His second argument hardly merits an observa tion, for we might as well assume that because we say such a thing is not worth a penny, or not worth a farthing, therefore the penny and the farthing are the same coin.
His final argument is sufficiently answered by the fact that there are coins of the Ethnarch Arche laus and of the Emperor Augustus struck by the procurators weighing so low as i8 to 15 grains, and that by comparing them with others of the same period a result can be obtained proving the existence in Judma of three denominations of coin age —the semis, the quadrans, and the lepton. There is no doubt that the lepton was rarely struck at the time of the evangelists, yet it must have been a common coin from the time of Alexander II. to the accession of Antigonus (B.c. 69–B.c. 40), and its circulation must long have continued in use. The extreme vicissitudes of the period may only have allowed these small copper coins to be struck. They were formerly attributed to Alex ander Jannavus, but are now given to Alexander II. [MONEY.] They average in weight from 20 to 15 grains.
It may be as well to notice that Schleusner (Lex. N. T., s. v. Kapdvrns), after Fischer, con siders the quadrans of the N. T., of which the
lepton was the half, not to have equalled the Roman quadrans, but to have been the fourth of the Jewish as. The Jewish as is made to correspond with the half of the half-ounce Roman as, and as, according to Jewish writers, the rlDpin or ntorz was the eighth part of the assar, or Jewish as (Buxtorf, Lex. 7'alm., s. v. i+tw), and as the evangelists have understood this word to be the lepton, it follows that the quadrans equalled Mc Virra. This theory, however, is quite out of the question, and a comparison the coins of Juda with those struck at Rome, clearly proves that the quadrans in Judrea was the same as the quadrant in Rome. Moreover, as the Romans ordered that only Roman coins, weights, and measures should be used in all the provinces of the Roman empire (Dion. Cass. lii. 2o), it is certain that there can have been no wish as or Jewish quadrans, and that all the coins issued by the Jewish princes, and under the procurators, were struck upon a Roman standard (cf. F. W. Madden, Hist. of 7ewish Coinage and of Money in 0. and N. T., pp. 296 3o2).—F. W. M.