefigures how Christians should provide for their ministers. This view of tithing, known as parallelism, gained prominence in the church around the sixth century.

Many non-Jewish and pre-Christian societies also practiced tithe-like giving. Some ancient sources describe how kings imposed a type of first-fruits tax to maintain holy shrines and support clergy. From Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonia to the temples of Apollo in Delphi and Athena in Athens, pre-Christian centers of worship collected tithes for their gods. Ancient cultures as disparate as the Greeks and Chinese—including the Arabians, Phoenicians, Romans, and Carthaginians—gave in ways mirroring the tithe. Some scholars believe ancient cultures hit on the seemingly arbitrary figure of one-tenth because they often did calculations on their fingers.

SUNScholar
This dissertation addresses the topic, “Theological perspectives on Tithing in the Old Testament and their implications for believing communities in Africa.” … Opponents query the biblical basis, point to abuses such as the lifestyles of pastors, and allege the commercialization of the gospel. Dispensationalists query the case for tithing in the New Testament, and the degree of reliance on the Old Testament where the situation might be different from ours. … So the research seeks to answer the questions about the theological basis for the adoption of the tithe system as a means of mobilizing local resources in support of the Church’s programmes, among others. … In order to achieve this, chapter two presented a survey of tithing in the Ancient Near East and Old Testament. It was shown that the concept of tithing was not peculiar to Ancient Israel; it was also found in other Ancient Eastern cultures like Ancient Egypt, Old and New Babylonia, Assyria, and Ugarit. Whereas the tithe system in the Old Testament was always theologically motivated, it was not always the case in other examples from the Ancient Near East.

tektonics.org
Within the context of the OT references to the tithe are made to refer to that which was given as support to a certain person (like Melchizedek) or an institution (the priesthood). But there is a point of background interest here. Clearly Abraham and Jacob practiced a tithe before the time of the law. There is good reason for this: Tithing was a widespread custom in the Ancient Near East, and it was commonly practiced for the support of kings and sanctuaries…. Sarna (Genesis commentary, 110) offers an example of pagan “tithing” in the Ugaritic (Canaanite) literature; the tithe was paid to a local king. Salstrand [The Tithe, 15] mentions secular examples of the “ten percent rule” in Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. We even see an example of a “secular” tithe in the OT: 1 Sam. 8:15-17. A very important initial point may be derived from this. The “ten percent” rule was a construct of the Ancient Near East even before the law was introduced.

Sanderson Beck
The state got revenue from taxes, and the temples received tithes, which averaged about ten percent of income. The Eanna temple of Uruk owned more than 5,000 cattle and over a 100,000 sheep. Those who could not pay the tithe might borrow it or even give their children to the temple as slaves. Scribes served not only government administration but as business accountants as well. In 553 BC Nabonidus appointed a royal commissioner in the Eanna temple to make sure that the state got its taxes from the temple. Temples also had to provide services to the palace, and the king began to regulate temple rations to slaves, salaries, and rental rates. Such policies may have induced the priests to prefer Cyrus to their own king

ministrymagazine.org
Although theologians disagree about the origin, purpose, and principle of tithing, they all agree on one point: It is of great antiquity. The Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Sumerians paid a tenth of their incomes to their gods as a fixed rule centuries before God through the prophet Malachi accused the Hebrews of robbing God when they withheld their tithes. In fact, one of the largest buildings in Babylon was the storehouse for the tithes used in heathen worship. Aristotle, Xenophon, Herodotus, Pliny, and Cicero all mention the payment of the tithe as a very old custom amounting to a law in their day among their people.

This may have led critics to suggest that the Jews borrowed this custom from heathen nations. Wouldn’t it be more logical to conclude that these people borrowed their practice from some ancient directive dating back to the Fall of Adam and Eve? The payment of the tithe did not originate with the Hebrews, but seems to be a common expression of the recognition of God’s sovereignty.

The Bible is strangely economical on the subject. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance lists only 39 references to tithing. It seems strange that such a basic principle of Christian belief would enjoy such limited reference unless, of course, it was so generally recognized and self-evident that it required only incidental mention. This could be one of its strongest evidences of validity.

To further support the fact that tithing was a common religious practice in antiquity, we offer links to the following scholarly writings about the practices of ancient religions before, during and after the giving of the law of Moses in which the details of Biblical tithing are mentioned.

The important fact to be learned from the history of tithing is that the practice did not originate with the giving of the Law of Moses. This is important because it establishes the historical context in which God uses tithes and offerings of agricultural produce (e.g. grain, wine, oil, animals, etc.) that can be seen, handled and traded to communicate his expectations about spiritual tithes and offerings that are invisible and untouchable.

The history of tithes and offerings by other religions is especially important when we consider God’s commandments that Israel should not follow the customs of other religious nations. With these commandments in mind, we must conclude that it was never God’s intention that his people, past and present, should give physical tithes and offerings of any kind. He only uses these religious practices to symbolically represent spiritual tithes and offerings that he really wants. This representation is a good example of the “first the natural and then the spiritual” principle found throughout the Bible.

So we know what the natural tithes and offerings are, but this does not explain what spiritual tithes are. For that understanding, we must listen to God’s voice.