We find the story of the widow’s mite in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. In both passages (which are nearly identical), Jesus makes the point that the widow’s gift to the Temple treasury was very costly to her, because it represented everything she had. But the challenge for the translator is to determine how best to translate the technical terms for the coins she dropped into the box.<\/p>\n
The Greek text in Mark 12:42 says that she dropped in “two lepta, which is a kodrantes.” So if we simply translate it that way in English, everything is clear, right? Sure, if the reader has an intuitive sense of the value of two lepta! And Mark even gives us a clue by telling us that two lepta\u00a0(Jewish coins) are equal to a kodrantes (a Roman coin). But most of us would still have to reach for a Bible dictionary to make sense of those terms. So translators have resorted to numerous solutions.<\/p>\n
KJV: two mites, which make a farthing
\nRSV: two copper coins, which make a penny
\nNASB: two small copper coins, which amount to a cent (with a footnote)
\nNIV: two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny (with a footnote)
\nESV: two small copper coins, which make a penny (with a footnote)
\nHCSB: two tiny coins worth very little (with a footnote)
\nNLT: two small coins (with a footnote)<\/p>\n
Which translation is correct? I would argue that the KJV, RSV, NASB, NIV, and ESV\u00a0communicate the wrong message. After all, a penny has very little value in our current economy. But in the first century, a kodrantes was equal to 1\/64 of a denarius, and a denarius was considered fair pay for a day\u2019s wage. If today\u2019s wage for a laborer in the USA is $15 per hour, that comes to $120 for an 8-hour day. At this rate, 1\/64 of a day\u2019s wage is $1.88. Round it up to $2.00, and we could say that the widow dropped two dollar-coins into the collection box. That feels very different from \u201ctwo coins worth only a fraction of a penny.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s for that reason that the NLT simply says \u201ctwo small coins\u201d [footnote: Greek two lepta, which is a kodrantes<\/em>\u00a0(i.e., a quadrans)]. After all, the point of Jesus\u2019 teaching was that the widow gave everything she had. And if\u00a0her two small coins were worth a couple of dollars in our economy, let\u2019s not give the impression that she had only two pennies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We find the story of the widow’s mite in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. In both passages (which are nearly identical), Jesus makes the point that the widow’s gift to the Temple treasury was very costly to her, because it represented everything she had. But the challenge for the translator is to determine how best […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,22,44,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5910,"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/5910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wpmu3.northcentralus.cloudapp.azure.com\/nlt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}