Parable of the ten minas

The reason for the story is given before the story, and it is unusually explicit: Jesus was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.

That expectation was reasonable given everything they had seen, and it was about to produce a crowd throwing cloaks on the road. The parable is told to slow it down.

A man of noble birth goes to a distant country to have himself appointed king and then return.

The opening would have raised eyebrows, because it describes something that had actually happened within living memory. When Herod the Great died, his son Archelaus travelled to Rome to have his inheritance confirmed by Augustus, and a delegation of about fifty Jews followed to argue against him. Archelaus came back with authority over Judea and dealt with his opponents. He also built a palace at Jericho, which is where this parable is told.

Before leaving, he calls ten of his servants and gives them ten minas, one each, with the instruction to put this money to work until I come back. A mina was about three months' wages for a labourer, so the sums are modest and identical, which distinguishes this story from the other one about talents where the amounts differ and are enormous.

His subjects hate him and send a delegation after him to say, we do not want this man to be our king.

He is made king anyway and returns, and calls in the servants. The first has earned ten more minas and is given charge of ten cities, a reward wildly out of proportion to the sum involved. The second has earned five and is given five cities.

The third produces the mina wrapped in a piece of cloth and explains himself: I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.

He is judged by his own description. If that is what you thought, why did you not put my money on deposit, so that when I came back I could have collected it with interest? Even the most cautious option was open to him and he took none.

The mina is taken and given to the man who has ten, and the closing line is the one people find hardest: to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

Then the enemies who did not want him as king are brought and killed in front of him, which is the Archelaus story again and is meant to be heard as such.

Archelaus ruled Judea for about ten years and was so bad at it that a delegation of Jews and Samaritans travelled to Rome to complain, and Augustus removed him and banished him to Gaul. Direct Roman administration followed, which is why there was a prefect in Jerusalem at all.

A version of the same story is told elsewhere with talents rather than minas, a talent being worth some sixty minas, and with three servants rather than ten. The similarities are obvious and the differences are consistent, and the likeliest explanation is that a teacher travelling constantly reused good material and adjusted it to the room.