Penny

The "penny" of the older English Bibles is the Roman denarius, a small silver coin that circulated in first-century Judea and that the UPDV simply names as a denarius wherever the Greek text does. Editorial footnotes in the UPDV consistently gloss it as "a Roman coin worth about one day's wages," containing about one eighth of a troy ounce of silver. Because the denarius was the standard daily wage, it sits at the meeting point of three biblical concerns the synthesizing index lifts together: money as a medium and a temptation, the wage relationship between hirer and hired, and the small coppers cast against it as a foil.

A Coin in the Hand

The denarius enters the Gospel narrative as the natural unit by which crowds, employers, and disciples reckoned cost. When Jesus told the Twelve to feed the multitude, they replied incredulously, "Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread, and give them to eat?" (Mark 6:37). When a woman broke an alabaster cruse of nard over Jesus in Bethany, the bystanders complained that the ointment "might have been sold for over 300 denarii, and given to the poor" (Mark 14:5). The Good Samaritan paid an innkeeper to nurse a stranger by taking out "two denarii" and promising to settle the rest on his return (Luke 10:35). In the parable of the two debtors one owed five hundred and the other fifty (Luke 7:41), and the lender's release of both becomes the measure of love returned. In each scene the coin is unremarkable as currency; it is the sums and the spenders that the Gospels press on.

Caesar's Image

The same coin carried Caesar's portrait, and that portrait turned a question of taxation into a confession. The Pharisees and Herodians asked Jesus whether it was lawful to give tribute to Caesar; he answered, "Bring me a denarius, that I may see it." When they brought it he said, "Whose is this image and superscription? And they said to him, Caesar's. And Jesus said to them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:15-17). Luke's parallel is identical in shape: "Show me a denarius. Whose image and superscription does it have? And they said, Caesar's. And he said to them, Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Luke 20:24-25). The coin's metal worth was a day of labor; its imprint located that labor inside an empire and outside the temple economy at once.

The Tables Overthrown

Money in Jerusalem had to be exchanged before it could be given. The temple-changers sat at tables converting common coinage into the currency accepted for offerings. Jesus' first and last public actions in the temple struck those tables. John records that "he made a scourge of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers' money, and overthrew their tables" (John 2:15). Mark records the same kind of scene at the close of his ministry: "he entered into the temple, and began to cast out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of those who sold the doves" (Mark 11:15). The coin that bought bread or hired a laborer became, in the temple court, a thing that needed correcting before it could be returned to God.

The Wage of a Day

If the denarius was a day's wages, then "a hired worker" is the human shape of the same fact. The pattern runs deep in the older books: Job sees the common man's life "like the days of a hired worker" (Job 7:1) and looks away from him so that he may "accomplish, as a hired worker, his day" (Job 14:6). Isaiah measures a coming judgment "as the years of a hired worker" until "the glory of Moab will be brought into contempt" (Isaiah 16:14). Ben Sira's wisdom warns the master, "Do not afflict a slave who serves faithfully; Or likewise a hired worker who gives his soul" (Sir 7:20), and rises to indictment: "He slays his neighbor who takes away his [means of] living, And a shedder of blood is he who deprives the hired worker of his wages" (Sir 34:26-27). Malachi names the same crime among those Yahweh comes to judge — "those who unjustly reduce the wages of the hired worker, the widow, and the fatherless" (Mal 3:5). And Jesus turns the figure inside out: the hireling shepherd, paid by the day, "flees because he is a hired worker, and does not care for the sheep" (John 10:13). The denarius is owed; the wage-earner can be cheated of it; the merely-paid keeper can abandon what costs more than money.

The Coin as Temptation

The instrument is not condemned, but the affection toward it is. Money in narrative most often appears in the act of being weighed, promised, or paid. Jeremiah, buying his cousin's field as a sign of return, "subscribed the deed, and sealed it, and called witnesses, and weighed him the silver in the balances" (Jer 32:10). Simon Maccabeus "laid out much of his money, and armed the valiant men of his nation, and gave them wages" (1Ma 14:32), and the Seleucid grant to him reads, "And I give you leave to coin your own money in your country" (1Ma 15:6). But the same neutral medium turns lethal in the betrayal: Judas' confederates, hearing his offer, "were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently deliver him" (Mark 14:11). Paul names the disposition rather than the metal: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Tim 6:10).

Two Lepta Against a Denarius

Against the denarius the Gospels set its smallest opposite. By UPDV's own footnote at Mark 12:42, a lepton was the smallest copper coin, worth about 1/128 of a day's wages, and a quadrans about 1/64. Mark stages the contrast in the temple itself: Jesus "sat down opposite the treasury, and watched how the multitude cast money into the treasury: and many who were rich cast in much. And there came a poor widow, and she cast in two lepta, which make a quadrans" (Mark 12:41-42). His verdict reverses the visible economy: "This poor widow cast in more than all those who are casting into the treasury: for they all cast in of their superfluity; but she of her want cast in all that she had, [even] all her living" (Mark 12:43-44). Luke retells it in the same shape: she "cast in more than all of them: for all these of their superfluity cast in to the gifts; but she of her want cast in all the living that she had" (Luke 21:3-4). The denarius and the lepton are the two ends of the same scale; Scripture leaves them on it together so that the smaller coin can outweigh the larger.