Thirty pieces of silver

But was 30 denarii a trivial, paltry sum at the time? If not, that interpretation would be contrary to the point of the story -- that it was a small amount.

 

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Mostly I have heard that they were Tyrian Shekels. But in newer versions of the bible they have translated this as denarii. Any evidence specifically for one vs. the other?

 

Great question. Some sources say that one denarius was the equivalent of one day's pay for your average soldier.

If you take a standard US military E-3 with less than 2 years, then one day's pay for this solider is about $68.

Multiply by 30 and you get about $2,000.

Which isn't really that much at all considering you're sending a man to the slaughter.

 

When my father was in the Army during World War II, I think his pay to start out was $21 per month!

 

I don't think the very earliest version was in English

 

Unfortunately human life is one of the cheapest things in the world.

 

I realized that I worded this ambiguously, but ironically it still makes sense either way.

I meant, that 2 grand wasn't a high amount for Judas to send his buddy Jesus to get crucified.

But, 2 grand also isn't that much when you're sending some 17 year old to fight in the trenches.

 

but the whole point of her article was that the 30 pieces of silver was idiomatic and not meant to be taken literally. You should read it, it is available through Jstor.

 

For $23 grand I can think of a few friends of mine I wouldn't mind selling...

 

Lots of interesting thoughts - makes me return to reconsider the point made by @Ocatarinetabellatchitchix. Amplified by the Reiner article which Victor correctly summarises

The Reiner article is very interesting – but - apparently contrary to @DonnaML – I do not find it compelling. Reiner quotes text running from Hammurabi to Godfrey of Viterbo (1800 BC to 1200 AD!). That seems troubling to me – since it seems unlikely Mark would have known of the first and certain he had no knowledge of the second. I suggest there are three ways to look at the passage in Mark

(1) historically correctly

(2) a story - but that specifically makes sense in early first century Judea

(3) a story that makes sense to someone with a lot of knowledge of traditional sacred text (like Reiner)

Personally I go with (1) or (2) – which does not exclude (3) but does imply a particular version of (3)

Now 30 pieces of silver was c. 250g of silver under Hammurabi, and might be the blood price of a slave or a free man back then. In first century Judea (and neglecting a small adjustment for silver quality) it was either c. 420g of silver (Tyre tets), or c. 115g of silver (Tiberius denarii).

I would still go with Tyre tet – and it seems to me that might be the sort of price of a slave for use in manual labour at that time. So there is a sense that the phrase is used pejoratively (ie for just the price of a slave). I would object rather strongly to calling it a “paltry sum”. I suspect a slave for instance would think it an rather large sum. As indeed would that well know widow of those times.

Following through on that – if the writer did have in mind a realistic price of a slave in the 1st century AD – and it was c. 420g – then it seems to me it might well make sense for it specifically to mean “an (Attic) pound of silver”. Because slave trading would likely be an international venture, and in contrast, coins are tied to particular local markets. An international trader would not care what coins he was paid in – just the amount of silver he got…..

@Kentucky reminds me that the earliest versions of Biblical texts were not in English. Hmmm, thanks for that. It seems the Targum (Aramaic) version of Zechariah did not include the phrase “30 piece of silver” found in later Greek versions. If anything that points in the direction of a 1st century interpretation of the phase, I would have thought.

Rob T

 

Forgive the snark, one of my worst habits.

 

No problem - all criticism is useful. I never looked into Targum before that

 

A separate matter – but one I would like to address. Surely the only thing we are interested in is - what the story probably meant in the 1st century? So - in so far as matters of “significance” are not the same as probabilities – they are just of no interest to us?

I spent a long time recently on a book on the history of coinage by the Nobel Laureate economist Sargent. It has a lot of tough (modelling) maths in it. Worse than that – he did not bother to define for readers what the terms in his equations actually meant!!! As if he was using the equations just to brow beat possible critics. And to a great extent it worked. I concluded his historical explanations were just not credible – but also that few spoke up in criticism – because he bullied people with tough maths.

My position is close to Gorard’s – for a long time now he has argued that universities in general should probably stop teaching stats/tough maths to people in the humanities - that it is doing more harm than good.

Rob T

 

@EWC3, probably everybody thinks in probabilities (e.g. what's the chance of a road traffic accident when I cross this cross section; should I eat this piece of very attractive fruit without knowing whether it's poisonous or not, etc.). Though I do not know Gorad, I mostly agree with his statement that significance testing, i.e. a formal approach to probabilities should be done with caution (I disagree that formal significance testing should be abandoned, as there is not something as 'all formal significance testing'. Should we abandon I2 as a measure of heterogeneity in meta-analysis? Probably, but not always. Should we be cautiousness when interpreting an R2 in linear regression. Definitely. Should we stop reporting a p-value only instead of the standard error or another measure that allows to form conclusions yourself? Absolutely.

I regularly teach statistics to medical students as a PhD clinical epidemiology (which is a very sexy job these days, though I have nothing to do with viruses ) It is pointless to just "bully people with math" without explaining what's the fuss about (actually, my last paper with a clinical message was very technical, and rejected by all journals until I removed the formulae and put them in the supplement ...). However, as a medical doctor, I have to be able to read, interpret and distill information from clinical papers, which usually present data in such a way that fits the data (or not). Most students really don't really bother, and skip the methods section of the article (with all the hocus pocus statistics) but clinical papers can be extremely dangerous when conclusions are incorrectly derived from wrong interpretation of data (either intentionally or not). Thus, in my opinion, teaching students "tough math/stats" in general is important, but teaching students to read critically is way more important.

 

@Roerbakmix many thanks for the detailed reply. I suspect we might be at cross purposes here. I would expect people in the medical sciences – (in contexts therefore where controlled experiments rule) – to throw the statistical kitchen sink at their subjects of research. I would be very concerned if they did not. So no criticism at all of your professional activity. Regarding publication of your papers – it depends upon context – in specialist literature I see no problems with leaving terms in well known equations undefined.

Gorard was quite specific however in levelling his criticism at people in humanities – and for myself I was talking about historical matters – and that's way outside anything that is a scientifically controlled experiment. And additionally, people who write for the general public - yet bang out long equations without a key to the meaning of the terms involved - deserve exemplary criticism in my view.

On the specific point however, you seemed to support this position

Surely I read that correctly as saying - ‘any number is as likely as any other’ – which is surely wrong. Doug immediately pointed out numbers like 30 get cultural preference, and a mass of carefully read text followed on - to back that up. I was going a step further by a careful consideration of contemporary monetary metrology. So I stand by my initial position there, I think you were wrong to (appear to?) back @gsimonel

Rob T

PS For my own part I passed many a happy hour looking into foundations of maths, and I suspect you yourself realize - if we throw that kitchen sink at “any number is as likely as any other” - we quickly sink into paradox. So I am not going to do that – I would be breaking my own code of conduct