' In the Oriental provinces of the Roman Empire,' says Babelon {Jlonnaics Grccqucs ct Ronw.incs, I. i. 466), ' the word Xctttov regularly denoted IcKjal copper money as distmguished from coppers of the Roman mint.' At ditierent times and in various places it was used of coins of verj- ditiierent value. A> used in the Gospels, however, there is no ambi- guity. It is agTeed on all hands that it denotes the smallest coin current among the Jews, known to the Mishna as the •:??-,» (/jirii(ah), of which we are expressly told that it was an eighth of the Roman ((s (see reti'. in Lightfoot, ii. 453, and Schiirer, II. i. 40), — a statement which exactly agrees with that of Mk. about the value of the Ivjjton. If, therefore, the quadrans is to be identi- fied with the cfudkus, the lepton is a coin of half the value.
Xevertheless, the statement of Mk. (?.=ttx Kc, c ie-Tn »S;ji>rr.-) has g^ven much trouble to numismatologists, who, to quote the words of one of them, ' have serious difficulty in finding among the small coins of Judasa separate denominations for chalkous and lepton' (G. F. Hill in EBi, s.v. 'Penny'). Accordingly, many attempts have been made to identify the leptoyi with the chalkua-quadram. Thus Madden, following Cavedoni, cuts the knot by supj.K)sing Mk. to have meant the c is-r. to apply to the '/.BTTt, and not to the /.ettoc i-.^ {Coins of the Jein:, 304), and appeals for corroboration to the correspondence of the tod ra^i/w to the lepton in Mt 5'-* = Lk 12-A Hill, on the other hand, fol- lowing up the suggestion of Prof. Kennedy referred to in the preceding paragraphs, contends that the difference between the Upton and the chalkug-quadraiu was only a matter of account- ing. The difficulty, as stated by Mr. Hill, depends upon the assumption that the o/(a/i-i(.s-y!(«rf/-a#i*- was a current Palestinian coin. This, however, has not been proved. Agrippa's chaUms need not have been considered as equal to a quadrang.* As stated by Mr. Madden, 'it is impossible to get over the fact that at this period the quadrans of the Empire, which still retained the name of x*'-«^', had the same weight as the lepton of the time of the Seleucidae ' {Coins of the Jews. 3(4). The difficulty depends, further, upon an inference from weight, — an inference which, in the case of coins which were little more than tokens, is unusually precarious. In any case, the argu- ments advanced would need to he much stronger in order to upset the positive statement of St. Mark.
The value, then, as men reckon values, of the widow's gift was little more than a farthing. But the fact that it consisted of two tiny coin.*, — a fact M'hich Me constantly obscure by talking, in our careless way, of 'the widow's rnite,^ — is fall of sig- nificance. She might have kept back one.t But of her penury she cast in aU that she had ; and so of her, too, as of another woman who from her larger resources made an equallj- laWsh g'ift, it is true that, wherever the gospel is preached through- out the whole world (Mt 26'*), this that she did is told as a memorial of hei.
LiTKRATFRE. — Madden's Coi»w of the Jews (voL iL of A'umis-
mata Orientalia) contains an exhaustive account of all the extant Jewish coins, and an appendix (2S9-31Ci) on the money of the NT. The subject is treated brieflv, but clearly, in Schurer, HJP ii. i. 3S-40, and O. Holtzmaim, AT Zeitge^ch. 110-116. Mommsen's Ge^cfi. des Bom. iliinziresenf: is a' mine of information on all that concerns the money of the Empire. Articles on ' Money ' in the various Bible Dictionaries can be read with advantage, esp. the admirably comprehensive and lucid art. by Prof. Kennedy in Hastings' DB.
NORMAX FP.ASER. MONEY-CHANGERS. — See preced. art. and Bank, No. 1.
MONOTHEISM.— At whatever period in their earl J- history tlie people of Israel may be supposed to have passed through the obscure and uncertain stages of belief that precede a clear and reasoned theism, that period had been left behind long before the days of Christ and the NT writers. The bitter experiences of exile and suHering on tiie one hand, and on the other the lofty teachings of prophets and men of God, had eradicated all tendencies to polytheism, and had fixed immov- ably in the conscience and con\-iction of the entire nation the faith that Jehovah was the one God of
* Babelon (606) identifies the qrtadram with the 2('xK>jMt and the x*'-"'^'' with the lepton of the Gospels, t ' Quorum unum vidua retinere potuerat ' (Bengel).
202
MOXOTHEISM
MORXIXG
tlie whole earth. If Israel's early beliefs, as some contend, were lienotheistic, and conceded a place and right to other national gods, as Cheniosh, JNIolech, or Rimmon, as equal and paramount lords of their omu peoples, such recognition of ex- ternal divinities had long since ceased to be per- missible. There were not really gods many and lords many ; there is one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ (1 Co S").
This monotheistic belief, however, is assumed rather than formulated or defined in the Gospels. Tlie doctrine that God is one, univei'sally supreme and without rival, does not need to be explained or defended, for it runs no risk of being assailed. Like the belief in the existence of God, it is an article of faith accepted on all sides, by Jesus and by His opponents, and is rather implicit in the thought than explicit in the teaching of Clirist and of His disciples.