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The Talents · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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  A single talent, in this story, was a weight of silver worth something like
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  twenty years of a labourer's wages. One servant is given that much, digs a hole,
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  and puts it in the ground.
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  Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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  Our reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter twenty-five, verses sixteen to
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  thirty, in the World English Bible, British Edition.
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  The speaker is Jesus. Just before our reading begins, a man about to leave for
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  another country calls his servants and hands his property over to them: five
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  talents to one, two to another, and one to the third, each according to his own
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  ability. Then he leaves.
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  Immediately he who received the five talents went and traded with them, and
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  made another five talents. In the same way, he also who got the two gained
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  another two. But he who received the one talent went away and dug in the earth and
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  hid his lord’s money.
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  “Now after a long time the lord of those servants came, and settled accounts with
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  them. He who received the five talents came and brought another five talents,
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  saying, ‘Lord, you delivered to me five talents. Behold, I have gained another
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  five talents in addition to them.’
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  “His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.
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  You have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things.
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  Enter into the joy of your lord.’
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  “He also who got the two talents came and said, ‘Lord, you delivered to me two
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  talents. Behold, I have gained another two talents in addition to them.’
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  “His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.
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  You have been faithful over a few things. I will set you over many things.
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  Enter into the joy of your lord.’
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  “He also who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you that you
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  are a hard man, reaping where you didn’t sow, and gathering where you didn’t
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  scatter. I was afraid, and went away and hid your talent in the earth.
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  Behold, you have what is yours.’
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  “But his lord answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant.
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  You knew that I reap where I didn’t sow, and gather where I didn’t scatter.
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  You ought therefore to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I
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  should have received back my own with interest. Take away therefore the talent
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  from him and give it to him who has the ten talents.
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  For to everyone who has will be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who
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  doesn’t have, even that which he has will be taken away.
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  Throw out the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, where there will be
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  weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
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  It's one of the best known stories Jesus told. It has even given English one of its
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  everyday words. But the story underneath is stranger and harder than the word
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  suggests. Let's start with where Matthew puts it.
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  Matthew sets this parable near the end of a long block of teaching.
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  Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives, and his disciples have asked him, "What is
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  the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?"
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  His answer runs through two chapters, and it keeps coming back to one picture: a
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  master who goes away and comes back at an hour nobody expects.
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  "Watch therefore," he says, "for you don't know in what hour your Lord comes."
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  Just before our story is the parable of the ten virgins waiting with their lamps
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  for a bridegroom, which ends with the same warning.
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  Just after it comes the scene of the Son of Man separating the nations "as a
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  shepherd separates the sheep from the goats." So in Matthew, the story sits
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  among other stories about what servants do while the master is away.
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  Now the money. The English word talent comes from a Greek word for a pair of
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  scales, and a talent was first of all a weight. The footnote in the World English
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  Bible puts it at about thirty kilograms, usually of silver.
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  As money, a talent was worth about six thousand denarii.
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  A denarius, elsewhere in Matthew, is a day's pay for a labourer in a vineyard.
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  So one talent is roughly six thousand days of work.
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  At six working days a week, that's around twenty years.
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  The first servant is handed five of those. Even the third servant, the one who gets
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  the least, is holding about twenty years of a labourer's pay.
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  Notice that the master in Matthew gives each servant a different amount,
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  "according to his own ability." Nobody in the story complains about that.
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  What the master asks for at the end isn't a set sum.
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  The servant with five talents makes five more, the servant with two makes two more,
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  and they get exactly the same words of praise: "Well done, good and faithful
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  servant. You have been faithful over a few things, I will set you over many things.
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  Enter into the joy of your lord." To the master, five talents is "a few things."
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  Then the third servant speaks, and he speaks first about the master, not the
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  money. "Lord, I knew you that you are a hard man, reaping where you didn't sow,
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  and gathering where you didn't scatter. I was afraid."
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  The master doesn't deny it. He repeats the servant's own words back to him and says
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  that if that's what he believed, he should at least have "deposited my money with the
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  bankers." The Greek word for bankers here comes from the word for a table.
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  They were the men who sat at money tables. An old commentary in the Cambridge Bible
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  series calls this "the very least the slave could have done," since it took no
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  effort or skill. The scholar Johann Bengel pointed out that digging the hole was
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  probably more work than walking to the bankers.
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  There's a detail here that changes how the third servant looks.
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  In later Jewish law, at least, burying money counted as the careful thing to do.
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  The Mishnah, edited around the end of the second century, and the Talmud that grew
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  from it were both written down after the Gospels. They deal with exactly this
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  situation: someone is holding money that belongs to someone else.
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  The Mishnah says that if the person keeping the coins "bound it in a cloth and
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  slung it behind him," and it was stolen, he has to pay it back, because he didn't
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  guard it properly. And the teacher Shmuel puts it plainly: "There is safeguarding
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  for money only in the ground." Another teacher in the same passage, Rabbi
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  Yitzhak, advises people to split their money into three: bury a third, put a
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  third into business, and keep a third at hand.
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  Read the parable with that in mind and the third servant did what the law of
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  safekeeping would later count as responsible. He gave back exactly what he
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  was given. The master in the story judges him by a different standard: at the very
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  least, he says, the money should have earned interest.
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  Luke tells a story that is close to this one but not the same.
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  In Luke's version, a nobleman goes "into a far country to receive for himself a
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  kingdom." He gives ten servants one mina each, a much smaller coin, worth a
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  sixtieth of a talent, and tells them, "Conduct business until I come."
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  His own citizens hate him and send an envoy after him saying, "We don't want
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  this man to reign over us." When he returns as king, the faithful servants are
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  given authority over cities. The servant who did nothing has kept his mina "laid
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  away in a handkerchief." And the story ends with the king ordering his enemies to
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  be brought and killed in front of him.
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  The details are different enough that some scholars think the two versions don't come
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  from a single source. Luke also places his parable in a different spot: right after
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  Jesus has stayed with Zacchaeus in Jericho, as the crowd is getting close to
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  Jerusalem and expecting God's kingdom to appear at once.
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  We looked at Zacchaeus in an earlier episode. There's a historical echo in
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  Luke's version, too. After Herod the Great died, usually dated to four BC, his son
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  Archelaus went to Rome to have his kingship confirmed by the emperor
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  Augustus, and the historian Josephus says a Jewish embassy went to Rome to argue
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  against him. Some interpreters think Luke's nobleman is drawn from that memory.
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  Others think the detail came into the story later, as it was retold.
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  And notice the handkerchief. By the standard of the Mishnah we just heard,
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  Luke's servant, who wrapped the money in a cloth, wasn't even careful.
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  There was at least one more version. An ancient fragment, attributed to Eusebius
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  of Caesarea, summarises the story as it appeared in a lost gospel written in
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  Hebrew script, usually identified with the Gospel of the Nazarenes.
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  In that telling, one servant "consumed the property of the master with prostitutes
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  and flute-girls," one "greatly increased the profit," and one "hid the talent."
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  One was "accepted," one was "merely censured," and one was "locked up in
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  prison." The fragment's writer seems to think the harshest treatment went to the
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  one who squandered the money, not the one who hid it, though the text is unclear.
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  So what is the parable about? Readers have answered in quite different ways.
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  The most familiar reading takes the talents as gifts from God, and the story
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  as a call to use them. The scholar Joachim Jeremias argued that it was first aimed at
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  religious leaders who had kept God's gifts from other people.
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  And some modern readers have turned it upside down.
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  The scholar William Herzog read the third servant as a whistle blower, punished for
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  naming the master as a man who profits from other people's work.
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  Scholars differ, and the parable itself doesn't settle it.
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  One line in the story has had a long life of its own: "For to everyone who has will
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  be given, and he will have abundance, but from him who doesn't have, even that which
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  he has will be taken away." Jesus says something very close to this in other
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  places, too, after the parable of the sower in both Matthew and Luke, where it's
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  about how people listen. The sociologist Robert Merton, drawing on Harriet
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  Zuckerman's interviews with Nobel laureates, borrowed it to describe how
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  well known scientists tend to get more credit than lesser known ones for similar
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  work. They called it the Matthew effect.
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  And then there's the word itself. The everyday meaning of talent in English, a
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  natural gift or skill, grew out of this parable. Medieval readers took the talents
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  as the gifts God gives each person, and the meaning stuck long after people
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  stopped weighing silver in talents. John Milton, who lost his sight in middle age,
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  used the parable in a sonnet that a later editor titled On His Blindness.
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  He writes of "that one Talent which is death to hide / Lodged with me useless,"
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  and worries that God will ask for an account of work he can no longer do.
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  The poem's answer, at the end, is a line people still quote: "They also serve who
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  only stand and wait."
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  The ending in Matthew is hard, and there's no way to soften it honestly.
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  The servant is called "wicked and slothful," his one talent is given to the
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  man with ten, and he's thrown "into the outer darkness, where there will be
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  weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew uses that phrase, the outer darkness,
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  three times, each time for people shut out. What the servant was punished for,
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  the story doesn't leave in doubt: he did nothing with what he'd been given, and he
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  said it was because he was afraid of the master. Whether his fear was justified,
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  the story leaves for us to decide.
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  So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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  Which servant's picture of the master do you think was closer to the truth: the two
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  who went and traded, or the one who was afraid?
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  Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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  World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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  Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.