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Historical context

The tax collectors

Publicans, toll booths and Zacchaeus

In Galilee and Judea, collecting taxes meant serving Rome or Herod and profiting from the surplus. That is why tax collectors were seen as traitors — and Jesus ate with them.

What it cost to live under Rome

A Galilean farmer paid many bills at once. There was the land tribute, calculated on the harvest; a per-person tax, which Rome required in provinces that had been counted by census, like Judea; tolls on goods moving along roads, over bridges and through ports; and, on the religious side, the tithe and the Temple’s annual half-shekel. A decree of Julius Caesar preserved by Josephus sets for Judea, on a common reading, a tribute of one quarter of what was sown, paid every other year, with an exemption in the sabbatical year (Antiquities 14.202-203). How heavy all this was is much debated: modern estimates of the combined burden of civil and religious taxes range from less than a fifth to more than a third of production. What is certain is that for people living near subsistence, one year of drought made the bill unpayable, and debts grew. Taxes were also a daily reminder of who ruled the land God had given Israel.

Who the publicans were

The word publican comes from the Latin publicanus, a contractor for the state. Under the Roman Republic, companies of wealthy men from the equestrian order bought at auction the right to collect a province’s taxes: they paid Rome the agreed sum and kept whatever they could collect beyond it. The system produced notorious abuses. By Jesus’ time, however, the direct tribute in Judea was collected mainly by local authorities, and the ‘publicans’ of the Gospels were something else: in Greek, telonai, collectors of tolls and fees, often Jews, who leased a collection post from a larger contractor or from the ruler. In Galilee they worked for Herod Antipas’ administration; in Judea, within the system tied to the Roman prefect. The logic was that of the old leasing: pay in advance and profit from whatever you collected above it. That is why John the Baptist did not tell tax collectors to quit their trade, but to collect no more than they were ordered (Luke 3:13).

A tax booth in Capernaum

Matthew, also called Levi, was sitting at the tax booth when Jesus called him. Capernaum lay on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, near the border between Antipas’ territory and that of his brother Philip, across the Jordan. A trade road and the traffic of the lake’s boats passed through, and goods crossing the border paid a toll. Levi probably collected those tolls and perhaps fees on fish and other goods sold in the local market, though the details are not documented. This means the Capernaum fishermen who followed Jesus knew the man at the booth well; quite possibly they had already paid him. The call scene takes on new color. Jesus does not call a distant stranger, but someone the whole town saw as part of the system squeezing it. And Levi responds with a banquet, bringing his colleagues to the table with Jesus.

Why they were hated

Contempt for tax collectors was almost universal in the ancient world. Cicero lists toll collectors and moneylenders among the disreputable trades, because they arouse people’s hatred (On Duties 1.150). Among Jews there were further reasons. The tax collector profited by serving Herod or Rome, handled Gentiles and their money and had a reputation for dishonesty. The Mishnah, compiled around AD 200 but containing older traditions, says that if tax collectors enter a house, the house becomes unclean (Tohorot 7:6), and it even allows a misleading vow to escape them (Nedarim 3:4). In the Gospels, ‘tax collectors and sinners’ appear together as a single bloc, and Jesus cites tax collectors as examples of those who love only those who love them (Matthew 5:46). They were not shunned for a single failing but for an entire social position: seen at once as traitors, thieves and unclean.

Matthew and Zacchaeus

Two tax collectors are named in the Gospels. Matthew leaves the booth and becomes one of the Twelve; the tradition of the early church linked the first Gospel to him, where he appears as ‘Matthew the tax collector’ (Matthew 10:3). Zacchaeus, in Jericho, was something bigger: a chief tax collector, and rich. Jericho was an oasis of palms and balsam, an expensive product, and lay on the route between Perea, across the Jordan, and Jerusalem; a collection post there could be very lucrative. When Jesus invites himself to his house, the town grumbles. Zacchaeus’ response is concrete: half his goods to the poor and fourfold repayment of anything he had extorted, the same measure the Law required of someone who stole and sold a sheep (Exodus 22:1). In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Jesus takes the reversal to its limit: the man the people despised goes home justified, because he asked for mercy.

Caesar, Paul and Nero

The question about taxes to Caesar was a perfect trap. If Jesus said taxes should not be paid, he would be denounced as a rebel; if he said they should, he would lose the people, who remembered Judas the Galilean. He asks for the tribute coin, a denarius, probably of Tiberius, bearing the emperor’s image and an inscription calling him son of the divine Augustus. Whoever carried that coin was already using Caesar’s system; God’s image, however, was on human beings. About 25 years later, Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome to pay taxes and revenue (Romans 13:6-7), using the two technical Greek words for direct tribute and indirect duties. Tacitus reports that shortly afterward, in AD 58, there were so many complaints against the collectors that Nero considered abolishing all indirect taxes in the empire; the senators persuaded him instead to publish rules against abuses (Annals 13.50-51).

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