Money in the New Testament

The widow’s mite.

As the King James Bible tells it, money in the time of Jesus went something like this:

• 1 talent = 1,500 pieces of silver
• 1 piece of silver = 4 pence (or sometimes just 1)
• 1 penny (plural: pence) = 4 farthings
• 1 farthing = 2 mites

A penny was a day’s pay for a common labourer – 2,000 years ago, back when a penny was a penny!

This is a mishmash of Greek, Elizabethan, and Flemish money that made some kind of sense in England in 1611 when the King James Bible came out. But it would have made no kind of sense to the professional money changers of Jesus’s time. And, after decimalization and 408 years of inflation, it makes little sense now in 2019.

Examples of how the King James translates the Greek:

• Mt 10.29: “farthing” – assarion (two sparrows for one assarion)
• Mt 17.24: “tribute money” – didrachma
• Mt 17.27: “piece of money” – stater (coin found in the mouth of a fish)
• Mt 20.02: “penny” – denarius (daily pay)
• Mt 22.19: “penny” – denarius (to be rendered unto Caesar)
• Mt 25.15: “talent” – talent (parable of the talents)
• Mt 26.15: “30 pieces of silver” – 30 silvers (probably tetradrachms)
• Mk 12.42: “2 mites” – 2 lepta (widow’s mite)
• Mk 14.05: “300 pence” – 300 denarii (spikenard sold to give to the poor)
• Lk 10.35: “2 pence” – 2 denarii (paid to innkeeper by Good Samaritan)
• Lk 12.06: “farthing” – assarion (five sparrows for two assarions)
• Lk 15.08: “pieces of silver” – drachmas (parable of the lost coin)

Tyrian tetradrachms: the “pieces of silver” Judas was probably paid.

What underlies all of this:

Greek money:

• 1 talent = 21kg of silver = 6,000 drachmas
• 1 tetradrachm = 14g = 4 drachmas
• 1 stater = 7g = 1 didrachm = 2 drachmas
• 1 drachma = 3.5g

Roman money:

• 1 denarius = 3.9g of silver = 16 assarions
• 1 assarion = 0.24g = 4 quadrans
• 1 quadrans = 0.06g = 2 lepta (a Greek coin)

A shekel, used in Jewish law, was pegged at 4 drachmas.

For comparison with 2019:

• 1 US dollar = 2.1g of silver
• 1 UK pound = 2.6g

Cost of living: In ancient times the cost of living was way lower. You could in fact get by on just $2 a day. Of course, there would be no telephone service.

The talent was too big to be a coin, even a gold one. The NIV translates a “talent” as “a bag of gold”, which gives you the right idea even if it is not a literal translation.

Render unto Caesar: a denarius from the reign of Emperor Tiberias, the sort Jesus probably held when he said, “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s”. This is the “penny” of the King James Bible.

The penny: Historically speaking, “penny” is the right translation of “denarius”: the English penny comes from the denarius. But by 1611 it had lost much of its value. By 2019 it was even worse:

Coins by value in grams of silver:

• 3.9g: denarius in the year 30
• 0.5g: penny in England in 1611
• 0.026g: penny in England in 2019
• 0.021g: penny in US in 2019

So even in 1611 “penny” was a bad translation, even if it was still made of silver.

Prices: from the New Testament, in grams of silver:

21,000 – the talent that was not put out at interest.

1,200 – the 327g of spikenard that could have been sold to help the poor.

420 – the 30 pieces of silver paid to Judas to betray Jesus.

8 – a few days at an inn.

4 – a day’s pay for a labourer.

3.5 – the lost coin.

0.24 – two sparrows (buy four and get the fifth one free!).

0.06 – the widow’s two mites.

At the spiritual level, of course:

“the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10)

– Abagond, 2019.

See also:

• Attic Greek units of measure
• money
  • Money in Leonardo’s time
  • Money in Shakespeare’s time
  • Money in the time of the 1897 Sears Catalogue
  • Money in New York in 2007
• English Bible translations
  • King James Bible (Authorized Version)
  • NIV
• Jesus Christ

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