Featured What Was the Tribute Penny?

A great video by Kevin Butcher.

 

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That's a great posting. I had never thought about some of those possibilities. Thanks for finding and submitting it.

 

That is a justified point. However, the question is not whether the ordinary population could read it, but whether the Herodians could read it. I think there should be little doubt about that, they lived on good terms with the Romans. Whether Jesus could also read it is the question and One that can hardly be answered. Finally, I would like to point out that the coins that the Herodians possessed did not necessarily satisfy what the average Jew possessed. They were of a high social class and, moreover, were in direct contact with the Roman government.

 

..ok, if A is the case...i got that covered too...

 

I enjoyed this post. I think there’s also another much less satisfying option. So much depends upon timeframe--the time of Jesus or the time of the composition of the Gospels. The earliest Gospel is probably that of Mark in the 60s C.E. (it’s a matter of dispute). By this time you would have had denarii of Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero (and potentially Julius Caesar with a portrait denarius) establishing a pattern of having an emperor portrait on the obverse—some scarce, some common. But by now the portraiture is a convention. If the Gospel narrative is trying to capture a general teaching and not a specific detailed moment in the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth, then the question might be akin to me saying in the U.S today, “Show me a coin. Whose picture is on it” and you saying “The President’s,” while not thinking of any one president (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, etc.). But that reading doesn’t sell ancient coins, so we get the Tribute Penny. But I’m not going to be too cool for school here; I bought a Tiberius denarius a few years ago just so I could have a “Tribute Penny.”

BTW, the more I learn about the political environment in the first-century, the more interesting that question becomes. Judas the Galilean had led an uprising ca. 6 C.E. against the Roman census because its end goal was taxation, which he urged Jews not to pay. Why should Jews fund their own hated foreign occupation? Judas was eventually captured and executed. Jesus would have known this Uprising since its leader had come from his home area. It’s pretty clear to me that the Pharisees' question put to Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar was designed to get him in the same bind with Rome and depict him as a dangerous insurrectionist like his Galilean predecessor. Jesus doesn’t fall for it.

 

OK, but that depends on the Herodians being literate in Latin. I don't think they were. Except in judicial and military matters the Roman officials themselves were more likely to employ the Koine Greek which was the (no pun here) Lingua Franca of the Holy Land, rather than Latin. Of course the Herodians, like any ruling oligarchy, had access to Latin speaking secretaries and were not likely not be oblivious of the uses of Latin. Even the Roman troops stationed there were mostly Syrian auxiliaries (except for their officers) who probably grew up speaking mostly Aramaic as their first language and picking up Koine Greek on on the streets if they came from Syrian cities. Yes, even they had to learn camp Latin for interaction with their officers and to understand their orders and regulations, which were universal with the Roman Army throughout the empire. The point here, however, is that the Herodians, the Pharisees and Sadducees, need not have known a word of Latin to pose the question. It was the image of the emperor that revealed the coin to be a Roman one and the inscription would have been something about the emperor, whoever it was, and whoever it was would have borne the title of Caesar. My own feeling now is that the coin rendered as a DENAPION, denarius was being used in a generic sense as any Roman silver coin and since the drachmas of Eastern mints had the image of the emperor, were similar in weight and fineness to the denarius and were more likely to find their way around the Levant than imperial denarii, which seem to have been uncommon in that region at that time, that the coin was most likely a Roman provincial, employing Greek lettered inscriptions, from a city like Caesarea or Antioch.

 

Very true about the origin of the Vulgate, and the difficulties of establishing what the earliest versions of Gospels looked like. I believe you are mistaken though, about the use of Latin in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine). Justinian was the last native speaker of Latin emperor, and the last holdouts of the Byzantines where Latin was spoken, the Balkans, Carthage and Southern Italy (where Greek was as commonly used there until around 1100 AD) were lost to Constantinople a few centuries after Justinian's reign. Though they called themselves Romaioi, few Byzantines could understand much if any Latin, that from Westerners visiting the region. Westerners during the Crusades were constantly annoyed that the so called "Romans" could not speak Latin, even Byzantine officials. As for biblical, use, the Byzantines did have access to Greek language bibles, the Septuagint for the Old Testament and of course the earliest versions of the New Testament written in Koine Greek, except possibly the Gospel, of Mathew (Aramaic). For the response, Eucharisto poli.

 

This is a misleading interpretation of what the goal and process of Textual Criticism is about. As worded here these comments make it sound as if the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament are modern inventions. That is at best a misunderstanding, and at worst an outright lie. Modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament, such as Nestle-Aland, and the Greek "Old Testament", such as the Goettingen Septuagint, are compilations from a large array of earlier manuscripts, but they are hardly "recreated backwards from modern texts and translated by scholars into Koine Greek." To dismiss them as such is irresponsible.

It is certainly the case that the canon of the New Testament developed over a few centuries into its final form, but the oldest full version texts still surviving date back to the fourth century in the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Beyond these there is also a substantial body of partial texts, mostly on papyrus, that date back at least to the early to mid-2nd century. Down through the centuries variant manuscripts came into being via copyist errors, interpolations, omissions, emendations and such, but these produced variants of passages while cleaving to the uniformity of the whole. At no time was it deemed necessary to re-write the whole thing.

The history of transmission for the Septuagint is much earlier inasmuch as it originated with the Jews as a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek from the 3rd century BCE. The textual importance of that Greek translation was upheld by such fathers of Christianity as St. Augustine who regarded it as divinely inspired and preferred it over the Latin translation then being completed by Jerome. For his part Jerome worked with texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek which he rendered into the Latin of his time in preference to the Italic versions which had preceded him.

It is certainly the case that when Erasmus of Rotterdam created the "Textus Receptus" in the 16th century he used a methodology which reconstructed the Greek based on a harmonization of the Greek manuscripts available to him using the Latin Vulgate as a template. That was textual criticism in its infancy. But that is a very far cry from what that discipline can do and has done these 500 years since then.

 

Fine and well put. As for the original posting, about the exact type of coin that the Tribute Penny was, we will probably have to assign it to the unknown for sure but that there are some coins more likely than others. Again, from the sources I have read and pondered, I go with a Roman provincial drachma from Caesaraea or Antioch. Thanks for the dialog.

 

@kaparthy is Michael Marotta .

 

I don't think this question can ever be answered affirmatively. However, I agree with the point that by the time of the Gospel of John was compiled there had been several emperors. Presumably the Gospel was written down based on earlier texts and /or oral tradition. Whether or not these sources detailed the ruler as Tiberius is unknown, or whether that specification would have been handed down in the tradition. I think the passage refers to "Caesar" in general, as representative of the Imperium, and a character reviled by Jews at the time. (Just before the revolt).

 

Interesting points to discuss. I also don't think the Herodians could do much Latin, but enough to largely understand what the coin said. I think we should above all be clear that we are talking here (in the case of Mark's gospel) about events that were written down more than 30 years later. And that the emphasis that the author puts is mainly on how Jesus silenced the Herodians and Pharisees. For the author it is totally inrelevant what kind of coin it was, if he already knew it.

 

Wonder if @Deacon Ray has anything to add

 

Now, if a numismatist had written the story, we would know not only who was on the obverse but also the Cos number, TRP number, probable mint, what divinity was on the reverse, weight in grams (or barley corns), maybe even its RIC number.

 

Then all those sellers couldn't advertise anymore with Tribute Penny struck 36-37, we just knew who owned the real one.

 

Not yet mentioned but very relevant to this question is that IF the Tiberius denarius with Livia seated reverse was the Tribute Penny, it would have to be a "straight leg" chair type because the "decorated leg" types were produced post-Crucifixion. (Notice that the example in Kevin Butcher's video shared by @David Atherton showed the straight leg type.)

Bottom-line (and as stated above) we will of course never ascertain with absolute certainty which exact coin type was presented. In view of that reality for my biblical coin collection I hedged my bet well by including several potential types most of which are shown below. I'm not including my Tyrian Melkart shekel or half-shekel because as Butcher pointed out in his video neither type fits the basic criteria of the narrative. (Although they are STRONG "30 pieces of silver" candidates, but that is a separate issue which deserves its own thread. )

Augustus denarius . . .


Tiberius denarius (with straight chair legs) . . .


Tiberius drachm from Cappadocia . . .


Tiberius Antiochene tetradrachm showing both Tiberius and Augustus . . .


Augustus Antiochene tetradrachm showing only Augustus . . .

 

A very nice representation of all relevant coinage possibilities.

 

It's good I didn't know this in the 1980s, because I might have passed on this coin and might never have become a collector of ancient coins!

Decorated leg type FTW!!!

 

Am I alone in having trouble with this?

Rob T

 

I am not sure what trouble you are having, but if it is with the statement about silver coins passing by weight (and fineness) that simply means that the value of silver and gold coins was determined by their intrinsic value of precious metals, a value that the state has had difficulty tampering with. Fifty grams of close to pure gold or silver had a value irrespective of what kings, emperors and tyrants (ancient times and later) wanted them to be worth. That is why, for millennia, people have tended to hoard good gold and silver coins and spend the less valuable token brass coinage (or cupro-nickel). Gresham's law.