On the spikenard of the ancients / By Charles Hatchett.

  • Charles Hatchett
Date:
[1836]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the spikenard of the ancients / By Charles Hatchett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/36 page 9
    translated the latin word Denarius by the German word Groschen, which is a small German coin ;* for instance in the parable of the good Samaritan he thus translates, v. 35 Luke, chap. 10—“ Des andern Tages reisete er und zog heraus zween Groschen und gab sie dem Wirth,” and the three hundred Denarii mentioned by St. John he translates “ Drey hundert Groschenthree hundred Groschen; perhaps he thought that the German people would not understand the meaning of the word Denarius, and he therefore substituted Groschen with which they were well ac- quainted ; but if the English translators had adopted the word Groschen, the people of England would not have understood it, and therefore with equal inaccuracy they substituted the word Penny. In many Editions of the English Bible there is a marginal note stating that the Roman Penny, as they chuse to call it, was the 8th part of an ounce of silver, and was worth sevenpence halfpenny of our money ; this, if attended to, serves in some measure to correct the error as to value, but affords no sort of excuse for copying Luther’s translation, and for attempting to translate the word Denarius, which being the specific name of a coin is not translatable. Even the Greeks did not attempt to translate it, and yet if they had thought proper to have substituted the word Drachma for Denarius, there would have been something like an approximation to the truth, for the Attic Drachma and the Roman Denarius were in weight and value so nearly alike, that the Greek Physicians when they came to practice at Rome, employed the Denarius as a weight for their medicines, in place of the Attic Drachma to which they had been accustomed when in their own country. The Denarius was the chief silver coin of the Romans, and in * In different parts of Germany the Groschen differs in value from to the 36th part of a dollar varying from about two pence three farthings to one penny and a half. c
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