Show me a penny; literally, a denarius, a coin of the value of 7.5 d., but really representing a larger sum in our money. It seems probable, from the language of Mark 12:15, Mark 12:16, that his interrogators had to borrow the Roman coin in question from some of the neighbouring money-changers.
These Jews would scarcely carry any but Jewish coins in their girdles. That the Roman denarius, however, was evidently a coin in common circulation in those days, we gather from the parable of the labourers in the vineyard.
Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. "On one side would be the once beautiful but now depraved features of Tiberius; the title 'Pontifex Maximus' was probably inscribed on the obverse" (Farrar).