What does the expression "Thirty pieces of silver" mean? Judas versus Jesus? Thirty silversmiths. Ascension of the Lord For how many pieces of silver sold

THE MYTH ABOUT COWARDENESS AND TRAILING OF THE JEWS Another eternal reproach to the Jews is their lack of inclination to military affairs. Therefore, the appearance of a Jew became even less attractive for women in the era of great wars, when the most seductive were men who rattled their weapons.

3. The death of Judas 3. Then Judas, who betrayed Him, seeing that He was condemned, and repented, returned thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. The death of Judas is told in Matthew and in Acts. 1: 16-20. There is no doubt that both of these passages tell about one and

Jude Chapter 1 1 Greeting. 3 A warning against wicked teachers who reject Christ. 5 Examples of the ancient wicked and their judgment. 17 "Keep yourselves in the love of God"; help the doubters and the tempted. 24 Glory to the One who is able to keep you from falling. 1 Judas, servant of Jesus

Jude Chapter 1 Judas, a servant of Jesus Christ, brother of James, greets those who are called by God the Father to live in His love and under the protection of Jesus Christ. 2 May mercy, peace and love be with you in all its fullness! 3 My beloved, although I really wanted to write to you about our common salvation with you,

The betrayal of Judas 14 After that, one of the Twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the high priests 15 and said: "What will you give me if I give you Him?" They paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16 And since then he began to look for an opportunity to give

The Betrayal of Judas 10 At that time Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the high priests to betray Jesus to them. 11 And when they heard this, they rejoiced and promised to give him money. And he began to look for an opportunity to betray

Jude Introduction This letter was written by Jude (another brother of Jesus Christ) between 65 and 70 AD. according to R.Kh. Where Judas wrote his letter and to whom exactly it was addressed, we do not know. But the essence of the question raised by the author is clear. Judas calls

Suicide of Judas (Acts 1: 16–20) 3 When Judas, who betrayed Isa, saw that Isa was condemned, he repented and returned thirty silver coins to the chief priests and elders. 4 - I have sinned, - he said, - I gave up to death of an innocent Man. '' `` What is it to us? -

Jude Chapter 1 Greeting 1 From Judas, servant of Jesus Christ and brother of Jacob, to all who have been called and loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ a.2 May mercy, peace and

Announcement 36 About despising the present for the sake of future blessings, as well as about brother Basil and two pieces of silver Fathers and brothers. Although my announcement is made according to paternal tradition, it does not have the same power, for the word of the fathers, backed up by good deeds, passed and reached

Jude 25,229

According to Biblical legends, this is a payment to Judas Iscariot from the Jewish priests for betraying Jesus Christ. The fact itself can be considered in two ways, for one simple reason - even at that time, 30 pieces of silver were very few.

Options:

• Christianity, has become one of the most significant world religions, and the image of Judas was necessary in order to show the pettiness and misunderstanding of the foundations of life by humanity;
• it was necessary to create the image of a hero, and for this an antipode was simply necessary, in the role of which one of the disciples of Christ played.

At present, the phrase "thirty pieces of silver" is a symbol of betrayalbut solely thanks to Christian traditions.

Another opinion was expressed about the legend by Leonid Andreev in the story "Judas Iscariot". Despite the fact that the work became a classic, during the life of the author there were many discussions and reproaches about what was written, namely that Judas went to betrayal out of love for the teacher and out of devotion, unlike the rest of the students.

Once during Holy Week, a preacher made a slip
and said that Judas sold Christ not for 30 pieces of silver, but for 40 ...
A merchant standing among the people bent down to his friend and said:
- This, therefore, at the current rate ...
Church anecdote of the 18th century

However, first of all, it should be noted that we will never know the real amount for which Judas sold his Teacher. 30 pieces of silver were put into the hands of Judas only in order to retroactively justify the Old Testament prophecy from the Book of the Prophet Zechariah: “Then the poor of the sheep who wait for Me will know that this is the word of the Lord. And I will say to them: if you please, give me my wages; if not, don't give; and they will weigh thirty pieces of silver to pay me. And the Lord said to me: Throw them into the church storehouse - a high price, at which they valued Me! And I took thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord for the potter ”(chap. 11: 11-13).

It is no coincidence that 30 pieces of silver in payment for the betrayal of Judas are mentioned only in the Gospel of Matthew (26.15): “And he said, What will you give me, and I will betray him to you? They offered him thirty pieces of silver ", in the Gospel of Mark (14.11), the oldest of the four, the specific amount is not indicated: "When they heard, they were delighted and promised to give him pieces of silver.", in the Gospel of Luke (22: 5) it says only: "They were delighted and agreed to give him money.", and the Gospel of John does not say at all that betrayal was paid for.

It is no secret that many passages of the Gospel biography of Jesus are entirely conditioned by the corresponding prophecies from the Old Testament. In the text of the Gospels, all these places are marked, and they can be safely attributed to literary fiction. Episode with 30 pieces of silver — from among them.

But this is not the point, but to understand what financial and economic associations the 30 pieces of silver evoked in the first readers of the Gospels.

Srebrenik, featured in the Gospels, is usually identified with a silver shekel (shekel, in Greek - statir). In the Bible, the word kesef (silver, silver piece) is sometimes used as a synonym for the expression “shekel of silver” (Genesis 37:28; Judges 9: 4; 17: 4; II Sam. 18:11). Moreover, at the time of the Second Temple (end of the 6th century BC - 70 AD) the shekel was in use (see illustration), which was actually a half shekel. This lightweight "sacred shekel" (weighing 13-14 grams of silver) was the annual tax of each Jew on the Temple.

Thus, 30 pieces of silver equals approximately 400 grams of silver.
What could this money buy in 1st century Judea?

In the Book of Exodus (chapter 21, 28-32), 30 pieces of silver are fine in favor of the owner for a slave or slave who was gored to death by someone else's ox (often this amount is incorrectly interpreted as the price slave).

The shekel was equal in weight to four denarii or four drachmas. The Greeks called the shekel "tetradrachma".
30 pieces of silver, therefore, were equal to 120 denarii. Denarius was paid a day to a soldier or an employee. Thus, we can talk about the then "average salary" for 4 months.
Judas valued the incense spent by Magdalene on Jesus at 300 denarii. This is 2.5 times more than thirty pieces of silver.

The Gospel also says that after Judas' suicide, the money he received was used to buy "potter's land" for burials, i.e. a certain piece of clay land (like a cheap summer cottage in the suburbs). But this information raises doubts, since again they refer to the prophecy of Jeremiah: "Then came true what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, who says: and they took thirty pieces of silver, the price of the Appraised, Which the children of Israel appreciated, and gave them for the potter's land, as the Lord told me" . (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 27, 9-10).
Moreover, Jeremiah himself gives completely different numbers: "And I bought a field from Anameel, my uncle's son, which is in Anathoth, and weighed him seven shekels of silver and ten pieces of silver" (Book of Jeremiah, chapter 32, 9).

Another important point is that the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah lived in the era of the First Temple and, therefore, their shekel was not equal to the Gospel shekel, which the Evangelists, of course, did not know. The weight of the shekel in more ancient times was determined by two standards - Babylonian and Phoenician, each of which, in turn, was double, light (ordinary) and heavy ("royal"). Babylonian heavy shekel was equal to 22-23 g, light - 11-11.5 g, Phoenician heavy - 14.5-15.3 g, light - 7.3-7.7 g. It is difficult to say which one is in mind in Old Testament prophecies. In any case, it should be remembered that in the prophecies of the Old Testament the life of the Son of God was actually evaluated somewhat differently than in the time of Jesus, despite the formal coincidence of the amount: 30 pieces of silver in the Old and New Testaments are different money ..

There are two ways to approximate the 30 pieces of silver incriminated to Judas to today's prices.
First, the value of silver. On November 21, 2013, the Bank of Russia estimates 1 g of silver at 21.52 rubles. At these rates, Judas would sign for 8600 rubles, like a normal Russian pensioner. Why our government considers pensioners to be Jews is another question.

In the second method of calculation, one should focus on the comparative cost of labor (we take a segment of 4 months). The average salary of Russians in 2013 is approximately 27,000 rubles. For 4 months it turns out a little more than 100 thousand. Well, probably for such a sum today there will be those who want to capture a kiss on the cheek of their doomed victim. And then - for a week in Paris.

At one of the lessons of the historical association “Sarovskaya Pustyn”, devoted to the study of the Gospels, the question arose, is it a lot - 30 pieces of silver received by Judas for betraying Jesus Christ.
It is not obvious from the text of the New Testament which specific silver coins are meant. These could be Roman denarii, ancient Greek drachmas, didrachmas, staters, or tetradrachms. However, usually 30 pieces of silver are identified with Tyrian staters (Jewish shekels, shekels) or tetradrachms (4 drachmas).

Numismatic reference

Tyrian stater (shekel, shekel)

Stater, Statir (Old Greek στᾰτήρ - balance beam, scales) is an antique coin circulated in Ancient Greece and Lydia in the period from about the beginning of the 5th century BC. e. until the middle of the 1st century A.D. e.
Initially, the name was used in Athens for coins equal in value to a tetradrachma (four drachmas), although later in other places the didrachma (two drachmas coin) was also called stater.

Denarius (lat. Denarius) - An ancient Roman silver coin equal to 10 copper assam, the minting of which began in 269 BC. At first, the denarius weighed 4.55 grams, in 217 BC. the weight of a denarius was reduced to 3.9 g. During the New Testament, one drachma was equal to one denarius.

First, let's calculate the cost formally. 30 pieces of silver is 360 grams of silver (since 1 denarius is ~ 4 g of silver, 1 piece of silver \u003d 4 drachmas, i.e. 12 g of silver). In pre-revolutionary sources of the late 19th century, 30 pieces of silver are equated to 30 rubles in silver, although then a silver coin of 1 ruble (20 grams) contained 18 g of pure silver and, therefore, 18x30 \u003d 540 (i.e., in the 19th century, silver became cheaper). Now silver is mined industrially and is even cheaper than in those days, and 1 gram of silver scrap costs about 40 rubles (modern). Thus, if we count in terms of the cost of silver, 30 pieces of silver are now worth: 40 rubles. x 360g ≈14,400 rubles, or 40 rubles. x 540g ≈ 21,600 rubles, which clearly does not correspond to either the purchasing power of 30 tsarist rubles (the salary of a highly qualified worker of the Russian Empire for two to three months), or 30 silver coins on the outskirts of the Roman Empire in Judea. The rather high purchasing power of 30 pieces of silver is evidenced by the fact that for this money (the repentant Judas returned them to the high priests) a plot of land was purchased for a cemetery near the capital of Judea - Jerusalem (compare with the cost of plots near Nizhny Novgorod - i.e. the capital of our region).

Let's go from the other side and speculate. Denarius, during the life of Jesus Christ, was the standard daily wage for a skilled agricultural laborer or Roman legionnaire. If we accept the widespread version that the silver coin is a tetradrachm (4 drachmas equal to 4 denarii), then 30 silver coins is 120 denarii, or about a five-month salary with a six-day working week. Moreover, with this money they could support (albeit at a very minimal level by today's standards) not only themselves, but their large family (wives then, as a rule, did not work, and there were “slightly” more children in the family than now).

Suppose that now the salary of a qualified employee or an officer of the middle rank, taking into account all additional payments and allowances, is approximately 40-50 thousand rubles a month. Another 10-20 thousand "runs" from public consumption funds that did not exist for "ordinary" people 2000 years ago (free education, medicine, police, etc.). Consequently, their salary for six months (with a five-day working week) will be 300-400 thousand rubles, i.e. approximately the cost of a simple domestic car or a used budget foreign car. Well, or the cost of one hundred square meters of land near Nizhny Novgorod. A cemetery, even a village one, is difficult to locate. However, then (at the time of Jesus Christ) there were two orders of magnitude less people on Earth, and correspondingly more free land, so the ratio of prices for land and different goods was obviously different.

From all presented, it seems to me the most correct definition of the current cost of 30 pieces of silver, proceeding from the ratio of the size of the salary (i.e., ~ 300-400 thousand rubles). You can live without silver or your own plot of land, but you always want to eat and drink. Thus, with a decent amount of voluntarism, it can be assumed that the betrayal did not cost the high priests so much, but Judas - his life (according to the Gospel of Matthew, he strangled himself) and dubious glory.

© 2013 - First Edition, © 2019 - Second Edition. VN Gankin, IO "Sarovskaya Pustyn".

1. Wikipedia.
2. Numismatic Dictionary, Lviv, 1979.
3. Mythological Dictionary, Moscow, 1990.
4. Bible Encyclopedia, BiE, St. Petersburg, 1893.