(ill.) Copper coins. — There are three copper coins mentioned in the Gospels : the assarion, the kod- rantes, and the lepton. The last is tr. ' mite ' in the EV, Avhile the tAvo others are called, AA'ithout dis- tinction, by the name 'farthing.'
1. Assarion {daadpiov Mt lO^", Lk 12^, AV and RV farthing, Amer. RV penny). — The name is derived from the Latin assarius, a A'ariant of as. It may either be the name given in Greek-speaking countries to the Roman as, or else the name of some local copper coin Avhich in some Avay corre- sponded to it. Both views have been taken, by difi'erent scholars, of the significance of the Avord in the above passages. On the one hand, Schiirer (HJP II. i. 39) and others hold that it is the Roman as that is here mentioned, in value the sixteenth part of the denaritis. In support of this vieAv, it may be urged that copper coins Avere issued, by authority of the Senate, from the Imperial mint at Antioch for circulation in the province of Syria, that these coins bear Latin inscriptions, and that of the tAvo sizes in Avhich they are found one has been identified (e.g. by Mommsen, op. cit. 718, and Madden, op. cit. 301 ) Avith the sestertius or quarter- dcnarius, and the other Avith the as. MoreoA-er, tlie Vulgate not only renders daadpLov back into as in tlie passage in Mt., but in the corresponding passage in Lk. has dipondio, thus identifyin,^ the ' tAvo farthings ' Avhich are named as the pri ;e of tAvo sparroAvs Avith the Roman dupondius or jiece
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of two asses. Schiirer points out, besides, that the name irx ('issar, evidentlj- the Heb. form of aacrdpiov) occurs frequently in the Mishna, and is sometimes expressly called "p^r-x icn or Italian assarion. If this view is correct, the assarion of the Gospels will represent 'Gd. — roughly a halfpenny — in English monej', or exactly 5 German pfennigs. On the other hand, this smiple solution of the problem is challenged, and chieflj- on account of those verj' references in tlie Mishna to which Schiirer appeals. The qualihcation of certain assarm as ' Italian ' — which is also found in Greek on certain Cretan coins of the time of Claudius (Head, 3S4) and in a quotation from the Rescript of Germanicus in the Palmj-ra tariti' — seems to implj- that there Avere other coins of the same name, but of diHerent value. Anil, as a matter of fact, the Mishna speaks of the dinar or denarius as containing 24 'issdri/n, which cannot therefore be Roman asses of 16 to the denarius. If this distinction existed already in the time of our Lord, it is to be presumed that He used the word in the more popular sense. * In this case the price of the two sparrows (Mt 10-^) would i be id. , or rather less than a halfpenny — almost exactly 4 centimes.
2. Kodrantes (KoSpdi'TTis, Mt 5^, Mk 12^-, AV, RV, and Amer. RV farthing). — There can be no question as to the identity of the coin that is in- tended in these two passages. It is the quadrans or quarter -05, the smallest coin in the Roman | system, eqiial in value to | of a farthing, or a little more than the pfennig. It may, however, reasonably be doubted whether any coin knoAvn by this name was in circulation in Palestine in the time of our Lord. The word does not occur in the Mishna, and it has not been found in any of the inscriptions in (ireek-speaking provinces (see ExpT X. [1899] 232, 336, where Sir W. M. Ramsay takes Prof. Blass roundly to task for assuming that the name KoSpavr-qs was familiar in the East, and that the provincial cities coined copper money with Roman designations). Nor are the alliLsions in the Gospels conclusive. Mk.'s explanatory note (XeTrrd Si'o, 6 i(niv KoSpavrris) is obAiously intended for non-Palestinian (possibly Roman) readers. As for the use of the word in' Mt., the fact that the parallel passage in Lk. has to eaxarov XeirTov instead of Tov eaxarov Ko5pa.vTr]p. suggests that it may have been inserted by the First Evangelist as the name of the smallest coin in the Roman system in place of the lejjfon, the smallest coin in the Palestinian .system. It is. however, open to us to suppose that there was a local coin which for some purposes was identified with the quadrans, though rarely so named. A coin of Agrippa II. has been found bearing the name xi^^'oi"? (Madden. 146). In the ordinary Greek system the ihnJkus is equal to Jg of the draciim ; but if we suppose that for purposes of taxation local copper was only accepted subject to a discount of 2.5 per cent., the rhalkus would be tariffed as equal to tlie quadrans. which is Jj of the denarius. (Cf. note to last paragraph, and see the already quoted art. by Prof. Kennedy, who works out in detail the relations of the 'tariff' and 'current " values of the various coins).
3. Lepton (\6n-T6v, Mk 12»-, Lk 12*-' 21^, AV and RV mite I. — This name is originally an adjective meaning 'thin' or 'small." It hence denotes a very small coin, but is otherwise indeterminate.
* Prof. Kennedy in Hastingrs" DB. s.v. 'Money,' § 8. draws an interesting: and instructive distinction between the 'tariff' and the ' current ' value of the local copper money. Just as the tetradrachmon of Antioch was tariffed as only equal to three denarii for purposes of taxation, so he supposes that the local agsarion (.>, of the drachm) was rated as equivalent to half of the Italian assarioit or as. But this does not affect the calcula- tion made above, for of course the purchase of sparrows would ! be one of those ' ordinary purposes ' for which tiie coin would i retain its current value. I