Pearls of Great Price

Pearls were of much greater value in Jesus’ time than they are today. Queen Cleopatra is reputed to have had two pearls which together were worth around 15 million denarii. A denari was roughly a day’s wage for an unskilled labourer, so based on the current minimum wage in Australia, that comes out as maybe AU$2.25 billion (US$1.5 billion) for those two pearls. Even if my…