Widow's Mite Value?

It depends on which translation you are reading, a King James bible refers to them as equaling a farthing. Onviously, it is very difficult to make a currency conversion across 2000 years of history but I believe it is merely describing the relative denomination of the coin in relation to a familiar modern denomination.

Two mites - The word translated "mite" denotes a small coin made of brass - the smallest in use among the Jews. The precise value cannot now be easily estimated. It was much less than any coin we have, as the "farthing" was less than an English farthing. It was in value about three mills and a half, or one-third of a cent.


and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing; a "quadrant", which was the fourth part of the Roman assis, or farthing; which seems to be much the same with the of the Greeks, which is said (g) to be,

"the fourth part of an obolus (the least Athenian coin), that is, two brass pieces.''

These mites seem to be the same with the "prutas", the Jews often speak of; who say (h), that a "pruta" is the eighth part of an Italian farthing; though some make it to be the sixth: hence the Syriac version here renders it, "two menin, that is, eighths"; and the Jerusalem Talmud expressly says (i), that, , "two prutas make a quadrant"

http://bible.cc/mark/12-42.htm

The phrasing used in the two parallel passages describing this story are slightly different, because Mark was writing to a (presumably) Roman audience, while Luke was writing to a Greek one.

Mark 12:42: "two lepta, which is a quadrans". The quadrans was the smallest denomination in the Roman Imperial monetary system.
Luke 21:2: "two lepta". Presumably Luke's audience already knew what "lepta" were and didn't need a currency conversion. The lepton was the smallest coin most Greek city-states issued.

The word "mite", used in the King James version in the Mark passage and has, thanks to this passage, become the name for the Greek/Jewish lepton, was the name English folks gave to the smallest copper (or extremely debased silver) coins from continental Europe, the French half-denier and the Dutch half-duit. These were reckoned at being worth a half-farthing, or even less.

Making parallels with modern currency units is always tricky, because the cultural differences between biblical Palestine and us are so great. But it should be pointed out that the lepton was not completely worthless, as a half-cent (or half-farthing) would be to you and me. Ancient peoples did not share our modern penchant for mass-producing coins that had absolutely no buying power. All ancient coins had some buying power, even the smallest ones, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered making them.

So, what was a Widow's Mite actually worth back then? There were four quadrans to an as, 16 asses to a denarius; so a lepton was worth 1/128th of a denarius. A denarius was a day's pay for an unskilled labourer, so in modern money, assuming $100 a day is an equivalent salary level, then the lepton was equivalent to about a dollar.

What can you do with two bucks these days? Not much, perhaps, but you can do something - and a poor person can probably make $2 go quite a long way. It was just the same in those days - a lepton could have bought you a loaf or two of low-grade barley bread, or enough raw barley for you to make a dozen or so loaves of bread - enough to last you for a couple of days.

I wrote the article in question, and frankly got a bit of a kick upon finding this thread. :)

I largely agree with Sap, both in context and reasoning. Maybe great minds think alike or something. ;)

The only real difference, and it's minor, is that I first assumed that the worker would be earning the US minimum wage, which would make the value of the two coins roughly 90 cents. Second, there is the matter of how much a day's wage will actually buy, which brought me to the conclusion that the coins would be worth about a third of that. I split the difference, kind of, which is how I came up with the figure of 50 cents that I put into the article.

And yes -- these coins are popular with the tourist trade and pretty much everyone else that knows the story.

The Mite was the smallest denomination at the time and almost worthless. People use these worthless little pieces of copper to prey on the religious and reference that they were mentioned in the same passage of the bible as Jesus. They would sell leprosy if they could as well. Stay away from these coins.