Ancient Judaea Coin For Identification

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I have no idea what it is, other than it's cast. A widow's mite has a star (a radial design) on the obverse (not present here) and an anchor on the reverse (not present here). So how they came to that description, I don't know.

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Having examined thousands of "widow's mites" in hand over the years, I believe your coin is genuine and essentially as described.

The coins of Alexander Jannaeus range from quite well executed to extremely crude. According to David Hendin, some of the cruder pieces have "barbaric or incomplete" inscriptions and "seem to carry crude linear designs instead of stars on the reverse". The coins of this period were not cast but struck on cast strips which were separated after striking, resulting in their characteristically odd fabric.

The smallest and crudest, such as your coin, are associated with the "widow's mite" of the New Testament. The assumption is that the coins were so common that they were srill in circulation during Jesus' ministry. "Mite" is the 1611 KJV translation of the Greek word "lepton" (plural "lepta"). In the Gospel, Jesus tells the story of a poor widow who offered "two lepta, which is a quadrans". The point of the parable is that the widow's offering counted for more than the offerings of the wealthy because she "out of her poverty put in all the livelihood that she had."