TITHES. In the ancient Near East lie the origins of a sacral offering or payment of a tenth part of stated goods or property to the deity. Often given to the king or to the royal temple, the "tenth" was usually approximate, not exact. The practice is known from Mesopotamia, Syria-Palestine, Greece, and as far to the west as the Phoenician city of Carthage. Tithing also continued in Christian Europe as a church tithe and as a tax upon Jewish landholdings formerly owned by Christians (or claimed to have been so). Tithes paid in support of parish rectors continued in England into the twentieth century.

Early texts associate the tithe with support of the king and of temples of the royal house (see Am. 4:4, 7:1, 7:13; see also Samuel's forecast of actions to be taken by the king, 1 Sm. 8:15, 8:17). The early biblical references to the tithe in Genesis 14:20 and 28:22 are...