Holy Thursday in Greece today, the day of the Last Supper, a day of mourning for Greek Orthodox Christians as the Passion Week reaches its peak. It is the day they recall Judas’ betrayal in exchange for 30 silver coins.
It is the day that Christians recall the betrayal of Judas the Iscariot who agreed with chief priests to hand over Jesus in exchange of 30 silver coins.
According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Judas Iscariot agreed with the chief priests to hand over Jesus in exchange of 30 silver coins, God’s Son was then arrested in Gethsemane.
Judas revealed Jesus’ identity to the soldiers by giving him a kiss.
But how much was this “kiss” worth nowadays?
Scholars disagree on the type of coins that would have been used and in the end there are suggestions for two possibilities: They could have been tetradrachms of Tyre, usually referred to as Tyrian shekels (14 grams of 94% silver), or staters from Antioch (15 grams of 75% silver), which bore the head of Augustus. Alternatively, they could have been Ptolemaic tetradrachms (13.5 ± 1 g of 25% silver). There are 31.1035 grams per troy ounce.
At spot valuation of $28/ozt in 2021, 30 “pieces of silver” would be worth approximately $91 to $441 in present-day value (USD) depending on which coin was used, wikipedia noted.
Τα 30 αργύρια ήταν τυριανά σεκέλ, Ενα σέκελ άξιζε περίπου 4 δρχ. Κάθε νόμισμα είχε βάρος λιγότερο από μισή ουγκιά ασήμι, περίπου 16 gr το καθένα.
Επομένως, η σημερινή αξία υπολογίζεται σε 400-500 € το ένα. Άρα, τα 30 αργύρια αντιστοιχούν σε 12.000-15.000 ευρώ.— xerolas (@xerolas2) May 2, 2024
In today’s Greek press and social media, the 30 silver coins are estimated to have a current value of €400 to €500 each, or 12,000-15,000 euros in total, if Judah betrayed Jesus in exchange for Tyrian shekels.
while the math was indeed wrong on that claim, it is also inaccurate to use today’s spot silver price as any kind of indication of the purchasing power of 30 pieces in AD 30. At that time in the roman world a denarius (a much smaller silver coin than a tetradrachm, or stater, the denarius at that time contained about 3g of silver, a drachm about 4-4.5g depending on where it was minted, a stater 12-15g again depending on whose it was) , was about a day’s wage for a professional soldier in the roman army. A laborer earned even less, often paid half a denarius a day or perhaps 3 denarii in two days. Even going with a soldier’s pay, 30 staters would be worth somewhere between100 and 150 denarii, which would mean between 3 and 5 months total pay for a soldier- or anywhere from 6 months to almost a year’s gtoss wages for a laborer. Put into context also that with the 30 pieces they in the end bought the ‘potters field’. Consider the typical wages at the bottom end of the scale today. A working-poor type of wage of somewhere between 500 and 800 eur a month in greece, for a low of 3 monthas to a high of 10 months.. might yield a very crude estimate of anywhere between 1500 and 8000 bucks today.. which also sounds about like the amount one would expect to pay to buy a few stremmata field somewhere on the edge of town (without property speculators and bankers driving pirces crazy).
trying to estimate prices in ancient times, in a meaningful way, is actually a difficult problem and probably the best approach is to get as much and as broad information as possible about relative prices and values of as many goods and peoples’ labor as well, for that time period and that area, to get an idea of what such and such a coin would have actually bought you. the metal content on today’s market is a meaningless number for ancient comparisons.
no wonder Judas hang himself after he looked into the future and capitalism
haha
the point i was trying to make was that while the original article did indeed get their match wrong, the simple ‘todays value of so many grams of silver’ also doesnt convey the value at that time to those people of those 30 coins. The amount was a pretty significant sum at the time to an ordinary working class man on the street and was obviously enough to bribe one fellow to turn snitch on his teacher, even if he regretted it after the fact.a fellow could have eaten for a year on that sum or, as we see, could have bought a decent sized field with it.
kalh anastash oloi!
While we may not know exactly what numerical value to put on the 30 pieces of silver in various current day fiat currencies what we do know is that it’s purchasing power is pretty much exactly the same today as it was in Judas’ time. Gold, and its lower value analogue silver, have maintained pretty much constant purchasing power for at least 5,000 years while our fiat currencies cannot maintain purchasing power for a whole year. As J.P. Morgan stated in his testimony before Congress in 1912, “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.”