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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Roman Collector, post: 2839488, member: 75937&quot;]Absolutely! The coin the author of Mark had in mind was more like this:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]671392[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The more interesting question to me is how to best translate an ancient language which references ancient and obsolete coin denominations into language the modern reader finds meaningful. One could translate literally, which conveys to the reader that the events which took place happened a long time ago in a far away place, but in this case you&#039;d have to footnote what the coin denominations meant in order to give the reader some context.</p><p><br /></p><p>Mark 12:42 (which was then incorporated into the third gospel by the author of Luke) reads:</p><p><br /></p><p>καὶ ἐλθοῦσα μία χήρα πτωχὴ ἔβαλεν λεπτὰ δύο, ὅ ἐστιν κοδράντης</p><p><br /></p><p>This is very literally translated as &quot;And one destitute widow came and threw in two lepta, which is a quadrans.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>Then what do you put in your footnotes? You can&#039;t just translate it into modern cash-equivalents, because your bible translation will still be in use 50 years (or more) down the road and such cash-equivalents will soon be rendered useless. So you can&#039;t translate (my apologies to the King James translation committee) &quot;denarius&quot; as &quot;penny.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>I would footnote it as follows:</p><p><br /></p><p>The quadrans was the smallest coin in the Roman Imperial monetary system. It was valued at 1/64 of a denarius. In turn, the denarius was a silver coin representing approximately a day&#039;s wages for an agricultural worker for hire.</p><p><br /></p><p>The other option is no better; that is to translate more loosely, so that footnotes are not required, such as:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;And one destitute widow came and threw in two small bronze coins, worth less than a dollar.&quot; That doesn&#039;t seem like a bad translation now, but keep in mind that in 1950, the translator would have had to say &quot;worth less than a dime&quot; to convey the same cash-equivalent.</p><p><br /></p><p>You&#039;ll note, too, that I have translated πτωχὴ as &quot;destitute,&quot; when many translations render it as &quot;poor.&quot; However, the Greeks had two words for &quot;poor.&quot; One designated a lesser degree of poverty, living from paycheck to paycheck and barely getting by -- πενία. Another indicated absolute destitution, even beggary or mendicity -- πτωχεία. It is the latter which is used by the author of Mark.</p><p><br /></p><p>The woman was more than just poor--she was reduced to begging. The amount she gave was more than just a few cents, too. It was about 1/64th of the daily wage of a minimum wage worker.</p><p><br /></p><p>Therefore, a translation that would only be valid at the present time would be:</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;And a homeless bag-lady came and threw in a dollar.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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