How Much Money Is 10,000 Talents Worth

The Bible contains many mysteries inside it, but not all of these were meant to be mysteries. Some are just references to a culture that no longer exists. One of these is found in The Parable of the Ungrateful Servant in the Gospel of Matthew. In this parable a king (or "master") forgives the debt of a man who owes him ten m talents. The reader is meant to sympathise this is a huge sum of coin and the king, who represents God, is very generous. How much money was a talent worth, though? What was a biblical talent? Here nosotros volition answer those questions.

The Parable of the Ungrateful Servant

For those unfamiliar with this story, the details are these: a servant who owes ten thousand talents to a male monarch is brought before him unable to pay back his debt. He and his whole family are to be sold into slavery to settle what he owes. The man throws himself at the mercy of the rex and begs a fiddling more time to pay back the money. The male monarch, in response, shows him compassion and tells him the debt is forgiven and he can become.

This servant leaves the rex and goes and finds someone who owes him 100 denarii and demands that he pay information technology. This man in turn begs the servant for mercy and asks him for more fourth dimension, but the ungrateful servant refuses and has him thrown him into prison until he can pay it. Other servants are angered at how wicked the ungrateful servant is and tell the king who is disgusted :

"You wicked servant," he said, "I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" In acrimony his master handed him over to the jailers to exist tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

Given the details of this parable, ten thousand talents would seem to exist a large sum of money just something that could, in fact, be paid back with time and difficult work. But is that the case?

How Much Was a Biblical Talent Worth?

If yous get by what the various translations of the Bible say, yous will be confused. The NIV (New International Version) translates 10 thou talents equally "ten 1000 bags of aureate." The Living Bible takes more leeway and translates it every bit "$x meg, literally, '10,000 talents.' Approximately £3 one thousand thousand."

Clearly it was a great deal of money. In the Old Attestation the word "talent" appears when describing how much gilded the Israelites used to build the tabernacle. It was a unit for weighing precious metals similar silver and gold and weighed about 75 pounds. The Israelites used 29 talents of gilt in the construction of their tabernacle.

In the New Testament the word meant something different. From the Greek word tálanton , it was a big monetary measurement equal to vi,000 drachmas or denarii, the Greek and Roman silver coins. It was the largest unit of measurement of currency at that fourth dimension. The denarius was a standard silver Roman coin and equal to a twenty-four hour period'southward wages. The Romans, remember, were ruling over Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, so their minted coins were in use in that location.

So if one denarius was what a man similar the ungrateful servant could earn in a twenty-four hour period, he would demand to work 6,000 days to earn one talent. Ten grand talents would equal 60 one thousand thousand denarii or 60 million days of work.

A biblical talent was enough money that a man who owned information technology could exist considered rich. Ten grand talents was an astronomical corporeality of money for the common man, an unforgivable debt. The servant begged the king for a "little more time" to pay it dorsum, merely both of them knew that he never could. The other human being who owed 100 denarii could have paid off his debt, perhaps, in time and with a picayune skilful fortune, but not the ungrateful servant. Information technology certainly would have behooved him to extend the same forgiveness he had received to his fellow man.

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