Sunday, October 24, 2021

The Temple Tax

 
Coins of at least three different nations were used in everyday life in Judea during the NT era. The NT text uses the names of Greek coins, Roman coins, and Jewish coins. The original readers of the NT were presumably very familiar with all of these terms and also knew their relative values.
 
The challenge for the translator is to use English terms for the various coins that will convey for modern readers the same intuitive sense of meaning. A case in point is the incident in Matt 17:24-27, in which Jesus sent Peter to find a coin (in a fish’s mouth!) to pay the Temple tax.
 
Matthew–the former tax collector–is the only Gospel writer to tell about this incident. And in the space of four verses, he uses the names of two Greek coins. In 17:24 he twice uses the term didrachma, which means simply a two-drachma coin. (The drachma was the Greek coin more or less equivalent to the Roman denarius, and both coins represent the daily wage for a laborer.) This is the only use of didrachma in the NT, and it is used to refer to the annual tax required for the upkeep of the Temple.  In Exodus 30:13-16, its predecessor–the tax for the care of the Tabernacle–is presented (in ancient Hebrew terminology) as a tax of “half a shekel.”
 
Matthew’s readers would intuitively have understood what was meant when the tax collectors came to ask Peter, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the didrachma?” But how should this term be translated into English?
 
A few verses later (Matt 17:27), Jesus tells Peter to go catch a fish, open its mouth, and pull out a stater. This Greek coin–mentioned only here in the NT–is equal to two didrachmas, or four drachmas. And if a didrachma pays the temple tax for one man, a stater is sufficient to pay the tax for both of them.
 
Here’s a list of how some English translations have handled the translation :
 
The NLT, the NKVJ and the NRSV all communicate clearly that the temple tax is in view. The RSV and the ESV, both borrow from Hebrew terminology (half-shekel) to help make the connection with the tax first mentioned in Exodus.   The most literal (word-to-word) renderings are found in the Darby Translation, the DRA and the Disciples’s Literal NT.

English Bible Translations

Matthew 17:24

Matthew 17:27

Darby, 1867

didrachmas

stater

DRA, 1899

didrachmas

stater

Disciples’ Literal NT, 2011

Double-drachmas

stater

NLT, 1996

the Temple tax

a large silver coin

KJV, 1611

tribute money

a piece of money

NKJV, 1982

the temple tax

a piece of money

NASB, 1971

the two-drachma tax

a shekel

RSV, 1952

the half-shekel tax

a shekel

NRSV, 1989

the temple tax

a coin

ESV, 2001

the half-shekel tax

a shekel

NIV, 1978

the two-drachma tax

a four-drachma coin

HCSB, 2004

the double-drachma tax

a coin



The NLT, the NKVJ and the NRSV all communicate clearly that the temple tax is in view. The RSV and the ESV, both borrow from Hebrew terminology (half-shekel) to help make the connection with the tax first mentioned in Exodus.   The most literal (word-to-word) renderings are found in the Darby Translation, the DRA and the Disciples’



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