Could someone inform me, when the roman coin denarion actual reached the egyptian and palestine/judean territories?
Besides the NT-witnesses (16x) there is just 1 Papyrus dated 25-0 BCE; all other Papyrus-witnesses date 70 CE or later.
Is it plausible that in Jesus-Lifetime the δηναριον was used in Palestine/Judea, and at the same time none of the more than 9000 Papyri in the Periode between 0-70 CE mentions the δηναριον?
The first denarius was issued in 58 BCE by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, the governor of the Roman province of Syria. The province included all of the Judaean coast towns from Raphia to Dora, and also all of the non-Jewish towns east of the Jordan River. This distinctive coin commemorates Scaurus’ victory in 65 BCE over the Nabataean King Aretas III.
Source: https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-roman-judean-coin-connection
Josephus, I see, never uses the word δηνάριον, but only δραχμή. Here is De bello Judaico 7.218:
φόρον δὲ τοῖς ὁπουδηποτοῦν οὖσιν Ἰουδαίοις ἐπέβαλεν δύο δραχμὰς ἕκαστον κελεύσας ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος εἰς τὸ Καπετώλιον φέρειν, ὥσπερ πρότερον εἰς τὸν ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις νεὼν συνετέλουν.
I assume that Titus’ original order would have said duo denarii, translated to Greek as δύο δραχμαί.
Thanks.
That means that for the time being the NT is the only witness for the use of δηναριον in Jesus-Lifetime.
The physical coins themselves would seem to be their own witness, imo. And the NT is witness to the usage when it was written, slightly later than Jesus’ lifetime.
But if only a papyrus will do, this is dated to “29 - 2 BC?”, for whatever the dating is worth.
That single BCE-Papyrus is the one I mentioned in my opening post (by the way: It’s nice that Papyri.info and https://www.papyrusportal.de/content/start.xml) have the possibility to do a text-search).
Yes, You’re right, that NT-Witnesses are all from ca 70 CE and later, but what I meant was, they claim, that Jesus used the word δηναριον, and the Lifetime of Jesus is exactly the time without any written witness of δηναριον, whilst in that time there are many Papyri, and many of them have δραχμη.
Provocative Question:
Would Jesus in Mt 18:28 (the Story of The Master, releaving a servant and canceling his debt of 10000 Talents, that same servant had another servant thrown in the jail because he had a debt of 100 “δηναρια”) have used the word δηναριον or would it be more plausible, he had used δραχμη?
The same goes for Luke 7:41, 10:35 etc.
None of the Instances in the NT have witnesses (in the INTF-Database) that give a deviating reading (for instance δραχμη for δηναριον).
The only instance, where probably only a δηναριον fits is the Parallel-Story of the Coin with the picture of Caesar Mt 22:19, Mk 12:15 and Luke 20:24 (Mt 22:19 : Jesus doesn’t use the word δηναριον but το νομισμα του κηνςου = coin of taxes).
That particular story is original with Matthew, I suspect, and the usage of δηνάριον in Mark would be sufficient to explain Matthew’s word choices, as Matthew is trying to both retell and imitate Mark. Besides, Matthew is writing late, after the 70 A.D. destruction of the temple. And the same for the Luke and John uses. Perhaps this explains Revelation, or perhaps the Revelation use of δηνάριον is independent of the Gospels. There are political dimensions to the word, and its use may also bear on the precise didactical point of Matthew, Luke, and John, who all had strong and very dissimilar feelings about Roman rule and about the Jews and their political struggles.
But to explain Mark’s use of δηνάριον is really the interesting question, given your research here. My own view, as I’ve stated before, is that Mark is the Gospel that actually bears on questions of the historical Jesus or at least of the very earliest Christians. By faith, I take the non-Markean accounts to be inspired scripture for all spiritual questions. But for historical questions I would classify them as derivative literary productions that display the personal inventiveness of their authors. Mostly useless for particular historical questions about Jesus, though not at all useless for historical questions about the first century Christ movement.
Mark, however, uses δηνάριον three times: Mark 6:37, 12:16, 14:5. One of these uses, as you’ve mentioned, 12:16, is political, and the particular type of coin surely motivates the use of δηνάριον over δραχμή.
The other two uses, 6:37 and 14:5, are not Jesus’ words nor do they attempt exact quotation. They both concern money given to the poor and specific questions of value. My impression, as is often the case when I read Mark, is that he seems to be writing from some sort of experience. He seems to know something about purchasing food for the poor, and about how much it costs to feed so many people. [I bought food for and ran the Advent dinner at church two weeks ago, and this can be harder than it sounds.] Mark seems to know how to resell an expensive donation and about how much he should get for it, and perhaps how to distribute the proceeds to the poor. He is, in other words, engaged in religious charity work of some sort, and portrays Jesus’ movement in that context. So Mark is, unsurprisingly, a very early model of what we might call a churchman.
But why would Mark use δηνάριον in the context of alms to the poor? If it is his habitual use, then the inference would be that in contexts of alms-giving, he was used to the money coming in and being referred to as denarii. We could guess that his geographical and cultural setting is one such that the donors he worked with were mainly Roman-affiliated, or Gentiles.
On the other hand, if Mark is portraying the early ministry with Jesus from some sort of first hand experience, which I think quite possible, then Mark’s descriptions get you really wondering about the mechanics of the movement. Where were they getting their money from? Are they δηνάρια because the money coming in is mostly Roman-affiliated money from wealthy Roman-affiliated people? What does that say about the Jesus movement? What did Jesus’ fundraising activities look like? (Mark 10:21-22?) Who is the money going to? When the other evangelists retold the Mark 14 account, they made the not unlikely deduction that Judas’ betrayal of Jesus to the Jews (simply for ἀργύριον in Mark), is all tied up in this jealousy and outrage about the money matters. The δηνάρια question and the possibility of wealthy Roman donors would make it all more interesting.
There you go. And Merry Christmas!
Thanks for the lengthy explanation.
Merry Christmas!
Oh, it’s just spitballing. I suspect that others here could give other theories, and hopefully will.
Does Mark’s use of the Latin word denarius necessarily mean that he was referring to a coin in that exact value? Couldn’t he perhaps have simply been referring to a drachma, but giving it the name of a Latin near-equivalent to convey his meaning more clearly to his readers in Italy?
It is often said that archaeologists working in Israel have never discovered significant quantities of true denarii (or other coins issued in Roman rather than Greek denominations) dating back to any period earlier than Vespasian’s invasion in the sixties AD.
As for the coin that Jesus was pointing at in the “Render unto Caesar” episode, that too could have been a drachma or didrachma of this kind, with Tiberius’ head on it and the inscription in Greek:
A parallel might be Mark’s use of the word κοδράντης. Helen Bond notes in her book Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (p. 19) that the prefects of Judea, including Pilate, “followed the Seleucid monetary system, striking coins with a value of 1 perutah (Jewish) = 1 dilepton (Seleucid).” The dilepton was equivalent to the Roman quadrans, as Mark confirms in his account of the widow’s mite incident (12:42):
καὶ ἐλθοῦσα μία χήρα πτωχὴ ἔβαλεν λεπτὰ δύο, ὅ ἐστιν κοδράντης.
In fact both Matthew and Mark use the word κοδράντης, though only once each. In Matthew’s case, Jesus uses the Latin word in the context of the “Raka” saying (Matt 5:26), where the Douay Rheims translates it as “farthing”: “Amen I say to thee, thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing.”
ἀμὴν λέγω σοι, οὐ μὴ ἐξέλθῃς ἐκεῖθεν ἕως ἂν ἀποδῷς τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην.
Sorry, I can’t get the “Image” thing to display properly. Here’s the link:
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/142244/tetradrachm-coin-portraying-emperor-tiberius