MINA
(miʹna).
A unit both of weight and of monetary value. (1 Ki. 10:17; Ezra 2:69; Neh. 7:71) According to the Hebrew text of Ezekiel 45:12, one mina (maneh) equals sixty shekels. The Septuagint (Alexandrine manuscript) rendering of the scripture, though, assigns a value of fifty shekels to the mina. (See RS, Mo.) Other Biblical evidence likewise points to a mina consisting of fifty shekels. Exodus 38:25, 26 indicates that there were 3,000 shekels to the talent (603,550 x 1⁄2 shekel = 301,775 shekels, stated in the text to amount to 100 talents and 1,775 shekels). Since 3,000 is divisible by fifty or by sixty, this suggests that the talent was a multiple of the mina and the mina a multiple of the shekel (1 talent = either 50 or 60 minas, depending on whether a mina consisted of 60 or 50 shekels). The fact that values stated in terms of shekels are more often multiples of fifty than of sixty lends weight to the conclusion that the mina was fifty shekels.—Gen. 23:15; Ex. 30:24; 38:29; Num. 31:52; 1 Sam. 17:5.
There is also archaeological testimony for a mina of fifty shekels. An uninscribed weight of about 12.2 pounds troy (4,565 grams) found at Tell Beit Mirsim, if divided into eight minas of fifty shekels, would yield a shekel of 11.41 grams. This value basically corresponds to that of the average of some forty-five inscribed shekel weights found in Palestine. Therefore, in this publication the mina is calculated at fifty shekels or one-sixtieth of a talent, that is, 1.525 pounds troy (570 grams). Accordingly, in modern values, the silver mina would equal $23.73, and the gold mina, $644.35.
There is also a possibility that, as in the case of the cubit, two values were assigned to the mina, one perhaps for a royal mina (compare 2 Samuel 14:26) and the other for a common mina.—Compare Ezekiel 40:5.
The mina (mna) of the Christian Greek Scriptures (Luke 19:13-25) is reckoned at 100 drachmas, this being the value derived from ancient Greek writers. On this basis, the mina (silver) of that period would be worth $14.094 in modern values. This was a considerable sum in the first century C.E., amounting to about a fourth of the wages earned annually by an agricultural worker.