Precious Metals at the Beginning and End of Jesus’ Life II: ‘Render Unto Caesar’
- ptcrawford
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
Looking at the possibilities of what any numismatic golden gift that Jesus might have received as a newborn might raise questions about the other coins connected to events in his life. On top of the ‘Cleansing of the Temple’ (known by some as the ‘Temple tantrum’), where Jesus looked to eject moneychangers from the vicinity of the Temple in Jerusalem, there are two other very famous incidents to take place late in Jesus’ life that involved coins.
The first of these comes in Matthew 22:15-22…
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21 They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. (Matt. 22:15-22, NRSV; cf. Mark 12: 13-17; Luke 20: 20-26)
As seen here, the text identifies the coin given to Jesus as a denarius (more accurately, given the New Testament’s Greek, δηνάριον - dēnarion); however, in the original King James Version of the Bible, the coin was referred to as a ‘penny’, which has given rise to it being called the ‘tribute penny’ (As an interesting aside, this connection between the denarius and the penny seems to form the basis for the abbreviation of ‘d’ being used as meaning ‘pence’ in British numismatic parlance until the 20th century, not to mention the continued linguistic influence of denarius on several modern words for ‘money’ – denaro, denar, dinheiro, dinero, as well as being the basis for dinar).
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas 100, the coin given to Jesus is made of gold, raising all the same questions as the ‘magi gold’ in terms of its identification, with the added suspect of it being an aureus of Tiberius.
The King James translation also gives this episode in Jesus’ life the more famous tagline used as the title of this piece – “Render unto Caesar”, a reduction which perhaps obscures some of the potentially more nuanced meanings involved in Jesus’ pronouncement.
However, our focus here is on the identification of the coin itself. The denarius already had a long history by the early first century AD, having been originally minted in around 211BC during a major overhaul of Roman coinage during the Second Punic War.
Its name comes from its initial value of 10 asses, with an as being a bronze (and later copper) coin introduced in c.280BC – denarius literally means ‘containing ten’, and while it was re-tariffed in 141BC to being the equivalent of 16 asses (reflecting the decrease in weight of the as), the name stuck and the denarius became the backbone of much of the Roman numismatic economy throughout the remainder of the Republic and on into the Early Imperial period.
This prolonged history of issue would seem to provide a considerable number of potential coins being referred to here as the ‘tribute penny.’ However, the description provided by Jesus and the Pharisees of this δηνάριον can reduce the chronological scope considerably. The mention of ‘Caesar’ as being depicted on the coin means that it came from the period of Julius Caesar’s minting of denarii with his own head in the mid-40s BC and after.
Given that he was emperor at the time of this proposed numismatic confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees, it is usually thought that the ‘tribute penny’ was a denarius of Tiberius (14-37AD).
And as it seems that Tiberius only issued one type of denarius during his reign with the inscription of TI CAESAR DIVI AVG F AVGVTVS (‘Tiberius Caesar Augustus, son of the Divine Augustus’) around his head on the obverse and a female figure seated on a chair. The figure is of uncertain identity but is sometimes considered to be Tiberius’ mother Livia in the guise of the divine Pax.
However, while the Tiberian identification might seem most likely, it is not certain. As mentioned, ‘Caesarian’ denarii had been produced for nearly 80 years by the time of this Pharisaic attempt to trap Jesus. In that time, various coins were in circulation that could fit the description of a coin sporting the head of ‘Caesar’ and ‘his’ inscription.
Not only did Julius Caesar mint coins with his own head on them, others also minted coins depicting him after his assassination. And given his eastern area of influence in the 30s BC, could the coin handed to Jesus have been issued under Mark Antony as a posthumous tribute to Julius Caesar? Antony certainly minted coins with his own and Caesar’s heads on them in 43BC.
Of course, the name ‘Caesar’ need not mean Julius Caesar himself. Some of Antony’s coins depicted his then ally Octavian i.e. ‘Gaius Julius Caesar’, and as the future Augustus took ‘Caesar’ as his name, it became attached to the imperial position and the ruling family.
The numismatic ‘Caesar’ therefore takes in not only Julius Caesar and then Augustus and Tiberius, but also numerous other members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Under the first two emperors, as well as their own, there were also denarii minted bearing the likenesses of Augustus’ grandsons, Gaius and Lucius (this has been suggested as the most “statistically likely” ‘Caesarian’ denarius to have been placed in Jesus’ hand; Marotta (2001)), and Tiberius’ nephew, Germanicus, who was prominent in the eastern provinces. It is clear then that the identity of ‘Caesar’ in the Gospels and therefore the denarius in question ranges much wider than merely the ruling emperor at the time of Jesus’ numismatic conversation with the Pharisees.
When is a δηνάριον not a denarius?
However, there is room to widen the potential range of identities of this ‘tribute penny’ even further. This is because while on the surface the identification of the coin handed to Jesus as a δηνάριον and therefore a Roman denarius seems set in stone, this is actually not the case.
Numismatic investigation suggests that there were very few denarii in Jerusalem (or even Syria for that matter) at the time of Jesus (Ariel (1982)), severely curtailing the chances of the ‘tribute penny’ actually being a denarius. But then why would the Gospel writers identify it as such?
As the Evangelists (focus usually falls on Mark as the widely accepted earliest Gospel writer) were writing some years after the events of Jesus’ life, it could be that the appearance of a denarius in the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees is a little anachronistic, with Mark and the other Gospel writers projecting the numismatic normality from their period back to that of Jerusalem in the 30sAD. And even if the denarius was still not all that normal in their time, the Evangelists could be presenting it as such in order to cater to their increasingly Romanised audience.
So what might the Evangelists have been ‘mistaking’ for a δηνάριον? Almost certainly an inscribed silver coin of similar size which depicted a ‘Caesar’ of some sort and there are some candidates.
Antioch issued tetradrachms which had a ‘Caesar’ on both sides – Augustus and Tiberius – and an imperial inscription. The Augustan inscription does call him ‘theos’ – a ‘god’, which would clearly be heavily objected to by the Jews in the same manner as their objecting to the Tiberian denarii sporting the inscription DIVI AVG F, depicting Tiberius as the ‘son of the Divine Augustus’. But could such blasphemous coins seeping into Judaea be part of the reason for the moneychangers setting up in the environs of the Temple in Jerusalem – to keep out such ‘graven images’ and profane declarations? Or had the temple always accepted just Tyrian ‘shekels’ and keeping such blasphemous tetradrachms and denarii were merely an extension of the money-changers normal work?
The size of this tetradrachm could also be a help or a hindrance to it being identified as the ‘tribute penny.’ It is twice the size of a denarius, which makes mistaking it for one less likely, but this size (and the busts and inscriptions) would make it a useful prop for the Jesus vs Pharisees encounter (Lewis (1999), 3-13; Lewis and Holden (2002), 19) [There was another Tiberian tetradrachm from Antioch that had the Tyche of Antioch on the reverse (RPC I.4162), which followed similar issues of Augustus (RPC I.4150-60)].
Another numismatic option would be the series of silver drachmae issued from Cappadocian Caesarea issued during the reign of Tiberius, featuring several different Caesars – Tiberius himself, the divine Augustus, Tiberius’ adopted son and heir, Germanicus, and Tiberius’ actual son, Drusus.
These Tiberian drachmae come in somewhat varied weights, but while the Tiberian denarius averages out at slightly heavier, there is enough similarity in weight to make a ‘mistaking’ of these drachmae for denarii realistic. Those depicting Augustus would also have come with the ‘graven images’ issue as Augustus is being presented as a divine being.
Perhaps the most ubiquitous silver coinage in Judaea by 30AD – the Tyrian shekel – would be available to be used an exhibit in the Jesus/Pharisee confrontation, particularly given its acceptance for the Jewish Temple tax. However, this coin is also considerably bigger than the denarius, as it was considered by the Greeks to be the equivalent of the tetradrachm. And while the Tyrian shekels of this period did have an inscription on them, it had nothing to do with the emperor and none of the coins depicted any kind of ‘Caesar’, instead bearing the Greco-Phoencian demigod, Heracles/Melqart (RPC I.4632-66): a strange choice of coin to be allowed for use in the Jewish Temple [Sidon half-shekels would be closer in size to a denarius, but are far less ubiquitous and feature Tyche, rather than a ‘Caesar’; RPC I.4559-60].
As we can see, there are numerous obstacles in the way of a firm identification of the so-called ‘tribute penny’ – size, ubiquity, numismatic content, chronology – None of which, individually or collectively, rule out any of the candidates presented here conclusively…
Bibliography
Ariel, D.T. ‘A Survey of Coin Finds in Jerusalem’, Liber Annuus 32 (1982), 273-326
Lewis, P.E. ‘The actual Tribute penny’, JNAA 10 (1999), 3-13
Lewis, P.E. ‘The Tribute penny in the Gospel of Thomas’, JNAA 10 (1999), 13-21
Lewis, P.E. and Bolden, R. The Pocket Guide to Saint Paul: Coins Encountered by the Apostle on His Travels. Kent Town (2002)
Marotta, M.E. ‘Six Caesars Of The Tribute Penny’ https://web.archive.org/web/20111012091846/http:/coin-newbies.com/articles/caesars.html
Shore, H. ‘The Real ‘Tribute Penny’’, Celator 10 (1996), 16-18
Yeoman, R.S. Moneys of the Bible. New York (1982)
For a succinct look at this ‘tribute penny’ debate and the potential candidates, check out this video by Professor Kevin Butcher (University of Warwick) - ‘Render Unto Caesar’.
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