Money transactions in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: The Coin of the Realm. In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi’ Talmud study, the finer points of monetary transactions, and the attendant honesty ingrained in them.

Today, we are used to thinking of buying and selling as an activity exclusively connected with money: you buy things by paying money and sell them in exchange for money. For the Talmud, however, money is considered only a special case of purchase and sale; the standard transaction is imagined as a barter, a direct exchange of goods. In a barter transaction, Jewish law says that the sale is completed when the buyer “pulls” the item he is buying: that is, he literally puts his hands on it and takes it into his possession. This makes sense when you are talking about, say, an ox or a cow.

But it raises a question about monetary transactions. When, exactly, is a money transaction completed? ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.